SABR’s annual Jerry Malloy Negro League Conference was held on June 6-9, 2024, at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York. Panels and presentations were also livestreamed virtually from the Hall of Fame’s Grandstand Theater.
In-person attendees had an opportunity to view the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum’s new exhibit, The Souls of the Game: Voices of Black Baseball, which spotlights the decades-long history of Black baseball prior to the formation of the Negro Leagues, through the complexities of baseball’s re-integration, to the challenges that remain today, revealing the deep connections between baseball and Black America.
The conference was highlighted by a panel discussion on SABR’s Special Negro Leagues and Teams Committee with James Brunson III, Phil S. Dixon, Kevin Johnson, Philip Lee, Adam Darowski, and Gary Gillette; and a panel on the Hall of Fame’s Souls of the Game exhibit featuring Tom Shieber, Mary Quinn, and Cassidy Lent.
Presentations were given by Dan Nathan, Karl Lindholm, Clem Hamilton, Keith Crook, Frank Harte, Paul Julion, Tim Hagerty, Ted Knorr, Clarence Gordon Jr., Alan Cohen, Jon Volkmer, Brian Sheehy, Alex Painter, Max Martinez Almenas, JB Martin IV, Mark Armour, Matt Jacob, Lisa Alexander, Missy Booker, Rich Puerzer, Steven Greenes, Gary Gillette, Larry McGill, and Robert Fitzpatrick. Click here to view the full schedule.
Click here to view a photo gallery at Flickr.com.
About the Conference
The Jerry Malloy Negro League Conference promotes activities to enhance scholarly, educational, and literary objectives. Since 1998, the event has been the only symposium dedicated exclusively to the examination and promotion of Black baseball history. The conference is open to baseball and history fans of all ages.
Each year, monies are targeted to donate books to schools or libraries; raise funds for the Negro Leagues Baseball Grave Marker Project; and award scholarships to high school seniors in a nationwide essay contest and an annual art contest. The Negro Leagues Committee is one of SABR’s original committees, formed in 1971. It has continued to preserve and highlight the contributions of African-American players in baseball history.
The committee published the landmark The Negro Leagues Book in 1994, which featured a complete register of more than 3,000 players, team rosters and in-depth histories from leagues of the late nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth.
