The Stadium
An American History of Politics, Protest, and Play
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2.0 • 1 Rating
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
The "deep and impactful" story of the American stadium (Howard Bryant, author of Full Dissidence)—from the first wooden ballparks to today’s glass and steel mega-arenas—revealing how it has made, and remade, American life.
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 this book, historian Frank Guridy 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, they also became important sites of protest as activists increasingly occupied the stadium floor to challenge racism, sexism, homophobia, fascism, 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 an arena of protest as a palace of pleasure.
Moving between the field, the press box, and the locker room, this book recovers the hidden history of the stadium and its important role in the struggle for justice in America.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"The stadium America's public square," according to this captivating study. Historian Guridy (The Sports Revolution) traces how, since the country's first stadiums were built in 1860s, America's political divisions have played out in and around them. He begins with a fascinating overview of stadium history (the first American stadiums were all "ballparks" for local baseball teams, but he also traces the modern stadium's origins to other forms of mass entertainment like circus tents and prizefights), then offers a series of snapshots of historical moments that highlight stadiums' political nature, including a KKK rally at Madison Square Garden in the 1920s and a 1941 Sugar Bowl game held at segregated Tulane University, which forced Boston College to bench their star running back because he was Black. Guridy's analysis, while it delves into moments of political resistance around stadiums, is most valuable for its insights into how the stadium's design and functions have fed into and exacerbated existing power structures. For instance, he explains that in the 1930s stadiums became "places to cultivate mass loyalty" with the introduction of rituals like first ball tosses and the singing of "The Star-Spangled Banner"; whereas at the turn of the 21st century, they became engines of gentrification in post-industrial cities. It's a sprawling history that ventures in many surprising directions.
