Moses Fleetwood Walker, Ohio baseball pioneer

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.