Not the First

With the movie 42 coming out on Friday, I’m sure we’ll hear folk say that Jackie Robinson was the first black Major League baseball player.  But that distinction belongs to Moses Fleetwood Walker who played in the American Association in 1884.  The color barrier was instituted to keep him out and, of course, Robinson broke it in 1947.  Walker was originally an integrationist but his struggle with racism led him to champion Garvey’s “Back to African Movement.”  He led an interesting life.

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[alta charo]

Because I am sure he would not toot his own horn, FYI our colleague at Wisconsin has published two books that people interested in the Jackie Robinson and Moses Fleetwood Walker stories might also find interesting:

Beyond the Shadow of the Senators: The Untold Story of the Homestead Grays and the Integration of Baseball (Contemporary Books, 2003) (argues that Washington, D.C. played a pivotal role in the integration of baseball during the 1940s when the best black baseball team, the Homestead Grays, played in the same stadium as the worst white team, the Washington Senators)

A Well-Paid Slave: Curt Flood’s Fight for Free Agency in Professional Sports (Viking/Penguin, Oct. 2006, paperback Plume, Oct. 2007) (tells the legal and historical story behind the Supreme Court’s Flood v. Kuhn decision about baseball’s antitrust exemption)

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