·S7 E4
Pretend The Ball is Named Jim Crow: The Story of Josh Gibson as told by Dorian Hairston
Episode Description
In this extraordinary bonus episode from the African Americans in Sport Podclass, Dr. Langston Clark sits down with Dorian Hairston—poet, educator, former University of Kentucky baseball player, and author of "Pretend the Ball is Named Jim Crow: The Story of Josh Gibson"—for a conversation that bridges sports history, poetry, and the humanization of Black athletic excellence.
Josh Gibson was a Negro League baseball legend credited with hitting over 800 home runs in his career. He died in January 1947, just months before Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball's color barrier in April of the same year. But Gibson's story is more than statistics—it's about a 19-year-old who lost his wife during childbirth, a man who faced Jim Crow at every turn, and an athlete whose greatness was confined by systemic racism.
Dorian's book tells this story through poetry, not traditional biography. Using persona poems written from the perspectives of Josh Gibson, his wife Helen, his son Josh Gibson Jr., teammates like Hooks Tinker, and even time-traveling observers, Harrison creates what he calls "historical fiction"—using real historical figures and events to explore empathy, humanity, and the messy complexity of history.
In this conversation, Dorian shares his journey from being a student-athlete who earned All-SEC Academic honors while playing baseball at Kentucky, to becoming an English major mentored by Kentucky's first Black Poet Laureate, Frank X Walker, to joining the Affrilachian Poets collective dedicated to "making the invisible visible" in Appalachian storytelling. He discusses the power of complex identity, the importance of preparing for life after sports, and why poetry is the best medium for humanizing historical figures who are often reduced to one-dimensional narratives.