#164: Frank Guridy - "The Stadium: An American History of Politics, Protest and Play"

Axelbank Reports History and Today

From the publisher: "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."
Information on Dr. Frank Guridy can be found at https://history.columbia.edu/person/guridy-frank/
Information on his book can be found at https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/frank-andre-guridy/the-stadium/9781541601451/?lens=basic-bo
His social media account can be found at https://x.com/fguridy
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