How Major Sports Stadiums Changed America

“The stadium,” writes Frank Andre Guridy in The Stadium – An American History of Politics, Protest, and Play (Basic Books), “has never been simply a sporting facility.”

From the first wooden ballparks, through the massive concrete buildings of the 1950s and 1960s, to today’s grand modern arenas, Guridy reveals what the stadium means to American life—extending beyond hosting sporting events to fulfilling of a much broader civic role.

“Americans have been gathering in these facilities for over a century,” he explains. “Like cathedrals, these places are where rituals take place on and off the field.”

But, says Guridy, who is a professor of history and African-American studies at Columbia University, stadiums have also become public squares, often used as much by activists as athletes, by politicians as pop stars.

In the not too distant past, for example, stadiums were guilty of instilling segregation and discrimination.

Women were barred from locker rooms and press boxes, and racial segregation was common in all-white leagues of the Jim Crow era.

But as Guridy claims, they have also been at the forefront of American activism.

In New York, for example, stadiums became “one of America’s battlegrounds for democracy” with European immigrant communities in the 1930s making Yankee Stadium and Madison Square Garden (MSG) focal points for the fight against fascism.

Meanwhile, in the 1940s, MSG organized ‘Negro Freedom Rallies’, making it what Guridy calls “a platform for claims”.

While corporatization and the shift toward private rather than municipal ownership has seen the role of the stadium change, athletes such as Colin Kaepernick and Megan Rapinhoe have demonstrated the enduring power of stadiums as points of protest.

Or, as the presidential race heats up, where intense political battles take place.

Furthermore, stadiums still fulfill their primary purpose – bringing people together.

“Investing in a stadium is best understood as a commitment to a public good, similar to budgeting for public parks and other public institutions that facilitate community cohesion,” writes Guridy.

“Ultimately, the stadium should be recognized, and perhaps actively cultivated, as the multifaceted institution it has always been in American life.” –David C. Kaufman