Editor’s note: Today’s post is a guest article by my friend and Negro Leagues research colleague, Alex Painter. It’s an excellent essay about the inimitable multi-sport star Jack Hannibal, and Alex’s search to find Hannibal’s grave and the resulting effort toward placing a marker on the athletic great’s final resting place.

By Alex Painter

Guest Author

In January 2022 – on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, to be exact – I took the one willing child (Eleanor, aged six at the time) to Crown Hill Cemetery to visit the final resting places of Black baseball players. The pre-Negro National League Indianapolis ABCs – that is, the club as it existed before 1920 – have long held a particular fascination for me. I had come in search of a few ABCs who had also suited up for the 1918 Richmond (IN) Giants, a team I had, by sheer happenstance, “discovered” back in 2019, who played in what is now my home city.

Let me tell you, Crown Hill, situated on the north side of Indianapolis, is an adventure in its own right. At 555 acres, it is the third-largest nongovernmental cemetery in the United States. It stretches across 25 miles of paved roads and holds more than 225,000 burial sites, a number that grows by the day. It’s just enormous. John Dillinger is buried there. Benjamin Harrison, too. James Whitcomb Riley as well. And, scattered among them, a number of Black baseball players.

There were three in particular I was intent on finding: Richmond Giants first baseman George Board, infielder Otis “Cat” Francis, and outfielder Porter Lee Floyd, better known professionally as Jack Hannibal. All three played for both the Giants and early iterations of the ABCs. After wandering more than I’ll dignify with a precise timeline, I discovered all three were buried in unmarked plots. Not entirely surprising but a little disappointing all the same. We also found that two other non-Giant early ABCs (William Prim and Fred Hutchinson) were unmarked as well.

Because of the cold, Eleanor was eventually exiled to the car with The Wizard of Oz on one of those portable DVD players. The temperature hovered in the low 20s, but the wind made a mockery of it – cutting straight through your damn bones. I felt bad toting her along on such a shitty day, though she handled it like a pro, splitting her time between Dorothy and scanning headstones for names. We had a mission, after all, and El knew it.

After we located the plots, we left inscribed baseballs marked with each player’s name, nickname, and birth and death years. I had a brief thought of a lawnmower catching one and sending it hurtling toward a nearby house. I felt a little bad about that too, though not all that much, if I’m being honest, unlikely as that scenario was. In the end, like any taphophile, I found myself wondering how long it had been since anyone had come looking for these guys.

Shortly after, I zipped off a “cold” email to Jeremy Krock of the Negro Leagues Baseball Grave Marker Project (NLGMP). The NLGMP’s mission is “to provide proper grave markers for players of the Negro Leagues to honor their contributions to history and the game of baseball.” The ballplayers needed headstones, so, yeah, it felt like a natural pairing.

Jeremy and I bantered back and forth. He appreciated the Crown Hill intel, which, honestly, felt pretty good. Freezing our asses off? Totally worth it. Then life happened, job change, the usual, and we lost touch for a couple of years. We reconnected in early 2025 about the project, and he mentioned Jack Hannibal was at the top of the NLBGMP list. The iron was still hot. We picked things back up in February 2026. This time, it was happening. The order has been placed and we are expecting an installment of it this summer! We are hopeful to have a small dedication ceremony.

Whoops. I jumped the shark a bit. So, undoubtedly, Jack Hannibal was the one we had gone to the cemetery to see (and when I originally wrote Jeremy, I led with Jack). I had spent a fair amount of time digging into his story the year before, and the more I read, the more interested I became. A classic case. Hannibal, aside from being a gifted outfielder, a strong hitter at the plate, and an occasional pitcher, was only just getting started there. He also starred on the gridiron under the tutelage of one of the greatest linemen in University of Notre Dame football history to that point.

He was also one of Indianapolis’ most prolific figures in the boxing scene for decades. One of his ring nicknames, “The Fighting Poor Boy,” just kind of struck me as absolutely badass. Despite his life in the “noble art of pugilism,” Jack was quiet. Kind. A mentor. Someone who was good to people and loved his city. Now it is time his city remembers him.

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Let’s start at the beginning. Hannibal was born Porter Lee Floyd in Campbellsville, Ky., on March 20, 1891, to Ruben Floyd and the former Sarah Shively. As he was referred to as “Jack Hannibal” during his lifetime, I will do the same here. His family later moved the roughly 200 miles north to Indianapolis while Porter was still a youngster. Like millions of other Black families at the time, they likely made the move in search of better-paying jobs and a measure of economic stability often out of reach in the rural South.

Ruben passed away sometime before Porter’s 20th birthday, leaving him to assume the role of head of the household at a young age. Before that, Jack had already made a name for himself as a multi-sport athlete at Shortridge High School in Indianapolis.

Let’s start with boxing. Listen, I know we are big baseball fans, but boxing was Jack’s most prolific sport.

According to his obituary, Hannibal would ultimately spar 100 times in the ring, allegedly losing only five matches. In a twist of delicious serendipity, the first recorded fight in which a “Jack Hannibal” appears on the card – a six-round preliminary bout on Dec. 4, 1911, against fellow local welterweight Kid Watkins – also happened to be the debut fight of Roy Charleston, the older brother of Negro Leagues luminary Oscar Charleston.

For what it’s worth, Hannibal easily defeated Watkins, and Charleston made a “great showing in the no-decision” against Ash, according to the Dec. 5, 1911, issue of the Indianapolis Star.

Not for nothing – Charleston, Hannibal, and longtime Negro Leagues pitcher Bill Holland all spent time living on Yandes Street in Indianapolis.

Anyway, by 1913, Hannibal was crowned the middleweight champion of Indianapolis – even getting his picture printed in the Jan. 4, 1913, issue of the Indianapolis Recorder to celebrate the triumph (below).

His boxing career lasted into 1930 (his obituary later listed 1928, but his final fight appears to have come in October 1930). None loomed larger than his Aug. 29, 1921, bout with Jack Blackburn in Muncie, Ind. Blackburn, a near-constant contender across multiple weight classes, was a nationally known fighter with a career spanning more than two decades.

For Hannibal, it was a tough draw. He reportedly took the fight to Blackburn through the first two rounds, but a crushing right hand to the jaw in the third sent him to the mat for the night, and Blackburn was declared the victor.

Blackburn would later gain even greater renown as the trainer of Joe Louis, the “Brown Bomber,” from 1934 until Blackburn’s death in 1942. In 1938, an estimated 100 million people tuned in via radio to hear Louis dismantle the German Max Schmeling – a fight with heavy racial and ethnic implications.

Hannibal trained young boxers and officiated matches up until his death. Not for nothing, one of his stablemates throughout the 1910s and 1920s was Jack ‘The Hoosier Bearcat’ Dillon, a former World Light Heavyweight Champion.

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Now, football. In addition to boxing, Hannibal also starred on the gridiron, most notably as a guard and right tackle for the Indianapolis-based semipro J.J.C. team, which was owned by Indianapolis sportsman Joe J. Canning. The club captured independent state championships in both 1925 and 1926.

The team was coached by Al Feeney, who played center alongside the famed Knute Rockne at the University of Notre Dame from 1910 to 1913. College football historians may recall that it was the 1913 Notre Dame team that helped revolutionize the forward pass, then a seldom-used tactic. Feeney snapped the ball to quarterback Gus Dorais, who lofted it to receivers Rockne and others.

Feeney also coached Negro Leaguer Connie Day during his high school football days at Greenfield High School in Greenfield, and later became Indianapolis’s first Catholic mayor, serving from 1948 until his death in 1950.

The J.J.C. team was clearly talented and well-coached. But just how good was Hannibal? Apparently talented enough to be the only man of color on the championship team (pictured fourth from right below). His obituary confirmed that he was indeed “the only Negro player” on the team.

So, in the midst of everything else, Jack was also a fantastic baseball player. 

A fleet-footed outfielder who could spray the ball to all parts of the yard, he appears to have broken in with the all-Black Indianapolis ABCs in 1913, then owned by white bail bondsman Thomas Bowser. He bounced the next year to the Louisville White Sox, owned by Hall of Fame player, executive and Negro National League founder Rube Foster. Then, 1915 was spent with the French Lick Plutos. By 1916, he was suiting up once more for Bowser’s ABCs. 

By the outbreak of World War I, Jack and his wife Hazel had four children. In addition to bringing in money from baseball and boxing, he also worked at an Indianapolis bottling factory. Jack and Hazel would ultimately have nine children.

In 1918, he suited up for the aforementioned Richmond Giants of Richmond, Ind. Though he mostly played right field, he also twirled seven scoreless innings in a 6–0 win over the Piqua (OH) Coca-Colas on Aug. 25.

On Labor Day weekend that year, Hannibal played a doubleheader with the Giants in the afternoon, then participated in a boxing exhibition in Richmond that evening. The Giants won one and tied the other (a notable day, as pitcher Bill Holland made his debut as a teenager), and, of course, Hannibal won his boxing match. Quite a day, indeed.

To further underscore his baseball career, particularly against top competition, Seamheads – of course the premier Negro Leagues database – credits him with a .435 batting average (30-for-69) in games against qualified opponents, meaning some of the best competition he would have faced. 

It is, admittedly, a small sample size. Still, no player in the database with at least 60 at-bats has recorded a higher average than Hannibal’s .435 mark. Zero. Who would have thought?

After his playing career ended, Jack transitioned seamlessly into managing, training and mentoring. He took a job as a janitor but remained deeply involved in sports, training fighters and organizing and coaching baseball teams. His managerial stops included the Indianapolis Cubs (1931), the Lincoln Highways (1932), the Indianapolis ABCs (1935), and the Richmond Lincoln Giants (1940).

He also etched out quite a reputation as an umpire. During a 1937 Negro American League game between the Indianapolis Athletics (managed by Ted Strong) and the St. Louis Stars (managed by Dizzy Dismukes), Jack was tabbed as umpire. The Indianapolis Recorder shared that “Jack Hannibal, an old familiar figure in the sports world, has proven himself an umpire equal to any of any race.”

On Aug. 20, 1948, tragedy struck the Hannibal family when Jack’s 25-year-old daughter Helen was tragically murdered by her husband. She left behind two children, ages three and 20 months old.

Just one year after his daughter’s death, Jack Hannibal died of a heart attack on Aug. 24, 1949. He was just 58 years old.

Six years after his death, Hannibal (and his son Leo, who also suited up in Black baseball and basketball) were selected to the all-Indianapolis Black baseball second team in a poll held by Indianapolis Recorder sportswriter Tiny Baldwin – himself a mainstay on the city’s diamonds. Jack was selected as a manager and Leo as a pitcher. Baldwin, in the Aug. 20, 1955, issue, fondly remembered Hannibal:

“Jack Hannibal was a quiet man, who always managed to talk at the right time, and only the right time. Jack put each player on a high pedestal and made him feel he was on top of the world, and that way gave the players that little extra something which made each give his everything every time he strode onto the diamond. His famous words were: ‘Every time I get out of Indianapolis, I like Indianapolis that much more.’”

And now, Indianapolis can remember him just the same.

Alex Painter is a writer, researcher and podcaster based in Richmond, Ind. Born and raised in Fort Wayne, he has called Richmond home for more than 15 years. He studied American history and politics at Earlham College and later earned a master’s degree in management and leadership.

Painter is passionate about the art of storytelling, particularly exploring the intersection of baseball and broader social movements in American history. His work often places the game within defining historical moments, using sports as a lens to better understand culture, community and change. He is the author of four books, including a local history of Richmond told through the rich legacy of Negro Leagues baseball in the city.

Among his proudest discoveries is uncovering the story of the 1918 Richmond Giants, the team for which Jack Hannibal once suited up. Inspired by that history, Painter has spent the past four years coaching a local little league team named the Richmond Giants — carrying the legacy forward for a new generation.