Here’s an update on a player who has been something of a mystery, “Koke” Alexander of the Dayton Marcos and other teams in the late 1910s and early 1920s.
First, I ran across a photo of him playing for Dayton’s Colored Men’s Improvement Association team in 1922. He’s in the middle, with Samuel Dewitt, another player I’ve never seen an image of, on the left, and Will Owens on the right:
(Dayton Herald, July 1, 1922, p. 8)
Unfortunately, I think these images are not really good enough to use on the Seamheads site.
A number of Black men named Alexander lived in Dayton around this time. The two I always thought were the likeliest candidates to be the ballplayer were:
1) Julius Forrest Alexander, manager of an “athletic club” according to his WW1 draft card, proprietor of an “amusement club” according to the 1920 census, and later (in 1928) the sponsor of a baseball team called the Dayton Independents. He was born in 1886, though, so was possibly a little old to be a professional ballplayer on the side. Also Koke Alexander moved to the Columbus Buckeyes and Chicago Giants for the 1921 season—it would seem unlikely that the owner of a club would leave his business to go play ball for a couple of second division teams. While Koke was appreciated as a good player in both Dayton and Chicago, he was hardly a star, and probably wasn’t pulling down a large paycheck.
2) Luther Cornileus Alexander, who worked as a sandblast operator in an iron foundry. “Coke” is a form of coal used as fuel in an iron-producing blast furnace; this seems as good an explanation for Koke’s nickname as any. Also, Luther was born in 1893, making him aged 25 through 28 during Koke’s top flight career.
However, some time ago I found a more solid lead than either of these (very speculative) possibilities—an entry in the 1921 Dayton City Directory:
This doesn’t seem to match any white ballplayer I can find. Moreover, Dayton didn’t have a white league team in 1920 or 1921, but of course the Dayton Marcos, featuring Koke Alexander, played in the Negro National League in 1920.
As it turns out, there was a Black man named Alfred Alexander who filled out a draft card in Dayton in 1917:
Born in 1888, he’s a little older than I would have expected, though it is certainly possible he was really younger than this—it’s very common to find earlier birthdates on World War I draft cards than in other records. I have tried to track him down in other records, including in his birth state of North Carolina, with no luck so far, so he remains a little mysterious. But this is I think the best lead I’ve come up with.
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