The National Pastime

looked forward to the next season, exercising his throwing Home Colony; A Treatise on the Past, Presentand Futureof arm by tossing a claw hammer in the air and catching it. the Negro Race in America. According to the former After a meeting in Buffalo inJanuary 1888, SportingLfe catcher, "The only practical and permanent solution of summarized the IA's ambivalent position on the question the present and future race troubles in the United States is of black players: entire separation by emigration of the Negro from Amer- ica." Following the example of Liberia, "the Negro race At the recent International Association meeting there was some can find superior advantages, and better opportunities informal talk regarding the right of clubs to sign colored players, .among people of their own race, for developing the and the general understanding seemed to be that no city should innate powers of mind and body. .. ." The achievement be allowed more than one colored man. Syracuse has signed two of racial equality "is contrary to everything in the nature of whom she will undoubtedly be allowed to keep. Buffalo has man, and [it is] almost criminal to attempt to harmonize signed Grant, but outside of these men there will probably be no colored men in the league. these two diverse peoples while living under the same government." The past forty years, he wrote, have shown Frank Grant would have a typical season in Buffalo in "that instead of improving we are experiencing the de- 1888, where he was moved to the outfield to avoid spike velopment of a real caste spirit in the United States." wounds. For the third straight year his batting average Fleet Walker died of pneumonia in Cleveland at age 66 (.346) was the highest on the team. Bob Higgins, the agent on May 11, 1924, and was buried in Union Cemetery in and victim of too much history, would, according to Steubenville, Ohio. His brother Welday died in Steuben- Sporting Life, "give up his $200 a month, and return ville thirteen years later at the age of 77. to his barbershop in Memphis, Tennessee," despite com- piling a 20-7 record. Fleet Walker, catching 76 games and stealing 30 bases, VII became a member of a second championship team, the first since Toledo in 1883. But his season was blighted by a In The Strange Career ofJim Crow, historian C. Vann third distasteful encounter with Anson. In an exhibition Woodward identifies the late 1880s as a "twilight zone game at Syracuse on September 27,1888, Walker was not that lies between living memory and written history," permitted to play against the White Stockings. Anson's when "for a time old and new rubbed shoulders-and so policy of refusing to allow blacks on the same field with did black and white-in a manner that differed sig- him had become so well-known and accepted that the nificantly from Jim Crow of the future or slavery of the incident was not even reported in the white press. The past." He continued: Indianapolis World noted the incident, which by now .a great deal of variety and inconsistency prevailed in race apparently was of interest only to black readers. relations from state to state and within a state. It was a time of Fowler, Grant, and Stovey played many more seasons, experiment, testing, and uncertainty--quite different from the some with integrated teams, some on all-Negro teams in time of repression and.rigid uniformity that was to come toward white leagues in organized baseball, some on inde- the end of the century. Alternatives were still open and real pendent Negro teams. Fowler and Grant stayed one step choices had to be made. ahead of the color line as it proceeded westward. Fleet Walker continued to play for Syracuse in 1889, Sol White and his contemporaries lived through such a where he would be the last black in the International transition period, and he identified the turning point at League until Jackie Robinson. Walker's career as a pro- 1887. Twenty years later he noted the deterioration of the fessional ballplayer ended in the relative obscurity of black ballplayer's situation. Although White could hope Terre Haute, Indiana (1890) and Oconto, Wisconsin that one day the black would be able to "walk hand-in- (1891). hand with the opposite race in the greatest of all Amer- In the spring of 1891 Walker was accused of murdering ican games-base ball," he was not optimistic: a convicted burglar by the name of Patrick Murphy out- As it is, the field for the colored professional is limited to a very side a bar in Syracuse. When he was found not guilty narrow scope in the base ball world. When he looks into the "immediately a shout of approval, accompanied by clap- future he sees no place for him. .. Consequently he loses ping of hands and stamping of feet, rose from the spec- interest. He knows that, so far shall I go, and no farther, and, as tators," according to Sporting Life. His baseball career it is with the profession, so it is with his ability. over, he returned to Ohio and embarked on various careers. He owned or operated the Cadiz, Ohio, opera house, The "strange careers" of Moses Walker, George Stovey, and several motion picture houses, during which time he Frank Grant, Bud Fowler, Robert Higgins, Sol White, et claimed several inventions in the motion picture industry. al., provide a microcosmic view of the development of He was also the editor of a newspaper, The Equator, with race relations in the society at large, as outlined by Wood- the assistance of his brother Welday. ward. The events of 1887 offer further evidence of the old In 1908 he published a 47-page booklet entitled Our saw that sport does not develop character-it reveals it. 28 THE NATIONAL PASTIME.

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