Josh Gibson was born on December 31, 1911, in Buena Vista, Georgia, to sharecroppers Mark and Nancy Gibson. Gibson said that one of the best things his father ever did for him was move his family in 1924 to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, because he believed it gave him economic opportunities that he would not have had in the South. He considered his getting a good-paying job in 1927 at a Pittsburgh steel mill, which sponsored an amateur baseball team that he 222 Josh Gibson joined, an example of this. In 1929, the Crawford Colored Giants, a well-known black semipro baseball team, invited him to join their club. It was while playing for the Crawfords that he began to build his reputation as a home run hitter. Holway emphasizes the opportunities Gibson had to excel in Pittsburgh, while noting that Gibson lived in a working-class city where times became hard when the Great Depression began.

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