In 1887, as racial segregation took hold in professional baseball, Weldy joined the Pittsburgh Keystones of the short-lived National Colored Base Ball League.

His March 1888 open letter to The Sporting Life protesting the racial segregation of baseball has been described as "perhaps the most passionate cry for justice ever voiced by an athlete.

Walker was born in 1860 in Steubenville, Ohio, an industrial city in the eastern part of the state with a reputation for racial tolerance.

"[16] Two weeks later, a writer for an Ann Arbor newspaper noted that "we have added to the list Weldy Walker, a magnificent fielder, safe batter, and phenomenal base runner.

"[32] The Walker brothers in 1884 were the last African Americans to play Major League Baseball for more than 60 years until Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.

[33][34] Weldy blamed Chicago White Stockings player-manager Cap Anson for the fact that neither he, his brother, nor any other African Americans were allowed to play in the major leagues after 1884.

In his 1970 history of racial segregation in baseball, Robert Peterson described Weldy's letter as "perhaps the most passionate cry for justice ever voiced by a Negro athlete.

I would suggest that your honorable body, in case that black law is not repealed, pass one making it criminal for a colored man or woman to be found on a ball ground ...

It is for these reasons and because I think ability and intelligence should be recognized first and last – at all times and by everyone – I ask the question again, 'Why was the law permitting colored men to sign repealed, etc.?

"[43] In 1887, Weldy joined the Pittsburgh Keystones in the newly formed National Colored Base Ball League and compiled a .360 batting average in five games as a player.

[38][44][45] Although the National Colored Base Ball League disbanded after a short time, the Keystones continued to play as an independent team.

Discrimination on account of color never was carried on in Steubenville until these strangers starting rinks here issued the edict "No Negroes need apply except for positions of menials."

On the 16th there was an opening night at the South Side Rink, and two of our young men of gentlemanly deportment and honest reputation applied for admission.

"[46]Walker and Lyons filed a civil rights lawsuit accusing the operator, Massey & Son, of racial discrimination.

In his biography of Fleetwood Walker, David Zang called the court's ruling "a judgment that nominally supported integration while doing nothing to promote it in everyday reality.

Walker's activism was heightened by an incident in June 1897 in which residents of Urbana, Ohio, formed a lynch mob, removed a black man named "Click" Mitchell from the town jail, and publicly killed him by hanging.

[50] The party adopted a platform demanding "an immediate recognition of our rights as citizens such as have been repeatedly pledged and as often violated," and declaring an intention "to take immediate political action that we may show to the world that we are no longer the plaything of politicians or chattels for sale to the highest bidder.

In 1898, while employed as a railroad postal clerk, Fleetwood was charged with embezzling the contents of registered letters addressed to a dozen different persons and served a year in jail.

[66] By 1906, Weldy had temporarily relocated several miles downriver to Wheeling, West Virginia, and rumors circulated that the Union Hotel would be sold and turned into "a first class house for the accommodation of Afro-American visitors.

[37][68] Six years later, Fleetwood and Weldy published a 47-page book titled Our Home Colony: A Treatise on the Past, Present, and Future of the Negro Race in America.

[70] In the book, the Walkers wrote: "The only practical and permanent solution of the present and future race troubles in the United States is entire separation by Emigration of the Negro from America.

The time is growing very near when the whites of the United States must either settle this problem by deportation, or else be willing to accept a reign of terror such as the world has never seen in a civilized country.

"[72] The Walker brothers also opened an office to begin the work of resettlement to Africa at the time Our Home Colony was published.

[37][69] In his 1908 response to an Oberlin College alumni questionnaire, Weldy listed his occupation as "General Agent" for Our Home Colony and Liberian emigration.

[37] In April 1910, at the time of the 1910 United States census, Weldy was still living at 105 Market Street in Steubenville, and the property was being operated as a boarding house.

[75] Weldy remained politically active in his later years and was a friend of Harry Clay Smith, the owner and editor of The Cleveland Gazette, the longest-publishing African-American weekly in the United States.

Still focused on the practice of lynching in the Southern states, Weldy added: "The North would not have known there had been an election in Florida unless that old game of killing six or more Negroes for wanting to vote had been pulled off.

[63] In April 1930, at the time of the 1930 United States census, Walker was a "roomer" in an all-black boarding house at 117 South 6th Street in Steubenville operated by Eugene Williams.