Politics, protest and play: how the stadium became America’s public square
FFifty-two years ago last month, 100,000 black Los Angeles residents packed the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. While the historic stadium had long hosted many of the city’s sports teams, that wasn’t the draw on August 20, 1972. Rather, it was Wattstax ’72, a celebration of black culture meant to channel positivity and pride in a community devastated by the 1965 Watts riots and mourning the 1968 assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson was an emcee, touting co-sponsor Schlitz Brewing Company’s initiative to provide black jobs and urging the crowd, no matter how poor, to remember the motto “I am Somebody.” No police were called in to maintain order; organizers took care of business themselves. One member of the talented lineup of performers, “Prince of Dance” Rufus Thomas, led the crowd in an impromptu rendition of the Funky Chicken on the field. (Many of the stars, including Thomas, had ties to co-sponsor Stax Records.) Afterward, a crowd member ignored a request to leave the field—until Thomas persuaded the spectators to act as an escort. Overall, it was a successful repurposing of a sports stadium into a public square—a phenomenon that Frank Andre Guridy, a professor of history and African American studies at Columbia University, explores in his new book, The Stadium: An American History of Politics, Protest, and Play.
“We think of a stadium as a place to have fun, to see your favorite team or your favorite artist,” Guridy says. “But whether it’s privately owned or — as is often the case — publicly managed or owned … in the U.S., this building has served as the institution of a public square where people come together to recreate and feel a sense of community.”
As he explains, “Civil rights groups organized protests inside or outside the stadium walls,” such as the Black Freedom Movement, gay liberation, and feminism. “When Pope John Paul II visited the United States, or during the Billy Graham Crusades in the mid-20th century, these were some of the largest crowds in the stadium’s history.” And, he adds, “the institution played a huge role in whatever war effort” was going on at the time, including both world wars and the more recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.
It’s a compelling argument. (Pick your favorite sports metaphor: a slam dunk? a home run?) After all, the book notes that stadiums are generally accessible, including by public transportation, and are often located in central parts of major cities. Yet the author is disheartened by what he sees as the current state of stadiums—places that are paid for with taxpayer dollars but corporatized by design, catering to wealthy ticket holders, and contributing to gentrification. Consider the lifelong Bronxite and self-proclaimed sports fan’s take on how Yankee Stadium has changed.
“It was totally different in the 70s and 80s,” Guridy says. “There was a lot more representation of New Yorkers in that building — [in terms of] class, not just racial. The surrounding community is predominantly black and brown. [Now] they are either in the fields or working in concessions… It is a temple of exclusion, an enclave of exclusivity, which contradicts its political and public goals.”
The book documents numerous occasions when politics and public affairs came to the stadium and arena. Guridy found numerous examples from his hometown, including Madison Square Garden.
It opened in 1874 as a venue for P. T. Barnum’s circus. In keeping with the Greco-Roman history of stadiums, it was originally called the Grand Roman Hippodrome. Rebuilt and renamed Madison Square Garden, it soon became a venue for sports and other entertainment, as well as a political meeting place.
In the 1930s, both fascists and anti-fascists held rallies there. A March 1933 rally, co-organized by the American Jewish Congress, denounced Nazi anti-Semitism, with New York Governor Al Smith among the speakers. The following year, a pro-Hitler, pro-Nazi group, Friends of the New Germany, held its own rally in the same location, with swastikas emblazoned on doormen’s armbands. The ugliness reached a fever pitch in 1939 when another such organization, the German American Bund, drew 20,000 people to the Garden, ostensibly to celebrate George Washington’s birthday. Instead, it was a night of anti-Semitic and anti-black rhetoric from speakers, set against a backdrop of a mix of American and Nazi symbols. While demonstrators demonstrated outside, two voices inside voiced their anti-fascist views. Journalist Dorothy Thompson mocked the Bund. Jewish plumber’s assistant Isadore Greenbaum disrupted the meeting and was attacked by Bund security forces.
“You see a German-American organization trying to harmonize fascism with American patriotism,” Guridy says. “There are some parallels with Trumpism.”
Meanwhile, the author discovers that wartime is a prime opportunity for pro-military demonstrations at sporting events. He follows the playing of the Star-Spangled Banner on baseball fields, including an early appearance in the Civil War. World War I made it a staple. More recently, after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, another patriotic song—“God Bless America”—has replaced “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the seventh-inning stretch, while the Department of Defense spends taxpayer dollars to promote the military in sports competitions.
Marginalized voices have also found ways to express themselves publicly in stadiums. One example of this was in 2016 when then-San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem before a practice game against the San Diego Chargers at Qualcomm Stadium. Kaepernick’s stated reason was outrage over the U.S.’s treatment of black people and people of color following the deaths of minorities at the hands of police and vigilantes. The author sees a parallel between Kaepernick and the Black Power salute given by African-American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, which were also held in a stadium, in this case the Estadio Olimpico Universitario.
Smith, Carlos and Kaepernick were all vilified for actions that challenged the status quo, and Kaepernick was soon unemployed in the NFL. Despite their public nature, stadiums have a history of exclusionary practices, the book finds. Sports leagues banned integrated play between blacks and whites and segregated crowds. Confederate stadiums sometimes hosted pro-Confederate displays, as was the case at the Sugar Bowl at Tulane Stadium in New Orleans.
“[The] “The white South in the Jim Crow era wanted to show white supremacist politics to the nation,” Guridy says. “The Sugar Bowl Classic was televised and broadcast. You weren’t just seeing a football game,” you were seeing “a glorification of the plantation past. Confederate flags were prominently displayed in the stands, on the field. When the Black Freedom Movement began to emerge, the ‘tradition’ was reinforced.”
The book examines gender segregation in sports media; leagues barred female reporters from the press box and locker room. A landmark 1978 lawsuit by Time Inc., on behalf of Sports Illustrated journalist Melissa Ludtke, resulted in a mandate for equal access, but change was slow until the 1990s. Guridy also documents homophobia in stadiums, including the infamous “Disco Demolition Night” at Chicago’s Comiskey Park in 1979. To him, the huge crowd that destroyed disco records—and ultimately the stadium—was not an innocent stunt but an outright homophobic act. He contrasts this with the positive example of the 1982 Gay Games as a place where gay and lesbian athletes felt welcome.
“These are buildings designed to bring people together,” says Guridy. “There are definitely other stories of exclusivity, even to this day.”
But if he’s disappointed by the current situation at Yankee Stadium and elsewhere, he also sees reason for hope. The upheaval of the Covid-19 pandemic may have helped stadiums take on a more public role. The book chronicles the spontaneous Black Lives Matter protests at Barclays Center Plaza in 2020. With much of the world in lockdown, the central Brooklyn space was an ideal protest location. Across the country, stadiums were converted into vaccination centers—and also as polling places, a trend that continues today.
“It made perfect sense, it worked really well through clubs and elected officials,” says Guridy, who notes that 50,000 Atlantans voted at State Farm Arena in the 2020 presidential election. “It had a lot of impact. It worked so well that they said, ‘Why aren’t we doing this on a regular basis?’”