August Wilson knew that baseball could bring glory. But it could also bring heartbreak, especially for a young Black player in the years before the sport was integrated. In Wilson’s Fences, when Troy Maxson remembered his days in the Negro Leagues, he was filled with both chest-puffing pride and bitter resentment. He had been a star on the diamond, but as a Black man in 1930s Pittsburgh, even his prowess could only get him so far. Troy might have been a fictional character, but his story was very real. It was a story lived by many Negro Leaguers.
Roy Williams was one of those players.
When the Williams family moved to the Hill from Sparks, Georgia, the National Negro League had not yet been founded; the Craws and Grays were not yet the legendary teams they would become. At that point, Roy Williams probably didn’t even know to dream the dream of baseball fame.
In 1930, Roy was laboring in a brick yard, and his older brother, Harry Lovett, was working in the mills, like their father, when they started playing ball. But by 1931, both Williams brothers were on the diamond. Roy shared the Grays roster with names like Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson and Cool Papa Bell. In his five years in the Leagues, Williams played with the Memphis Red Sox, the Craws, the Baltimore Sox and the Brooklyn Eagles. For that brief moment in time, Roy Williams must have felt like he was at the center of the world.
When the census taker came to 627 Hollace on April 16, 1940, where Roy lived with his mother, brother and lodgers, Both Williams sons are listed as baseball players. But seems to be only half true. It’s true that Harry Lovett was off playing with the New York Black Yankees, but Roy wasn’t on the mound anymore. He wasn’t even working regularly. We can’t know why, but it seems that the dream of baseball fame for Roy Williams had faded by then. Just a few years later he would die of chronic kidney disease, 7 days before his 37th birthday.
Roy, I hope Gabriel blew the trumpet for you when you passed through those gates, just like he did for Troy Maxson
