the history of the Air Force. Coastal Plain League The Great Depression took a great toll on the minor leagues, with only thirteen teams operating across the U.S. at a 1933 low point. Like most, Kinston sat out the first few years of the Great Depression but reentered play for the season in the semi-professional Coastal Plain League. By the circuit had become a fully professional, Class D league as ranked by the National Association. The city remained in the Coastal Plain League continuously until it was disbanded after . As a member of this affiliation, Kinston saw many playoff appearances and won league championships in and . Among the superior talent during this period was a young player named Charlie "King Kong" Keller who is listed as among the top forty major league players of all-time in terms of on-base percentage (.410). Carolina League Kinston was without a team for the three-year period following the dissolution of the Coastal Plain League. In 1956, the owner of the Burlington Bees of the Carolina League moved his team to Kinston. At that time, the Carolina League was a Class B loop with teams located in Virginia and North Carolina. The team, calling itself the Kinston Eagles, were a Pittsburgh Pirates affiliate and featured the city's first African American ball players. In these early days of the Civil Rights Movement, the black players in the Carolina League received much verbal and psychological abuse from the largely white, Southern fan base. The first black players were Frank Washington and Carl Long. Long excelled during the 1956 season, setting an RBI standard of 111 that has never been surpassed by any later Kinston hitter. The racial experiment succeeded, but the team failed financially. The Eagles' owner was an inept businessman who brought the club near bankruptcy before it was moved 40 miles away to Wilson in . Kinston's re-entry into Carolina League baseball in was successful both on the field and at the turnstile. The Eagles were able to claim the first of its Carolina League crowns. At a time when Kinston's population was only 25,000, the ball club attracted over 140,000 fans. Part of the lure was the talent supplied by Kinston's parent club, the Pittsburgh Pirates, which included Steve Blass (17–3, 1.97 ERA, 209 K's), and Frank Bork (19–7, 2.00 ERA). Another fan attraction was that the Eagles were for the first