Annual Negro League Baseball Symposium with a panel of historians, including Rob Ruck and Ted Knorr, at the Franco Harris Sports Museum.
A Keystone Story: Pennsylvania's Negro League Legacy comes to the Franco Harris Sports Museum on Friday, October 23, from 6 PM to 9 PM. It's the Josh Gibson Foundation's annual Negro League Baseball Symposium, held inside the Senator John Heinz History Center at 1212 Smallman Street.
The evening is built around a panel of three historians who've spent decades tracing the Negro Leagues across Pennsylvania. Dr. Courtney Michelle Smith has spent over twenty years researching Philadelphia-area teams and Ed Bolden. Rob Ruck is a University of Pittsburgh historian and the author of Sandlot Seasons: Sport in Black Pittsburgh. Ted Knorr, a Harrisburg researcher and founder of the Society for American Baseball Research's Negro League Research Conference, has spent more than forty years preserving Central Pennsylvania's Negro League history. A community conversation follows the lecture, so there's room to ask questions and keep the conversation going after the panel wraps.
The museum's exhibition runs alongside the talk, tracing the leagues in Western Pennsylvania, including the legendary Homestead Grays and Pittsburgh Crawfords. The program is part of the History Center's Lecture250 series and its commemoration of the U.S. Semiquincentennial, America250PA.
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It's free with advance registration. The symposium runs from 6 PM to 9 PM on Friday, October 23, at the Franco Harris Sports Museum, 1212 Smallman Street.
Date
Friday, 23 October 2026
18:00
Price
Free
Recommended Age
+14 years
