Pretend the Ball Is Named Jim Crow: The Story of Josh Gibson
Sponsored by the University Press of Kentucky. A Reception will be held at 5:00 pm followed by the lecture at 6:00 pm.
Joshua “Josh” Gibson (1911–1947) is a baseball legend—one of the greatest power hitters in the Negro Leagues, and in all of baseball history. At the height of his career, this trailblazing athlete suffered grueling physical ailments, lost his young wife who died giving birth to their twins, and endured years of Jim Crow–era segregation and discrimination—all the while breaking records on the ball field.
Dorian Hairston’s debut poetry collection explores the Black American experience through the lens of Gibson’s life and seventeen-year baseball career, which culminated in his posthumous election to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972. Hairston brilliantly reconstructs the personas of Gibson and others in his orbit whose encounters with white supremacy interweave with the inevitability of losing loved ones. By alternating between the perspectives of Gibson, members of his family, and contemporary Black baseball players, Hairston captures the complexity and the pain of living under the oppressive weight of grief and racial discrimination.
Emotive, prescient, and absorbing, these powerful poems address social change, culture, family, race, death, and oppression—while honoring and giving voice to Gibson and a voiceless generation of African Americans.
Dorian Hairston is a poet, scholar, and former University of Kentucky baseball player from Lexington, Kentucky. He is a member of the Affrilachian Poets and his work has appeared in Shale, Anthology of Appalachian Writers, and pluck!
