page_title: Weldy Walker
section_title: Professional baseball
hierarchical_section_title: Weldy Walker / Professional baseball
caption_attribution_description: English: 1883 University of Michigan baseball team.Top row: Charles A. Hueber (pitcher, 2nd base), Henry Ernest Montgomery (catcher), manager Metcalfe, A. E. Miller, Lincoln McMillan (right field)Front row: William D. Condon (pitcher, left field), Charles G. Allmendinger (captain and shortstop), Weldy W. Walker (3rd base), Arthur P. Packard (pitcher), Charles H. Blackburn
context_page_description: Weldy Wilberforce Walker, sometimes known as Welday Walker and W. W. Walker, was an American baseball player. In 1884, he became the second African American to play Major League Baseball.
  Walker played at Oberlin College and the University of Michigan. In July 1884, he joined the Toledo Blue Stockings of the American Association which was then part of Major League Baseball. His brother Moses Fleetwood Walker, commonly known as Fleetwood Walker, was the first African American to play Major League Baseball, making his debut two months before Weldy. In 1887, as racial segregation took hold in professional baseball, Weldy joined the Pittsburgh Keystones of the short-lived National Colored Base Ball League.
  His March 1888 open letter to The Sporting Life protesting the racial segregation of baseball has been described as "perhaps the most passionate cry for justice ever voiced by a Negro athlete."
  After retiring from baseball, Walker operated restaurants and a hotel in eastern Ohio.
caption: 1883 Michigan baseball team, Weldy Walker in the center of the front row
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