Elizabethton Blue Grays

This independent semi-professional barnstorming Negro baseball team consisted of young men from Elizabethton, Johnson City, Kingsport, Greeneville, Middle Tennessee, Kentucky, Bristol, and Martinsville, Virginia. Because of segregation, their baseball careers were limited to the old Negro League. However, the Blue Grays persevered through America's Jim Crow period of racial segregation, the Great Depression, World Wars I and II, and the Civil Rights era. The Blue Grays played against some of the most famous Negro League teams of the time, including the Asheville Blues of the Negro Southern League. Some of them also played with the Indianapolis Zulu Clowns, the Alabama Black Barons, and the Nashville Cubs. The Elizabethton Blue Grays were James “Chick” Forney, James Napier, Garland “Big Red” Norwood, Russell Smith, Columbus “Ted” Hartsaw, Lester Forney, Nathaniel Duffield, Raymond Gardner, Howard “JuJu” Thomas, Gilbert Horton, Gordon Jackson, Frank Landers, Ernest “Pat” McGee, Rob Bass, Ed Thomas, Will Taylor, Samuel “Slim” Avery, Jim “Son” Stover,Fred “Jiggs” Taylor, Hoover Sensabaugh, Shannon Richmond, Robert “Egghead” Johnson, Charles “Lefty” Moore, John Redd, John Shearer, James Woods, Josh Hamilton, Odell Cox, Charlie McRath, Alton Machen, Carter Taylor, Calvin “Cal” Taylor, Eddie “Bad” Daniels, Charles Young, and Stompin Joe.