Answer: It Wasn’t Jackie Robinson

If you were to ask 100 sports fans who was the first black person to play in the major leagues, you would get 100 people who would answer “Jackie Robinson.” He was the first African-American to play in the big leagues in a long time, but he was hardly the first.

The first may have been a young man by the name of William White who played one game for the Providence Greys in 1879. He was born to a slave woman in Georgia, his Father was the plantation owner. After the Civil War, William’s father thought it best for his children to be moved out of the south, be given a good education and pretend to be white. So he and his sister boarded a train and moved to Providence. William excelled at baseball and in his senior year of High School he was starting for Brown University.

In those days major league teams would field no more than ten players. When one was hurt the team would scramble to find a substitute. Enter William White. Providence was playing a home game against Cleveland on this day, June 21, 1879. The starting first baseman, Joe Start, broke his finger. The manager, George Wright, put in William to fill the spot. William stole two bases and got a base hit in the ninth. William especially excelled in the field, recording 12 putouts, pretty good considering that no one wore gloves in those days. Providence won  the game on this day, 5-3, and went on to win the pennant that year.

For some reason, no one knows why to this day, the Greys replaced William the next night at first base with Jim O’Rourke, a right fielder. William never played for the Greys again.

William White always claimed to be white while going to school and playing ball. Later in life he married and moved to Chicago. He was separated from his wife when the 1920 census taker asked his race, “Black,” he replied.

William preceded the next known African-American major leaguer by five years. Moses Fleetwood Walker played 24 games in 1884 for the Toledo Blue Stockings of the American Association, which was then considered a major league. His brother, Welday Walker, also played 6 games for Toledo.

Fleetwood’s father was a blacksmith who managed to work his way through college and became a physician and a minister. Having ascended into a higher societal plane he was able to send his boys to better schools. Fleetwood and Welday were enrolled in Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio. On the same team, remarkably enough, was one Branch Rickey who would later sign Jackie Robinson to the Dodgers and famously “break” the color barrier.