Long before Jackie Robinson and his fabled life as an
athlete, barrier breaker, business man, and civil rights activist, there was Moses
Fleetwood Walker.
Walker, traditionally considered the first African American
to play baseball at the Major League level, first appeared in a major league
baseball game as a catcher for the Toledo (Ohio) Blue Stockings in 1884.
Today, the Triple-A minor league Toledo Mud Hens, claim
Walker as one of their own. The Hens honored him on May 14 of last year with a
special tribute 125 years after his major league debut and the city's first
major league baseball game.
Walker was born in Mount Pleasant, Ohio, and played college
baseball with Oberlin College and University of Michigan
(where he attended law school) before signing with the minor league Blue
Stockings in 1883.
His team made the jump to the Major League in 1884 by
joining the American Association, a competitor to the National League, and
played Walker on May 1. Walker had no hits and four errors in his major league
debut, but his appearance still put him into the baseball record books.
Walker played baseball with his brother, Welday, at Oberlin,
and Welday Walker joined his brother in Toledo, playing for six games with the
Blue Stockings during 1884.
The Walkers brothers are arguably the first and second
African Americans to ever play in the major leagues before Jackie Robinson's
1947 major league debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
There is a claim that another player, William Edward White, predates
Fleet Walker as the first African American to play in the major leagues. The
ironically named White played one game for the Providence (Rhode Island) Grays
in 1879. White's parents were a white slaveholder and a mixed-race slave, but
census data from 1880 and later lists White's race as "white", so
there is conjecture that he was passing as a white man in Rhode Island.
Walker's major league career only lasted one season.
There is some evidence that some players did not like playing
with an African American catcher, and one of the team's star pitchers later
admitted that he deliberately ignored Walker's signals. That meant Walker often
had to catch without knowing the speed, location, or spin of the pitcher's
throws, and it's possible that resulting injuries contributed to the early end
of his baseball career.
Meanwhile, the Toledo team folded and the American
Association joined the National League in unofficially banning black players.
Walker drifted through several years with various minor
league teams, and suffered several more setbacks due to discrimination. His
team in Syracuse, New York, released him in 1889, and he could no longer find a
job in baseball.
In 1891, a group of white men attacked Walker in Syracuse. Walker
killed stabbed and killed one of his attackers. He stood trial on charges of
second-degree murder and entered a plea of self-defense, with the jury acquitting
him of all charges.
The college-educated Walker, who an article in The Sporting
News from 1945 described as "an avid reader of high-grade literature and a
brilliant conversationalist", tried
his hand at writing and publishing later in life. He was a strong proponent of Black
Nationalism, and his 1908 book, "Our Home Colony", encouraged black
emigration back to Africa as the best solution to avoiding racial prejudice. He
published a newspaper called The Equator, opened a hotel with his brother, and
managed several movie theaters and an opera house in his later years. He also
patented several inventions involving the movie industry and motion picture cameras.
Walker died in 1924, and baseball fans can find his grave in
Union Cemetery at Steubenville, Ohio.
A State of Ohio Historical Marker honoring Walker also
stands outside of the Mud Hens' ball park in downtown Toledo.
Read more about the Mud Hens here at Midwest Guest:
Take Me Out to the Ball Game
Want to learn more about Walker and the early history of
baseball in Toledo? Try checking out these books:
Fleet Walker's Divided Heart: The Life of Baseball's First Black Major Leaguer by David W. Zang
Baseball in Toledo by John R. Husman
© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved
