A Century Later, Moses Walker Gets His Due -- Research Leads To First Black Player

PHILADELPHIA - They finally put a headstone on the grave of Moses Fleetwood Walker last October. The inscription read: "First black major-league baseball player in the U.S.A."

It took a while - more than a century, in fact - but the man Sara Freeman knew as "Uncle Fleet" finally got his due, thanks to the historians at Oberlin (Ohio) College.

"I used to tell people my great-uncle was the first black major-league ballplayer and they didn't believe me," said Freeman, 74, a retired postal worker who lives in Mount Airy. "They would say something like, `Oh, really? That's nice.'

"I knew what they were thinking: `Jackie Robinson was the first black player in the major leagues. Everybody knows that.' But it's not true. There were blacks in (pro) baseball in the 1800s and, as a child, I was told that Uncle Fleet was the first.

"It was a very proud thing for our family," Freeman said, "but I never forced (the issue) on anyone, because I didn't have any proof. We didn't have clippings or photos, nothing that told the real story.

"After a while, I just stopped talking about it."

But last year, Oberlin College was researching candidates for its athletic hall of fame and it picked up the trail of Moses Fleetwood Walker, a catcher on the school's first baseball team (1881) who had been forgotten since his death in 1924.

The college began piecing together Walker's life story. What emerged was a portrait of an American pioneer - athlete, scholar and author - who, sadly, slipped through the cracks of history.

Oberlin attempted to correct that oversight last October by inducting Walker into its hall of fame and placing a 350-pound granite headstone on his previously unmarked grave in Steubenville, Ohio.

"We're hopeful that what we're doing will bring more attention to a piece of baseball history without stepping on the image of Jackie Robinson," said Samuel Cooper, an Oberlin official, speaking at the dedication ceremony attended by members of the Walker family, including Sara Freeman and her son Tony, 33.

"It was a thrill to see (Walker) honored in such a way," Freeman said. "I was only 7 years old when he died, so I didn't remember that much about him.

"I just remember he was a nice man who had a flamboyant way about him. My relatives would say, `That's your Uncle Fleet. He was a great ballplayer.'

"It wasn't until later, after he was gone, that I realized how really important he was. It's nice to know that now other people will understand that, too."

Jackie Robinson achieved everlasting fame as the first black player in baseball's modern era.

He signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers and broke baseball's so-called "color barrier" in 1947. He endured racial taunts and harsh treatment from other players and fans around the National League.

But the truth is, Moses Fleetwood Walker went through the same thing in 1884 when he played for Toledo, of the American Association, forerunner of the American League.

Walker was the first player actually to integrate the game and he, too, paid a steep emotional price.

He was jeered and often roughed up on the field. Opposing pitchers threw at his head and base runners went out of their way to level him at home plate. Even some of his teammates resented his presence.

In the book "19th Century Stars," Toledo pitcher Tony Mullane was quoted as saying: "Walker was the best catcher I ever worked with, but I disliked the Negro. Whenever I had to work to him, I'd pitch anything I wanted without looking at the signs."

Walker lasted one season in the American Association before being released. He spent the next five years in the minors. Officially, he batted .263 in 42 major-league games.

If his fielding percentage seems low (.888), keep in mind, there were no catcher's mitts in the 1880s. Walker caught every game barehanded; newspaper accounts from that era describe his "swollen hands and split, bleeding fingers," which worsened as the season wore on.

That pain was nothing compared with the deeper pain Walker felt when he was singled out and mistreated because of his race.

Walker was a bright, introspective man, certainly better-educated than most of his baseball peers. At Oberlin, his courses included four languages, logic, rhetoric, astronomy, zoology, civil engineering and math. He graduated with honors in 1882.

In a sport dominated by semi-literate whites, Walker, the son of a Methodist minister from Steubenville, could not have been a more alien figure.

As the Jim Crow segregationist laws spread, the black pros disappeared from baseball. Some were released; others quit in disgust.

Moses Walker hung on the longest. He finally retired in 1890 at age 33 and took a job as a mail clerk in Syracuse, N.Y.

No black would play major-league baseball again until Jackie Robinson came along, more than a half-century later.

In 1922, Walker retired to Cleveland, where he died of pneumonia two years later. He was buried in the family plot at the Union Cemetery in Steubenville.

For 67 years, there was no marker on the grave. Today, thanks to Walker's alma mater, Oberlin College, there is.