The first president, Edward Thomson, staunchly supported the abolition of slavery and liberalism. Other individuals associated with the university have fought racism. Branch Rickey, an alumnus, broke the racial barrier in baseball. Mary King, a civil rights activist, worked alongside Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the U.S. civil rights movement while she was a staff member of OWU's Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In the 1980s, Ohio Wesleyan's administration, moved by student activism, pledged and eventually fully divested holdings connected to South Africa. As of September 2007, Ohio Wesleyan joined a small group of liberal colleges that actively opposed the methodology and usefulness of "U.S. News & World Report" college rankings, despite the fact that the magazine ranked Ohio Wesleyan among the top national liberal arts colleges. Ohio Wesleyan's concern intensified with disclosures about institutions flagrantly manipulating data in order to move up in the rankings in U.S. News and other popular college guides.