The Negro League Baseball Renaissance: Prelude to a Conversation

The talk will be delivered on Zoom and is free and open to the public

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https://uiowa.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_E6f_SKkuQLy2nyc-Gg6OkQ

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Abstract

In the last thirty-plus years, there has been a remarkable resurgence of interest in the rich history of Negro league baseball, its teams, executives, and ballplayers. This talk examines some of the multifaceted aspects of the Negro league baseball renaissance. It documents the Negro league revival, which has been expressed in myriad, sometimes surprising forms, and considers some of its cultural and historical sources. My comments, however, are just a prelude to a public conversation I want to have with people attending the Birrell/Parratt Lecture. What do people think it means that so many people are now (relatively) knowledgeable about long forgotten or neglected Black baseball teams and players? Is there something nostalgic about the interest some people have in Negro league baseball? To what extent is interest in the Negro leagues rooted in a social and/or racial justice impulse or agenda, a desire to make Black Baseball Lives Matter? To what extent (and for whom) are the Negro leagues primarily a profitable cottage industry, one that commercializes an institution that only existed due to systemic, institutional racism?

About the Speaker

A University of Iowa graduate, Daniel A. Nathan is Professor of American Studies at Skidmore College. He holds the Douglas Family Chair in American Culture, History, and Literary and Interdisciplinary Studies. The author of the award-winning Saying It’s So: A Cultural History of the Black Sox Scandal (2003), Nathan has also published essays and reviews in many periodicals. He is the editor of Rooting for the Home Team: Sport, Community and Identity (2013) and Baltimore Sports: Stories from Charm City(2016), and the co-editor of Baseball Beyond Our Borders: An International Pastime (2017). An active member of the North American Society for Sport History—he was the organization’s President (2013-2015)—Nathan the editor of the Journal of Sport History. He also co-edits the University of Texas Press’s Terry and Jan Todd Series on Physical Culture and Sports. Nathan is the recipient of several honors, including a Fulbright Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, and the Edwin M. Moseley Faculty Lectureship.