James Riley has the following entry on a player named “Lightner,” no first name, “a.k.a. Linder” (Biographical Encyclopedia of Baseball’s Negro Leagues, p. 482)

“He made appearances with top ballclubs, as a pitcher with the Kansas City Monarchs in 1920 and again with the Cole’s American Giants in 1932, the year they won the Negro Southern League pennant.  It is uncertain where he was in the intervening decade.”

The Negro Leagues Book has “? Lightner” on both 1920 and 1922 Monarchs’ rosters; in the register, he is listed as “Lightner [Linder].”

Leaving aside 1932, which I haven’t researched, when you actually look at the box scores and game accounts, all mentions of “Lightner” occur in 1920, and all mentions of “Linder” in 1922.  There aren’t any exceptions, as far as I can tell.  It seems reasonable to assume that these were really two different men.  Neither had much of an impact, both appearing in three games as a pitcher in their respective seasons.  Lightner pitched only eight innings in his three starts, all in May, 1920, walking 11 and striking out one, and giving up 10 runs; he was decisionless.  Linder achieved slightly better results in his three games (two of them starts), ranging from May 28 to June 14, 1922: he went 1-0, giving up seven runs in 10 2/3 innings, walking five and striking out eight.

About Lightner: there was an African-American family from Arkansas living in Kansas City between 1917 and 1920, which included a number of sons.  Two of them, Charley and James, can be found in World War I draft cards, and also in the Missouri Soldiers Database.  In the 1920 census, Charles Lightner is back living with his family in Kansas City and working in a meatpacking plant; James is nowhere to be found (he died in Muskogee, Oklahoma, in August 1967, according to the SSDI). 

Then, in the September 16, 1920, Chicago Defender, I found this small note:

Now, “Lightning” is a real, though very rare surname; and in fact an African-American man named Charles Lightning, 25, can be found living in Memphis in the 1920 census.  (Though I can’t find a trace of this person in any other record, which suggests, though certainly doesn’t prove, that the census record could be mistaken.) At any rate, it seems somewhat unlikely that you could have two black pitchers named Lightning and Lightner in the same city in the same year. 

Here is Charley Lightner’s draft card:

And his record in the Missouri Soldiers’ Database:
Name: Lightner, Charley
Race: Colored
Born: July 17, 1891, Atkins, AR
Residing in Kansas City, Mo., inducted there on 8/2/1918
Served in Company E, 805th Pioneer Infantry

I don’t know about the Lightner of the 1932 American Giants; but Charles Lightner was residing in Chicago when he died in September, 1967, just a month or so after the death of his brother James.  However, he would have been a little on the old side in 1932 (either 39 or 40); plus I found a “Charlie Lightner,” “Negro,” born in Arkansas, aged 37, in the 1930 census living in Maryville, Missouri, and working as a porter in a barber shop.  Moreover, his brother “Cletha,” 19 and born in Oklahoma, was living with them; and “Clether,” aged 8 and born in Oklahoma, is listed among the Lightner siblings living in Kansas City in the 1920 census.

To sum up: I can’t confirm that Charley (or Charles) Lightner was the 1920 Monarchs’ pitcher; but the evidence seems strong enough to make it a working hypothesis.

With “Linder” in 1922, the situation is a little more straightforward.  He was mentioned, with no first name, in the April 1, 1922, Chicago Defender as one of three Army players joining the Monarchs, along with Heavy Johnson and Branch Russell.  Then, in the NNL reserve lists published after the 1922 season (Chicago Whip, December 16, 1922), the Monarchs reserved one “Wm. Linder.”  Going back to the 1920 census, a William Linder (34, born in Tennessee) appears at Camp Stephen D. Little in Nogales, Arizona, on the same census page as Branch Russell and Walter Moore.