Moses Fleetwood Walker
| Moses Fleetwood Walker | |||
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| Catcher | |||
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Born: October 7, 1856 Mount Pleasant, Ohio, United States |
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Died: May 11, 1924 (aged 67) Cleveland, Ohio, U.S. |
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| MLB debut | |||
| May 1, 1884, for the Toledo Blue Stockings | |||
| Last MLB appearance | |||
| September 4, 1884, for the Toledo Blue Stockings | |||
| MLB statistics | |||
| Games played | 42 | ||
| Batting average | .263 | ||
| Runs scored | 23 | ||
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Moses Fleetwood "Fleet" Walker (October 7, 1856 – May 11, 1924) was an American professional baseball catcher who is credited with being the first openly black athlete to play in Major League Baseball (MLB). A native of Mount Pleasant, Ohio, and a star athlete at Oberlin College as well as the University of Michigan, Walker played for semi-professional and minor league baseball clubs before joining the of the American Association (AA) for the 1884 season.
Though research suggests William Edward White was the first African-American baseball player in MLB, unlike White who passed as a white man, Walker was open about his black heritage, and often faced racial bigotry prevalent in the late 19th century. His brother, Weldy, became the second black athlete to do so later in the same year, also for the Toledo ball club. Walker played just one season, 42 games total, for Toledo before injuries entailed his release.
Walker played in the minor leagues until 1889, and was the last African-American to participate on the major league level before Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color line in 1947. After his baseball career, he became a successful businessman and inventor. As an advocate of Black nationalism, Walker also jointly edited a newspaper, The Equator, with his brother. He published a book, Our Home Colony (1908), to explore ideas about emigrating back to Africa. He died in 1924 at the age of 67.
Moses Fleetwood Walker was born in 1856 in Mount Pleasant, a working-class town in Eastern Ohio that had served as a sanctuary for runaway slaves since 1815. Its population included a large Quaker community and a unique collective of former Virginian slaves. Walker's parents, Moses W. Walker and Caroline O' Harra, were both mulattos. According to Walker's biographer David W. Zang, his father came to Ohio from Pennsylvania, likely a beneficiary of Quaker patronage, and married O' Harra, who was a native to the state, on June 11, 1843. When Walker was three years old, the family moved 20 miles northeast to Steubenville where Moses W. became one of the first black physicians of Ohio and later a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church. There, Walker's fifth or sixth sibling, his younger brother Weldy, was born the same year. Walker and Weldy attended Steubenville High School in the early 1870s, just as the community passed legislation for racial integration.
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