Jackie Robinson in Brooklyn Dodgers uniform. (Photo by Warnecke/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images) But little, if any, fuss will be made about William Edward Whyte (White), Moses Fleetwood Walker, Weldy Walker or Bumpus Jones.While Robinson broke the color barrier — a rule that prohibited Black players from the league — Whyte, Jones and the Walker brothers were Black men in the majors long before Robinson was even born.AdvertisementAnd the daunting shadow cast by Robinson’s legacy threatens to reduce those men to footnotes in a seldom-read history book.
William Edward Whyte (Photos courtesy of James Brunson/Public domain) Whyte was born in October 1860 to slave owner Andrew Jackson White and a mixed-race woman enslaved by White..