10 Queen City Heritage

Ednah Jane Mason, one of his Oberlin College classmates. , 1908), 21. She died in 1920.50 Fleet Walker died of pneumonia at age 5. United States Census Record, First Ward Steubenville-City, Jefferson County, Ohio June 3, 1870, entry #47,6. sixty-six on May 11, 1924, in where he had been 6. , obituary, Steubenville Herald-Star, May living in retirement for two years at 2326 East Fifty-fifth 13, 1924. Street.51 7. Ralph E. LinWeber, WThe Toledo Guide of the Mud Hens: If Moses Fleetwood Walker is remembered Directory of History Records Indicating 60 Years of the Toledo Baseball Club, 1883-1943 (Rossford, Ohio, 1944), 7. at all today, he is remembered by some as the first black 8. Moses Fleetwood Walker, obituary, Steubenville Herald-Star, May big leaguer. But there was so much more to Fleet Walker 13, 1924. than being the answer to a baseball trivia question. In 9. Moses Fleetwood Walker, transcript, Oberlin College Archives. 10. University of Michigan Sports Information Department to addition to having a fascinating and somewhat controver- author, August 8, 1986. sial career in baseball, he became an ardent advocate and 11. Ralph E. LinWeber to author, August 9,1986. articulate writer for black rights in the United States. He 12. LinWeber, Toledo Baseball Guide, 14. 13. Ibid., 15. was a scholar and an intellectual as well as an athlete and a 14. Quoted in William A. Brewer, "Barehanded ," Negro gentleman, a unique survivor of the "twilight zone" in the Digest, October 1951, 86. history of this nation's race relations. 15. Ibid. 16. LinWeber, Toledo Baseball Guide, 17. 17. Toledo Blade, August 11, 1883. 18. The Baseball Encyclopedia, (New York, 1969), 106-107 and 1607. 1. C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career ofJim Crow, third revised 19. John Brown to C.H. Morton, April 11, 1884, Chicago Baseball edition (New York, 1974), 33. Club, Chicago Historical Society. 2. Much of the general information on Moses Fleetwood Walker is 20. New York Age, January 11, 1919. presented in Ocania Chalk, Pioneers of Black Sport (New York, 1975); 21. Toledo Blade, May 5,1884. Jerry Malloy, "Out at Home: Baseball Draws the Color Line, 1887," 22. Ibid. The NationalPastime, 1983, 14-18; Robert Peterson, Only the BallWas 23. Toledo Blade, May 15,1884. White (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1970); and Carl F. Wittke, 24. Quoted in Peterson, Only the Ball Was White, 23. "Oberlinian Was First Negro Player in Major Leagues," Oberlin 25. Toledo Blade, September 24, 1884. Alumni Bulletin, First Quarter, 1946, 4. 26. Ibid. 3. Robert Davids, member of the Society for American Baseball 27. Pete Craig, "The Scoreboard,"Oberlin News-Tribune, Research, "Chronological Registry of 19th Century Negroes in December 28, 1945. Organized Baseball," 1985, unpublished. 28. LinWeber, Toledo Baseball Guide, 20. 4. M[oscs]. F[lcctwood]. Walker, Our Home Colony: A Treatise on the 29. Sporting Life, June 6, 1988. Past, Present and Future of the Negro Race in America, (Steubenville, 30. Cleveland Leader and Herald, June 7, 1885.

Weldy Walker, like his broth- Historical Library, University er Fleet, attended the of Michigan) University of Michigan and played baseball there in 1884. Weldy Walker is pictured in the center of the front row. (Photo courtesy Bentley