Opera House and managed the Temple Theater in Cleveland with Weldy. On May 11, 1924, Walker died of lobar pneumonia at 67 years of age. His body was buried at Union Cemetery-Beatty Park next to his first wife. Legacy Although Jackie Robinson is very commonly miscredited with being the first African-American to play major league baseball, Walker held the honor among baseball aficionados for decades. In 2007, researcher Pete Morris discovered that another ball player, the formerly enslaved William Edward White, actually played a single game for the Providence Grays around five years before Walker debuted for the Blue Stockings. Despite these findings, baseball historians still credit Walker with being the first in the major leagues to play openly as a black man. On the subject of White, John R. Husman wrote: "He played baseball and lived his life as a white man. If White, who was also of white blood, said he was white and he was not challenged, he was white in his time and circumstances." Like Robinson, however, Walker endured trials with racism in the major leagues and was thus the first black man to do so. Walker was inducted into the Oberlin College Hall of Fame in 1990. In 2021, indie-folk artist Cousin Wolf released a song entitled "Moses Fleetwood Walker" as part of an album called Nine Innings. References Bibliography External links Negro League Baseball Players Association Baseball Hall of Fame Fleetwood Walker Honor Bill 1856 births 1924 deaths Major League Baseball catchers 19th-century baseball players Toledo Blue Stockings players Toledo Blue Stockings (minor league) players Waterbury (minor league baseball) players Cleveland Forest Cities players Waterbury Brassmen players Newark Little Giants players Syracuse Stars (minor league baseball) players Oconto (minor league baseball) players Oberlin College alumni University of Michigan alumni African-American baseball players African and Black nationalists Baseball players from Ohio People from Mount Pleasant, Ohio Sportspeople from Steubenville, Ohio People acquitted of murder Burials at Union Cemetery-Beatty Park Baseball in Syracuse, New York African-American inventors 19th-century American inventors 20th-century African-American writers Deaths from pneumonia in Ohio 20th-century American male writers African-American male writers Writers from Ohio