Collection Highlights: Marylandia Update
Contributed by Jordan Wohlfort, Collection Development Librarian
;
February 2022
In honor of Black History Month, check out this title that covers
the story of the first Black major league baseball player.
Biography
DBC 5264 – Fleet Walker's Divided Heart : The Life of Baseball's First Black Major Leaguer, by David W. Zang, narrated by Sylvia Eastman
A biography of an all-but-forgotten figure in the history of American
sports and a dramatic portrait that reflects the nation’s turn-of-the-century
racial milieu. Moses Fleetwood Walker was the first black American to play
baseball in a major league. He achieved college baseball stardom at Oberlin
College in the 1880s. Teammates, as well as opponents, harassed him.
A gifted athlete, inventor, civil rights activist, author, and entrepreneur,
Walker lived precariously along America’s racial fault lines. He died in
1924, thwarted in ambition and talent and frustrated by both the American dream
and the national pastime. This book is about more than baseball as the author
effectively places Walker’s multifaceted life in the context of the racial climate of the
late nineteenth century.
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