The Josh Gibson Foundation

Josh Gibson MVP Campaign

Major League Baseball’s annual MVP award had always been named after Kennesaw Mountain Landis, a former baseball commissioner. However Landis was known to have played a key part in enforcing a color barrier that kept African American baseball players such as Josh Gibson out of the Majors. A Hall of Famer, Josh’s Negro League statistics would have earned him multiple MVP honors if he’d been allowed to participate. As such, and with announcement of the MLB recognizing the statistics of the Negro League players in 2020, a campaign was launched to rename the MLB MVP Awards to honor a true legend of the game: Josh Gibson. On behalf of The Josh Gibson Foundation, MarketSpace worked in tandem with 9Rooftops to develop marketing materials including posters, a website, a social media campaign, tshirts and mobile phone graphics dedicated to supporting the selection of Josh for the prestigious naming rights to this award. The campaign is still going strong and we hope Josh’s name will be recognized in 2021.