STEUBENVILLE – Craig Brown doesn’t know why there’s no headstone on Weldy Wilberforce Walker’s grave at Union Cemetery.

But he and Wellsburg resident Nathan Marshall hope to see one placed there by spring.

After all, Weldy Wilberforce Walker was the second African-American to play baseball in the major leagues; Moses Fleetwood Walker, his older brother buried nearby, was the first.

Both grew up in Steubenville and command a special place in local, state and national history, they say.

Brown and Marshall have joined forces to generate funds for an estimated $1,400 grave marker and are hoping for Steubenville area support to make that happen.

“It’s a very small thing to do, but it’s the right thing to do,” said Brown, a resident of Salem and teacher at the Salem branch of Kent State University and Stark State College in North Canton.

As efforts are launched to secure money for a headstone, there is cause for some connected celebration, according to Brown, thanks to action taken Feb. 17 by the Ohio House.

By a 90-0 vote, lawmakers unanimously passed House Bill 87 to declare Oct. 7 – the birthday of Moses Fleetwood Walker – to be Moses Fleetwood Walker Day each year in Ohio.

“It still needs to pass the Senate and be signed by the governor,” Brown said. “This needs to happen by the end of the year or everything starts from the beginning,” he added.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Stephen Slesnick, D-Canton, constitutes a grassroots effort led by baseball buff Brown and his students. Toward the end of 2013, Brown first learned about Moses Fleetwood Walker after reading “Black Diamond: The Story of the Negro Baseball Leagues.”

Intrigued that Moses Fleetwood Walker was an early baseball pioneer and from the local area no less, Brown said his discovery coincided with classroom discussions on civil liberties and civil rights. The conversations ultimately developed into the effort to have Ohio honor one of its own, spurring Brown to contact Slesnick.

The bill reads in part: “The seventh day of October is designated as Moses Fleetwood Walker Day in honor of the Ohioan who was the first African-American Major League Baseball player under contract. In declaring the seventh day of October Moses Fleetwood Walker Day, the general assembly recognizes the contribution that Moses Fleetwood Walker made to the integration of professional athletics. Born in Mount Pleasant, Ohio, on Oct. 7, 1857, Moses Fleetwood Walker played one season with the Toledo Blue Stockings and died in Cleveland in 1924.”

Brown and his students believed Moses Fleetwood Walker – not only a baseball player but a businessman in the Ohio Valley – deserved to be honored with a special day so that future generations will know what he accomplished against all odds.

The public’s support for the bill’s passage had been encouraged by asking people to like the Moses Fleetwood Walker Day Facebook page and to e-mail their representatives – continued support that would be appreciated, according to Brown.

“I’m thrilled with the outpouring of support this bill has received as shown by a unanimous vote,” Brown said, reacting to the House’s action. “This is the type of recognition Walker would never have imagined. By the end of his life, his views on race relations were tainted by bad experiences, and he doubted if things could ever improve. I hope that in some small way what has happened shows we have made progress,” he added.

In a post April 15, Slesnick, in noting the House state government committee had reviewed the bill, wrote, “Moses Fleetwood Walker was a man whose actions of courage and determination were not and are not celebrated, but instead cast aside. We should recognize October 7 as Moses Fleetwood Walker Day and finally give this Ohioan some long overdue credit he deserves for being the first African American to play in major league baseball.”

Slesnick continued, “Walker was raised in Steubenville and attended Oberlin College where he played for the school’s first varsity baseball team. On May 1, 1884, he made his major league debut as catcher for the Toledo Blue Stockings and later played on a number of minor league teams until 1888. Walker’s entry in major league baseball ultimately resulted in a ban on African Americans in the sport, a barrier Jackie Robinson later broke in 1947.”

Brown said he learned about Weldy Wilberforce Walker as a result of researching his brother, who was three years older, but was preoccupied with the status of House Bill 87, at least before Nathan Marshall of Brooke County connected with him through the Moses Fleetwood Walker Facebook page.

“Nathan approached me about doing more things to honor the Walker brothers a few months ago,” Brown said. “Up until that point I was focused on HB 87. His interest convinced me that buying Weldy a gravestone could have momentum, and this was possibly something we could do in a relatively short amount of time. If the people of Steubenville can get behind this cause, I believe this is something we can get done quickly. Nathan and I both believe that the lives of the Walker brothers can be used as a way to promote interest and tourism in the Steubenville area,” he added.

Marshall said he learned only recently about the Walker brothers after a conversation with Judy Bratten, executive director of Historic Fort Steuben and the Visitors Center.

“I love history, and this is such an interesting story,” Marshall said, noting he didn’t know about the Walker brothers or that they had area ties. “They are very captivating people and were very forward thinkers, so I got ahold of Craig in December.”

Also a baseball enthusiast, Marshall said he and his girfriend, Shannon Reardon of Follansbee, met Brown in East Liverpool and talked about a movement to get a headstone, the status of House Bill 87 and other ways to draw attention to two important local men, mentioning that a mural or the naming of a baseball field could hold possibilities.

“Very little has been done for them which is really sad,” Marshall said. “It’s really a shame these two men, when you read their life history and things they went through and all the trials and tribulations they had just to play the game they loved, they were very smart businessmen and very inventive and ingenious in a lot of things and for them to not get any credit for the things they did, that’s sad,” Marshall continued.

Marshall advocates that singling out the brothers in a special tribute could bring positive attention to the region for tourism.

Brown agrees.

“You have two historical figures here worthy of attention yet they have largely been ignored unfortunately,” Brown said.

Marshall designed the proposed headstone, which is identical to the one on Moses’ grave.

“Moses’ grave was marked by the Oberlin Heisman Club in 1990,” Brown said. “There are several members of the Walker family buried in Union Cemetery. Moses has the only marked grave. I’m not sure if this was due to a cemetery rule from that era or if it was a financial issue. It seems that the Walkers were very active in the community and were not destitute,” he continued.

“It is unfortunate when any grave is unmarked, but Weldy’s situation is unsettling. He made a contribution to baseball, but he also was an early politically active African-American and a voice for civil rights. Remembering his name and knowing his story can help us connect with our past and better understand our present,” Brown said.

The area educator said he learned about the Negro League Baseball Grave Marker Project through research on the Internet and connected with Jeremy Krock.

“We connected via e-mail, and he was 100 percent supportive,” Brown said. “Although we planned on raising the money for the grave before approaching the Society for American Baseball Researchers, we knew it would help our efforts if a donation system was already in place with a professional structure and legitimate record. Our hope is that SABR will be able to reach interested baseball historians and that other efforts will allow people in the Steubenville area to participate in this project,” he added.

“We only need to raise about $1,400. That isn’t bad,” Brown said. “All donations are accepted and will go to memorializing this forgotten man. It is important that when making a contribution via the SABR site, the donor writes ‘Weldy Walker’ in the comments. If 56 people donate $25, we reach our goal,” he said.

For information on making a tax-deductible contribution for the head- stone, contact Brown by phone at (330) 277-9509 or by e-mail at browncraig77@hotmail.com.

“It’s really not that complicated. It’s designed, and we just have to make it happen,” Brown said. “We would hope people in the Steubenville area would take a special interest in this.”

As Black History Month draws to a close, securing a headstone is timely but important no matter the month, according to Brown.

“We’re reminding people for what he did, what he stood up for, and Weldy took the bans on baseball a little more personally than Moses,” he said, explaining that Weldy wrote to the Sporting Life to publish an open letter to the president of the Tri-State League. “He wrote a very good letter talking about the bad decision to segregate baseball and how this is just wrong,” Brown said. “If you’re talking about somebody who is a vocal civil rights activist, a little bit more public about it than Moses, Weldy certainly was a little more verbal about it.”

As for the passage of the bill, Brown said, “We need people in the community to really rally around it. This is local history, Ohio history, this is important.”

“Moses Fleetwood Walker was the first African American to regularly play for a Major League Baseball team. He preceded Jackie Robinson by about 70 years and can be referenced as a catalyst for the ban on blacks in baseball. Walker is a footnote in American history and is unknown to many Americans. Still, his contribution is significant, as he was one of the first African Americans to demonstrate that blacks were not athletically and physically inferior, an idea popular during his lifetime,” Brown wrote.

Born in Mount Pleasant, Moses Fleetwood Walker and his family moved to Steubenville where he and his brother, Weldy, attended Steubenville High School. Their father was a medical doctor and minister.

After graduating, Moses Fleetwood Walker enrolled in Oberlin College in 1877 and played on the school’s first varsity baseball team in 1881. His talent as Oberlin’s star catcher caught the eye of the “school up north” where he was later recruited to play for, according to Slesnick’s sponsor testimony.

After college, Moses Fleetwood Walker began his professional career, playing for the White Sewing Machine Club in Cleveland and eventually the Toledo Blue Stockings in the old American Association in 1884. Walker was an excellent catcher – barehanded such as the times were – and performed well at bat, but his baseball life and career were devastated by rising racism and discrimination, Brown said.

According to Slesnick’s testimony, Moses Fleetwood Walker was “refused services granted to his white teammates, opposing managers ousted Walker from catcher so that white batters would not need to be so close to him, and even some opponents refused to play if ‘Fleet’ was on the same field.”

By 1889, the color line had been drawn, and Moses Fleetwood Walker retired at the age of 33. Of the seven blacks who played pro ball during that five-year period, he was the first and last, according to a story written in 1990 by former Herald-Star Sports Editor John Enrietto.

“Once Walker left the game in 1889, no black players appeared in the major leagues until Jackie Robinson’s well-documented entrance in 1947,” Enrietto wrote.

It was because of Moses Fleetwood Walker’s presence that Major League Baseball convened in 1889 to unofficially ban African-American players from participating, a ban that Robinson dissolved.

Brown said Moses Fleetwood Walker was a very popular baseball player, almost a novelty act at times.

“It was weird to see an African American play sports,” Brown said in an earlier interview with the Herald-Star, “so he was kind of like a novelty act, but that race issue just always kind of crept in there throughout his entire life. It’s a testament to somebody who displayed everything being against him. It’s a good story overcoming challenge after challenge. We’re talking about a very educated man here. He went off to Oberlin, he was a pretty smart guy, but he always tended to try to fight back against those obstacles in his life. I think it’s a good story for us to know,” Brown added.

After baseball, Moses Fleetwood Walker continued to have an interesting life, according to Brown.

In 1891, he was charged in Syracuse, N.Y., with second-degree murder, but was acquitted by an all-white jury, which concluded he had acted in self-defense. He ultimately returned to Jefferson County. Reports acknowledge him as having been a theater owner in Steubenville, the operator of an opera house in Cadiz, the publisher of “The Equator,” one who patented several inventions for motion picture equipment and the author of a book “on why African-Americans will never be accepted in the United States and that they should go back to Africa,” Brown said.

Walker died in 1924 in Cleveland where he lived and is buried in the family plot at Union Cemetery in Steubenville in what originally was an unmarked grave.

In 1990, the Heisman Club of Oberlin College unveiled a headstone acknowledging his athletic achievements. The marker proclaims him as the “first black major league baseball player in U.S.A.”

Weldy played college baseball at Oberlin College and the University of Michigan.

In July 1884, he joined the Toledo Blue Stockings two months after his brother. In 1887, as racial segregation took hold in professional baseball, Weldy joined the Pittsburgh Keystones of the short-lived National Colored Base Ball League, according to Wikipedia. In March 1888, Weldy wrote an open letter to The Sporting Life protesting the racial segregation of baseball.

After retiring from baseball, Weldy operated restaurants and a hotel, according to Wikipedia, and in 1897, served on the executive committee of the Negro Protective Party, a newly formed political party established in Ohio in protest of the failure of the Republican governor to investigate the lynching of an African American in June 1897 at Urbana, Ohio. In the 1900s, the brothers became active in the Back-to-Africa movement and promoted emigration to Liberia, according to Wikipedia, and they established and edited The Equator, a black issues newspaper.

Weldy was born July 27, 1860, and died in Steubenville on Nov. 23, 1937.