Answer: It Wasn’t Jackie Robinson

Fleetwood had the misfortune of being a catcher. Being a catcher in those days was a hazardous vocation. Catchers did not wear the protective equipment we are familiar with today. To make matters worse, some of Fleetwood’s battery mates refused to take signs from a colored man so he did not know what pitch was being thrown. Fleetwood, inevitably, got hurt, but he managed to make enough money to pay his way through the University of Michigan law school.

Fleetwood continued to play for a number of teams over the next few years. While playing for Syracuse in 1891, Fleetwood was accosted outside a bar on a Sunday afternoon as he walked home from church. Fleetwood killed his attacker. He was charged with manslaughter but was later acquitted of all charges.

Besides being a lawyer, Fleetwood became an inventor. In 1891 he was awarded a patent for an exploding artillery shell. He and his brother also began a newspaper for African-Americans, The Equator.

In 1904, Fleetwood and his wife Ednah, moved to Cadiz, OH, where they bought and operated an opera house which stands to this day.

Fleetwood and Welday were the last black men to play in a regular season major league game, but not the last to be signed by a big league team. That would be Charlie Grant.

Charlie also was born in Ohio. He played for several years for the biggest negro teams of his day. He first played for the Page Fence Giants beginning in 1896. In 1899 he would play for the Columbia Giants who went on to win the Negro League championship. In 1901 Charlie moved to Hot Springs, AR to play for the Eastland Hotel team. A few years earlier, a resort hotel in New York had begun letting their hired help play baseball in the evenings and the patrons would watch. It caught on and hotels all over the eastern part of the country got themselves a team.

It was this year, 1901, that the American League was born. The new Baltimore Orioles held their spring training in Hot Springs. The manager of the Orioles that year, John McGraw, saw Charlie play and was impressed. He immediately signed the little second baseman to a contract. McGraw know that the major leagues had passed a ban disallowing blacks from playing. No problem, McGraw came up with a plan to make Charlie a Cherokee Indian, “Chief Tokohoma.” It wasn’t hard to pass Charlie as an Indian, who was light-skinned with high cheek bones and long, straight, black hair.

The owner of the White Stockings, Charles Comiskey, began making noise about the Orioles newest signing, claiming he knew that “old Grant,” played for a negro team. He more than likely was thinking of John Grant who was older than Charlie and had also played for negro teams for many years in Chicago.

Charlie played in one preseason game. He managed to hit a home run, quite a feat in the “dead ball” era. The black spectators at the game immediately rushed out onto the field to congratulate their hero, and the masquerade was over. The American League Commissioner, Ban Johnson, forced the Orioles to release Charlie. McGraw tried in vain over the next several months to get Charlie back on the team. McGraw got fed up with the American League and its commissioner, and bolted to the National League the next year where he managed the New York Giants. He would win 10 National League Pennants and 3 World Series with the Giants. In 1937 McGraw was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. After his death at age 60, his wife found among his belongings, a list of all the black baseball players he wanted to sign to play in the major leagues but was not allowed to.