The Stadium as a Site of Politics and Protest
Frank Guridy’s book describes the history of how U.S. arenas have functioned as so much more than monuments to sports.
Stadiums are monuments to recreation, sports, and pleasure. Yet from the earliest ballparks to the present, stadiums have also functioned as public squares. Politicians have used them to cultivate loyalty to the status quo, while activists and athletes have used them for anti-fascist rallies, Black Power demonstrations, feminist protests, and much more.
In The Stadium, Frank Guridy, Dr. Kenneth and Kareitha Forde Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies, recounts the contested history of play, protest, and politics in American stadiums. From the beginning, stadiums were political, as elites turned games into celebrations of war, banned women from the press box, and enforced racial segregation. By the 1920s, these arenas also became important sites of protest as activists increasingly occupied the stadium floor to challenge racism, sexism, homophobia, and more. Following the rise of the corporatized stadium in the 1990s, this complex history was largely forgotten. But today’s athlete-activists, like Colin Kaepernick and Megan Rapinoe, belong to a powerful tradition in which the stadium is as much a place of protest as of pleasure.
Guridy talks about the book with Columbia News, as well as his ideal reading experience, what he’s teaching now, and who he would invite to a dinner party.
What was the impetus for this book?
When we think of the stadiums that dot the landscapes of cities and towns around the globe, we think of them primarily as sports and entertainment venues, where fans behold breathtaking performances by athletes like Patrick Mahomes and performers like Taylor Swift. Yet, my book aims to show how stadiums have had a much larger role in shaping the United States: They have been barometers of the state of democracy and the fate of the nation since they first emerged as makeshift wooden structures in the late 19th century. The stadium has been, and continues to be, America’s public square—a place where social and political hierarchies are reinforced and challenged.
The book also attempts to contest the idea that stadiums are engines of economic revitalization, an argument that stadium builders often make when they seek to convince the public to finance their construction. I contend that stadiums are best seen as a commitment to a public good, akin to budgeting for public parks and other public institutions that can create community cohesion. Despite the dubious economic benefits claimed by sports franchises, a stadium’s value seldom translates into a metric. Democracies depend on these public spaces where everyone can gather, and political action can happen.
Can you give some examples from the book of how stadiums are sites of protest and politics?
American stadiums and arenas have a long history of being venues of political conflict. In the early 20th century, Madison Square Garden, the most storied arena in the U.S., hosted many political rallies—everything from pro-Communist and pro-Nazi meetings to the American Jewish Congress. As was the case in ancient Rome, the modern stadium has been used by elites to project their power and influence. For example, at Tulane Stadium in New Orleans, white community leaders continuously used the Sugar Bowl, the annual New Year’s Day college football classic, to celebrate and reinforce Jim Crow segregation, on the field and in the stands, from the 1930s until the 1970s. In recent decades, especially after 9/11, the federal government has partnered with sports leagues to turn the stadium into a site for a recurring pep rally for the U.S. military and for law enforcement, which facilitated a culture of compliance as it waged wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for two decades.
Stadiums have also been arenas of protest where America’s marginalized and dispossessed have made their voices heard. Civil rights and Black Power rallies were held in stadiums across the country during the 1960s and ‘70s, perhaps most famously at the Los Angeles Coliseum, which hosted the legendary Wattstax concert/rally in 1972. A decade later, San Francisco’s Kezar Stadium became the venue for the inaugural Gay Games in 1982, where local LGBTQ activists proudly proclaimed their desires and discontents. These events and countless others like them established stadiums as important theaters of place-making, where marginalized people could transform spaces built for other purposes.
What's the last great book you read, and why?
Adam Shatz’s The Rebel’s Clinic, an excellent intellectual biography of Frantz Fanon, the Martiniquan-born, anti-colonial theorist and activist.
Describe your ideal reading experience—where, when, how.
At the risk of sounding formulaic, I have turned into someone who treasures the experience of reading over the summer. My job requires me to read year-round, of course, but the ever-increasing demands of being a 21st-century academic conspire against the slower, contemplative reading experience. I also still enjoy reading while sitting in a coffee shop or a public space, like the subway with music in my ears, which is how I became a reader while growing up in New York City.
What are you teaching this semester?
My large lecture class, Sport and Society in the Americas, which I thoroughly enjoy teaching because it attracts students from a variety of backgrounds. It is the only class at Columbia that I am aware of that approaches sports from a humanistic/social science perspective, and it exemplifies what sport can give us—engagement and conversation across difference.
I am also teaching my Approaches to International and Global History graduate course, which I enjoy immensely, too, because it keeps me engaged with the exciting scholarship in fields outside of U.S. history.
What else are you working on?
I have written two books in the last four years, so right now I am slowing down and taking some time to figure out my next project.
Which three historians/scholars, dead or alive, would you invite to a dinner party, and why?
W.E.B. DuBois, the great African-American scholar/activist who witnessed, and wrote about, all of the major transformations in the struggle for racial equality from the era of Reconstruction until the early 1960s.
Walter Rodney, the Guyanese-born historian who wrote pioneering works in African and Caribbean history, and who committed his life to justice for people in Africa and the diaspora.
Angela Davis, because she has remained steadfastly committed to liberatory thought and action for more than 50 years.