The stadium is more than a symbol. They exclude some and include others

Most of us go to the stadium to watch football or baseball, or see a big concert, or maybe cheer on our favorite political candidate. It is likely that these activities do not directly reflect on how and for whom public spaces are used, or how these spaces reflect the strengths and weaknesses of American democracy. But after reading Frank Andre Guridy’s “Stadium,” you might wonder about the history of this cavernous facility as much as the game on the field.

Subtitled “An American History of Politics, Protest, and Play,” Guridy’s deeply researched book provides just that. It is a progressive study of inclusion and exclusion, the relationship of highly visible buildings to their surroundings, and the ways in which stadiums and arenas succeed and fail to achieve the nation’s ideals.

It is also a defense of the midcentury “donut concrete” stadium – think of Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium, or San Francisco’s Candlestick Park – which, Guridy argues, fostered the democratic spirit despite its usual location in the suburbs. Conversely, it criticizes the odd “jewel box” facility (pioneered by Baltimore’s Camden Yards) that tends to harbor wealth and gentrification despite its centralized urban location.

Guridy, a professor of history and African-American studies at Columbia University, has created a daunting task with many potential pitfalls. The book can be very informative about buildings, which will appeal to readers with an architectural bent but perhaps not a general audience. It can also turn the effort into a work of sports history; game, after all, that’s what most people think of when they hear the word “stadium.” The book contains elements of both subjects, but Guridy strives for greater things.

“Stadium” is a work of social history, about the interaction of people, places and ideas, legal and de facto separation, mingling and isolation, money and power. It’s a series of vivid scenes that add up to the big picture.

One such scene is in the heart of Los Angeles. The publicly-run Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum opened in 1923 (one of many stadiums designed as a memorial to World War I veterans), built to draw the Olympics to Los Angeles (which they did, in 1932). In the 1970s it has long been racially integrated, as opposed to, say, Tulane stadium in New Orleans, where for many years visiting football teams must bench Black players. (In 1956, as Guridy wrote about Louisiana, “the state legislature banned interracial mixing at sporting events and at all social functions.”)

But at the Coliseum, progress isn’t just measured on the field. In 1972, seven years after the Watts rebellion, the facility hosted the first Wattstax concert, a benefit exhibition of Stax recording artists featuring Isaac Hayes, the Staples Singers and many other acts. As Guridy wrote, “The audience of one hundred thousand was the largest black crowd at a public event in the United States since the March on Washington in 1963.” At this time, the stadium was a place for social change and cultural celebration.

Other subjects explored here include the 1982 Gay Games held at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco (the US Olympic Committee played legal hardball to ensure Gay Games organizers could not officially use the word “Olympics”); the history of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in Washington, DC, essentially a national monument where the demeaning stereotypes of Native Americans were regularly acted out as entertainment for Redskins fans; and the fight to allow female reporters into the stadium locker room and press box, led by Melissa Ludtke, who in 1978 was the plaintiff in a federal lawsuit that finally won female sports reporters equal access to the Major League Baseball locker room. (Ludtke has written an excellent new book, “Locker Room Talk,” which describes this struggle in detail.)

At its heart, “Stadium” is a story of access and representation in the most public and crowded spaces, where community rituals and, often, patriotism are played out for everyone. Like many sports fans, Guridy pays critical attention to the premium currently placed on luxury seats, which cost many fans who are not in the picture, and many excellent corporate sponsors, which now make the stadium look like a billboard market with games. pull out.

Guridy sometimes loses the forest for the trees as she zooms in on an episode that shows a particular point she wants to make. But when detouring to a certain event, you have to think about where we are going, usually they can return to the main road.

“Stadion” keeps the stadium as an idea, and it’s good. In this book our stadium, write big, for better or for worse. This is where we live out our national dreams and, sometimes, our fantasies.

Chris Vognar is a freelance culture writer.