DR. LISA DORIS ALEXANDER

Dr. Alexander is a professor of African American Studies at Wayne State University. She is the author of When Baseball Isn’t White, Straight, and Male: The Media and Difference in the National Pastime (2012) and Expanding the Black Film Canon: Race and Genre Across Six Decades (2019). She has contributed chapters to other books on sports and race, and her work has also appeared in Black Ball: A Negro Leagues Journal, The American Historian, NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture and The Journal of Popular Film and Television.

DR. JAMES E. BRUNSON

Dr. Brunson is an art historian who specializes in American modernism. He is the author of the three-volume work Black Baseball, 1858-1900 (2019) and The Early Image of Black Baseball; Race and Representation in the Popular Press, 1871-1890 (2013). His essays and articles have appeared in The Negro Leagues Were Major Leagues (2020), NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture, Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game, and Black Ball: A Negro Leagues Journal. Forthcoming works include Black Baseball, 1858-1900 (supplemental volume), Black Baseball, 1901-1916, and Blues People: Black Music, Black Style, and Black Baseball, 1868-1910.

JORGE COLÓN-DELGADO

Colón-Delgado is a leading historian on the Negro Leagues and baseball in Puerto Rico. A longtime member of the Society for Baseball Research, he has researched the island’s baseball history for the past 22 years. In 2003 he was appointed the Official Historian of the Puerto Rico Professional Baseball League. For his work, he has been inducted into two sports halls of fame: the Santurce Hall of Fame and the Rio Piedras Sports Hall of Fame. Colón-Delgado is the author of seven books and the editor of beisbol101.com and negroleaguerspuertorico.com. The Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown has granted him a lifetime pass for his contributions to preserving baseball history.

PHIL DIXON

Dixon is a co-founder of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. Prior to the museum’s launch in 1990, he had been a freelance contributor to the African American-owned Kansas City Call and done public relations work for the Kansas City Royals. A member of the Society for American Baseball Research and the Missouri Writers Guild, he has interviewed hundreds of players as a writer and researcher covering the American and Negro Leagues baseball experience. Dixon has written seven nonfiction books, including The Negro Baseball Leagues: A Photographic History, 1867-1955 (1992) and, most recently, The Dizzy and Daffy Dean Barnstorming Tour: Race, Media and America’s National Pastime (2019).

SEAN GIBSON

Gibson is the great-grandson of Baseball Hall of Fame legend Josh Gibson. His life is dedicated to the preservation of Josh’s legacy. He is the Executive Director of the Josh Gibson Foundation, a Pittsburgh-area non-profit organization dedicated to keeping the alive the memory of his great-grandfather and the entire Negro Leagues. The foundation partners with the University of Pittsburgh, Duquesne University and Carnegie Mellon University to provide tutoring for elementary and middle school youth. Sharing an extensive knowledge of the Negro Leagues, Gibson speaks a variety of groups on the topic.

GARY GILLETTE

Gillette is a nationally known baseball historian and writer who is the foremost expert on Hall of Famer Turkey Stearnes, the Detroit Stars and the history of the Negro Leagues in Detroit. As the founder of the nonprofit Friends of Historic Hamtramck Stadium, he has led the campaign to restore the historic site. His research was key to the approval of a State of Michigan Historic Marker for Hamtramck Stadium and was the basis for two African American Civil Rights Grants from the National Park Service. In 2021, Gillette was the recipient of the prestigious Tweed Webb Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for American Baseball Research's Negro Leagues Committee.

KEVIN JOHNSON

Johnson is the co-creator of and the Data Integrity Coordinator for the Seamheads Negro Leagues Database, which has brought to light the statistics of the Negro Leagues and other leagues featuring African American players. He also maintains a ballparks database at Seamheads.com and is the co-chairman of the Society of Baseball Research’s Ballparks Committee. He has contributed to Total Baseball, The ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia, Black Stats Matter (2022) and Baseball-Reference.com. Johnson received the 2012 SABR Baseball Research Award, the 2016 Tweed Webb Lifetime Achievement Award and the 2019 Fay Vincent Most Valuable Partner Award.

TED KNORR

Knorr has been a Society of American Baseball Research member since 1979, and in 1998 he founded SABR’s Jerry Malloy Negro League Research Conference. In conjunction with Pennsylvania minor league teams in Harrisburg, Lancaster and York, he founded the annual Negro Leagues celebrations held during the season. In 2005 he consulted on erecting a Pennsylvania State Historic Marker on City Island in Harrisburg, honoring the Harrisburg Giants, and in 2006 he raised funds for a baseball marker on the grave of Negro Leagues legend Rap Dixon. Knorr contributed to Dixon’s SABR Bio Project essay and to Todd Peterson’s The Negro Leagues Were Major Leagues.

DR. ROB RUCK

Dr. Ruck, a University of Pittsburgh history professor, served on the 2006 committee that voted 18 players from the Caribbean and Negro Leagues into the Baseball Hall of Fame. He is the author of Sandlot Seasons: Sport in Black Pittsburgh (1987), The Tropic of Baseball: Baseball in the Dominican Republic (1991), Raceball: How the Major Leagues Colonized the Black and Latin Game (2011), and most recently, Tropic of Football: The Long and Perilous Journey of Samoans to the NFL. His documentaries, Kings on the Hill: Baseball’s Forgotten Men (1993) and The Republic of Baseball: Dominican Giants of the American Game (2006), appeared on NBC and PBS.