Robert A. Moss

Campy: The Two Lives of Roy Campanella (review)

up, . . . Walker was one of the ringleaders.” Jonathan Eig in Opening Day wrote “it was Walker who apparently decided he would try to do something about it. Some teammates said he circulated a petition among his fellow players. Others said he organized by word-of-mouth.” Arnold Rampersad, Robinson’s biographer, places Walker “at the center” of “a core of Southern veterans” circulating the petition while acknowledging that Walker later denied this. In The Era, Roger Kahn quotes Walker from a conversation in 1976. “I had a wholesale hardware business in Birmingham,” Walker said, “and people told me I’d lose my business if I played with a black man. That’s why I started the petition. It was the dumbest thing I did in all my life.” Allen, unfortunately, engages with none of these accounts.