In the comments to this post I remarked that I’d never seen a photo of the Asheville Royal Giants. Thanks to Mark Aubrey, now I have. Here they are:
You can see more photos in Bill Ballew’s book, Baseball in Asheville. Edward W. Pearson, a Spanish-American War veteran and businessman, founded the Royal Giants around 1916, and they continued to play into the 1920s, joining the Blue Ridge Colored Baseball League in 1921. For more about the team, Mark points to an article by Bijan Bayne about “Early Black Baseball in North Carolina” (pdf).
Here’s something else Mark found out about the Royal Giants:
(Charleston Evening Post, August 26, 1922)
It seems likely that this is Forrest “Wing” Maddox of the 1921 Knoxville Giants and the 1923 Birmingham Black Barons.
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