Charles “Lefty” Williams

Incorporated in 1886, Homestead Cemetery was created to serve the needs of the Monongahela Valley.1 Though actually located in Munhall, Pennsylvania, Homestead Cemetery is within walking distance of its namesake town. Over the years it has become the final resting place for the denizens of the area, including 10 individuals who have ties to major-league baseball. Homestead Cemetery’s most famous resident is Hall of Famer Cumberland Posey, the player, manager, and owner of the Homestead Grays. Others who have ties to the Grays include Ethel Posey, Seward “See” Posey, Rufus “Sonnyman” Jackson, Brother Pace, and George D. Johnston (bus driver for the Grays during the 1930s). All the above-mentioned are marked and within a short walking distance of one another. However, in the back of the cemetery, down a hill, and next to the fence line that separates the woods from the cemetery was the once unmarked grave of Charles “Lefty” Williams, though he has since received a stone through the Negro Leagues Memorial Markers: a Josh Gibson Foundation Initiative in 2023.2 Williams died suddenly in 1952 and was placed in the singles section of the cemetery and seemingly forgotten. But how does one of the most consistent and important players in the history of the Homestead Grays end up like this? That question may never fully be answered but what follows is the story of one of the greatest southpaws in Negro League history.

Not much is known about his early life. Charles Henry Williams was born on September 24, 1894. His place of birth isn’t clear as some sources list Tanners, Virginia, as his place of origin while his death certificate just simply states Orange County, Virginia. To confuse matters even more, his draft registration cards for World Wars I and II list Madison, Virginia, as his place of birth while his Social Security paperwork just has Madison County (Virginia) listed.

Only the scantest of family information has been uncovered. Williams’s father’s name was Louis (Lowis), and his mother was Anna W. Williams. Nothing further about his family has been uncovered at this time. This absence of precise information would continue into his adult life. His World War I draft card states that Williams was married with one child. However, there is no further information available concerning their identities or what became of them.

Williams’s marital status in the 1940 US census lists him as single, while his World War II draft card states that he is married to Viola Williams. Just when the couple met and what happened to his first wife and child remain undiscovered. The 1950 census lists his marriage status as “separated” with no further information. While most of his personal life remains elusive, his baseball life is well documented through a variety of sources.

The team that would become the Homestead Grays began life at the turn of the twentieth century as the Blue Ribbons, an independent ballclub made up of Black steelworkers and Homestead natives. In 1910 the team reorganized as the Murdoc Grays and in 1913 simply became known as the Homestead Grays.3 Though not present in 1913, Williams joined the team in 1915 and upon his retirement from the team in 1935 the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph stated that Williams, “a resident of Homestead, has retired from baseball, after 20 years of service with Cum Posey’s famous Negro team, and his withdrawal removes the last connecting playing link between the original Grays and the present combination.”4 While no documentation of Williams and the Grays can be found prior to 1919.5 After signing, he went on to spend two decades dominating the mound for Posey’s team.

While Williams pitched for the Grays during the 1920 season, it wasn’t until 1921 that his name begins to appear in the sources on a regular basis. On April 25, 1921, the Grays took on the Bauers of Wheeling, West Virginia. This was Williams’s first appearance that season and he struck out two players and walked four, helping the Grays to a 10-9 victory.

On April 30 the Grays took on the Spaldings from Pittsburgh’s East Liberty neighborhood. The Gazette-Times listed him as “Lofty Willams.”6 On August 22, Williams and the Grays played the Pittsburgh Keystones at Central Park (the first Black-owned, controlled, and managed baseball park in the city) in what was called Pittsburgh’s “little world series.”7 The first game in that series ended in a 1-1 tie with the Gazette-Times calling Williams’s pitching “airtight.”8 He finished up the 1921 season with a .333 won-lost percentage and a 1.85 ERA.

By 1922, Williams’s abilities on the mound were gaining him recognition in the city’s papers. An article in the April 30 Pittsburgh Press said that “Lefty Williams, the Grays’ reliable southpaw, rated one of the best colored pitchers in the county, is to be entrusted with the pitching assignment and if he shows his true form the Grays stand a good chance of alling [sic] another victory.”9

Standing only 5-feet-6-inches and weighing 165 pounds, batting and throwing left, Williams played solidly year after year against both local and professional teams. At the beginning of his professional baseball career, Williams would winter in Virginia before returning to Homestead each season to play with the Grays. Though the exact date is unknown, he eventually relocated to the Pittsburgh area in the late teens or early 1920s.10

Researching Williams required some untangling as there was a White semipro player who was also named Lefty Williams playing in the local Twilight League and the sources were not clear at the outset if they were the same person. It was only after further researching the Twilight League that the author was able to determine that the Lefty Williams of that league was White.11 It should also be noted that Williams and the Grays did not play Black baseball teams exclusively. They played against some of the area’s and nation’s best White players such as future Pittsburgh Pirate Steve Swetonic, who was pitching for Bellevue (Pennsylvania) at that time and teams such as the barnstorming House of David, a squad made up of members of the religious community of the same name in Benton Harbor, Michigan. While these types of games showed that there was some tolerance for baseball played between players of both races, true integration of baseball was still two decades away.12

Beginning at the end of the 1924 season, Williams, like so many Black ballplayers before him, left the United States during the winter to play ball in either the Caribbean basin, Central America, or South America. With the prospect of better pay and escaping Jim Crow, players like Williams could relax and be themselves without fear of reprisal for crossing the social boundaries they might encounter back home. In 1924 Williams played in Cuba for Santa Clara which “finished a distant third in the four-team league to Almendares. His initial foray in Cuba shows him as a shortstop with 112 at-bats and a .232 average. He played alongside fellow Negro Leaguers Bill Holland, Sam Streeter, and Turkey Stearnes, to name a few.”13

This was not Williams’s last trip abroad to play baseball in Cuba. During the 1928-1929 season, he played with Cienfuegos, pitching alongside “Ted Trent, Andy Cooper, Sam Streeter, and Luis Tiant, and with the likes of Mule Suttles, Cool Papa Bell, Newt Joseph, and Willie Wells in the lineup. Cienfuegos finished last in the four-team league that Habana won. It was not one of Williams’ better efforts; he led the league in losses with eight.”14

Williams’s last season on the island came in the 1929-1930 season when he again played for Cienfuegos. He appeared in 16 games, starting seven of them, finishing the season 7-4, far better than the previous season.15 However, Cuba wasn’t the only winter residence for the southpaw. Author William F. McNeil writes that “Williams appeared in the Coconut League in Florida – the fabled head-to-head competition between the Breakers and Royal Poinciana Hotels – at least one year, in 1928.”16 McNeil chronicled one game when it was Williams (Lefty) v. Williams (Cyclone) in a 1-0 result for Lefty.

As the 1920s wound down and the country entered the Great Depression, the nation was in a dark place. But for Williams, the high-water mark of his career was just over the horizon.

Some baseball historians consider the 1931 Grays the greatest team in baseball history.17 With Hall of Famers Josh Gibson, Oscar Charleson, Jud Wilson, Satchel Paige, Smokey Joe Williams, Willie Foster, and manager Cumberland Posey, the Grays beat the best that baseball had to offer and according to SABR author Charlie Fouche, “Overall, the 1931 Grays won at an .846 clip over the greatest teams of all time.”18

While this was the Grays’ best season, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote that his best had been a year earlier in 1930. With his “superb pitching.”19 Williams pitched 31 games and won 31 games that season, losing only one postseason game to the International League All-Stars in Newark, New Jersey.20 This claim is not backed by statistics found on the Seamheads database that records him as 6-3 during the regular season, working in 12 games. Regardless, his expertise on the mound no doubt helped his 1931 team gain the reputation that it has. It didn’t matter whether the Grays were playing local teams like the Dormont (Pennsylvania) Tossers or Negro League powerhouse teams like the Kansas City Monarchs, Williams was always on top of his game.21

Williams’s first game pitched in 1931 was a 15-9 victory on April 12 over the St. Louis Stars in St. Louis. Willams shared pitching duties on the mound that day with Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe and Smoky Joe Williams.22 The first complete game Williams pitched came one week later, a 5-0 shutout of the Cumberland (Maryland) Colts.23 On May 19 Williams and the Grays took on the Cuban House of David baseball team in a doubleheader at Forbes Field. The Cuban House of David were a traveling team owned by Syd Pollock, borrowing the name from the religious team from Benton Harbor, Michigan. With Williams on the mound during the second game, The Grays won, 9-3.24

Over the course of the season, Williams pitched against some of the best independent Black baseball teams such as the Baltimore Black Sox and the Kansas City Monarchs. On August 31 Williams led the Grays to a 9-1 victory over Kansas City in the first game of a doubleheader played in Cleveland.25 The final game for Williams that season was played on September 23 against the Baltimore Black Sox at Parkersburg, West Virginia. The first two innings were a disaster for the Grays as the Black Sox scored five runs. Rap Dixon, the Black Sox center fielder, slammed a home run and a triple off Williams. However, after the second inning, the Black Sox were helpless against Lefty’s pitching. It wasn’t enough though, and the Grays lost 5-1 with Bill Evans scoring their only run.26 According to statistics compiled by Negro Leagues researcher and scholar Phil Dixon, Williams played in 33 games that season with Seamheads counting only 9 for its records.27 In those nine games, Williams pitched to a .667 W% and a 3.48 ERA.28 No matter which record is used in research, Williams had a winning year.

It isn’t completely clear why, but both Vic Harris and Williams were “transferred” to the Detroit Wolves managed by Dizzy Dismukes for 1932.29 Then in June of 1932 the Wolves and the Grays merged and Williams was a Gray again.30 He remained with the team for the rest of his career.

The Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph announced on May 9, 1935, that after 20 years with the Homestead Grays, Williams was leaving the team.31 In July it was reported that Williams was managing the Charleston (West Virginia) Tigers.32 Then in 1936, Williams was back in the Pittsburgh area managing the Edgar Thompson Nine, a team named after the steel mill that employed the players.33

In 1937 Williams took to the mound again, this time pitching for the Edgar Thompson team against his old team, the Grays.34 He pitched again in 1938, this time for the Rankin (Pennsylvania) Community Team of the Tri-Boro League. Williams, 44, and catcher Pete Watson, 35, made up the oldest battery in the league.35 Williams went on to manage the Munhall (Pennsylvania) Stars in 1941, also becoming the first African American caretaker of Homestead High School Field (now called West Field), a position he held until his death. This was the same field that the Grays used for practice and to play exhibition games. Today it stands as one of the last remaining ballfields that have ties to the historic Negro Leagues.36

In 1942 Williams along with a White ballplayer named Johnny Pope co-founded an integrated baseball team called the Homestead Stars, made up of eight former Negro League players and eight White players from the Pittsburgh area.37 Williams apparently could not give up the game he loved. There was even a report in 1943 in the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph that Williams was pitching for a team in Hawaii; it was the last time he was written about as an active baseball player.38

On April 26, 1952, Williams, 57 years old, died at his home of a lingering illness, according to his obituary.39 His death certificate states that the cause of death was cardiac failure due to pulmonary tuberculosis.40

In the end, the obituary published in the Pittsburgh Courier gave the best summary of Williams’s time with the iconic Homestead Grays: “Williams, whose snapping curve ball fooled some of baseball’s top sluggers, was one of the figures responsible for the remarkable rise of the Grays. During the team’s early days, he was the man upon whom manager Cum Posey called to pitch in crucial games. He seldom failed to produce in the clutch.”41

Sources

In addition to the sources shown in the Notes, the author used Baseball-Reference.com, Seamheads.com, and the following:

Ancestry.com

Findagrave.com

Newspapers.com

US Census reports from 1940 and 1950.

Photo credit

Charles “Lefty” Williams, National Baseball Hall of Fame Library.

Notes

1 Home | Homestead Cemetery (thehomesteadcemetery.com), accessed September 9, 2024.

2 Honoring the Memories of Negro League Greats – Josh Gibson Foundation Memorial Markers (jgfmemorialmarkers.org), accessed September 9, 2024.

3 Homestead Grays Historical Marker: explorepahistory.com/hmarker.php?markerId=1-A-D, accessed September 9, 2024.

4 “Sport,” Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, May 9, 1935: 29.

5 “Grays Down Brushton,” Pittsburgh Press, July 6, 1919: 24.

6 “Spaldings at Homestead,” Pittsburgh Gazette Times, April 30, 1921: 9.

7 “Colored Teams Start Title Series Tonight,” Pittsburgh Post, August 22, 1921: 7.

Agate Type: pittsburgh’s central park (typepad.com), accessed September 9, 2024.

8 “Keystone and Grays Tie,” Pittsburgh Gazette-Times, August 23, 1921: 11.

9 “Huggins and Hoyt Battle,” Pittsburgh Press, April 30, 1922: 29.

10 “Semi-Pro Armatures Rarin’ to Go,” Pittsburgh Post, April 2, 1923: 10.

11 “Northside Twilight League,” Pittsburgh Post, July 10, 1923: 11; “Fineview Highlanders Strong Club,” Pittsburgh Sunday Post, August 12, 1923: 25.

12 “Grays Tripped by Bellevue Before 4,000,” Pittsburgh Sunday Post, June 15, 1924: 26; “Grays Take Three Out of Four Games,” Pittsburgh Courier, July 12, 1924: 7; Jim Gates, “Giving the House a Home,” National Baseball Hall of Fame. accessed September 9, 2024. 

13 Jorge S. Figueredo, Cuban Baseball: A Statistical History, 1878-1961 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2003),158-160, 178-183.

14 Figueredo, 178-183.

15 Figueredo, 178-183.

16 William F. McNeil, Black Baseball Out of Season: Pay for Play Outside the Negro Leagues (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co. Inc., 2007), 42.

17 The Homestead Grays of the Negro Leagues | MLB.com, accessed September 9, 2024.

18 Charlie Fouche, “The 1931 Homestead Grays: The Greatest Baseball Team of All Time,” The National Pastime (SABR, 2018), accessed September 9, 2024.

19 “Gray Notes,” Pittsburgh Courier, May 17,1930: 17.

20 “In The Semi-Pro Loop,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 27, 1931: 18.

21 “Homestead Grays Triumph Over Dormont Tossers,10-7, Pittsburgh Press, June 7, 1931: 33; “Grays-Monarchs Split,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 31, 1931: 14.

22 Phil S. Dixon, Phil Dixon’s American Baseball Chronicles Great Teams: The 1931 Homestead Grays, Volume I (Bloomington, Indiana: Xlibris., 2009), 314.

23 “Cumberland Blanked By Homestead Grays,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 20, 1931: 19.

24 “Grays Win Pair From Cuban Davids,” Pittsburgh Press, May 17, 1931: 40.

25 “Grays-Monarchs Split,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 31, 1931: 14.

26 “Dixon’s Extra Base Blows Beat Grays,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 24, 1931: 16.

27 It should be noted that, as of mid-2025, Baseball-Reference.com does not include this season in its Williams entry.

28 Dixon, 314. Baseball Reference only includes eight games and gives his win percentage as .625 with a 3.80 ERA.

29 “Grays Launch Local Season with Detroit,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 16, 1932: 16; “Speaking of Baseball,” Pittsburgh Courier, April 16, 1932: 14.

30 “East-West League Leaders Meet Grays,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 19, 1932: 15; “Drastic Shakeup on Craws and Grays,” Pittsburgh Courier, June 11, 1932: 14.

31 “Last of the Old Grays,” Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, May 9, 1935: 29.

32 “In the Melting Pot of Sports,” Pittsburgh Courier, July 27, 1935: 14.

33 “Rain Defeats Sandlotters,” Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, August 20, 1936: 25.

34 “Edgar Thompson Plays,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 23, 1937: 18.

35 “Oldest Battery,” Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, July 24, 1938: 16.

36 “Stars Face Homestead Parkers,” Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, August 30, 1940: 28; “Posey’s Points,” Pittsburgh Courier, June 21,1941: 16: Byron Bennett, “West Field – One of the Last Surviving Negro League Ballparks,” Deadball Baseball, March 20, 2015. accessed September 9, 2024.

37 “On the Sandlots,” Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, June 26, 1942: 28.

38 “Most Everything,” Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, August 27, 1943: 25.

39 “Wendell Smith’s Sports Beat,” Pittsburgh Courier, May 3, 1952: 14.

40 Charles H. Williams Death Certificate: Ancestry.com – Pennsylvania, U.S., Death Certificates, 1906-1970, accessed September 9, 2024.

41 “Ex-Grays’ Ace Dies,” Pittsburgh Courier, May 3, 1952: 14.