Sport, Politics, and Protest: Unpacking History with Dr. Frank Guridy

In this dynamic episode of the African Americans in Sport Podclass, co-host Dr. Alvin Logan Jr. sits down with renowned historian Dr. Frank Guridy—Professor of History and African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University and Executive Director of the Eric H. Holder Initiative. Together, they explore the intersections of sport, politics, and protest through a diasporic lens. Dr. Guridy reflects on his academic journey, from studying Afro-Cuban resistance to authoring pivotal works like The Sports Revolution and The Stadium: An American History of Politics, Protest, and Play. Tune in to learn how Black communities have historically used sports to survive, build institutions, and create change—both on and off the field.

Transcript

What's good, everyone? Welcome to the African Americans in Sport podcast, a unique podcasting format where each episode is a lesson and each season is a semester where we detail the diverse experiences of African Americans in sports. All right, good folks. I appreciate you for bending your ear one more time for the African-Americans in Sport podcast. I am one of your co-hosts, Dr. Alvin Logan Jr. And today we have what the young folks call a banger. We've got, uh, Dr. Frank Guridy here and he is, you talk about a sports historian, you talk about somebody who really digs deep into sports history and politics. Frank is, is your guy. So Frank Guridy from New York. In New York, I'm not gonna sing for him. A little fun year. Attended Syracuse University for his bachelor's, went to University of Chicago at Illinois for his master's, then completed his PhD at the University of Michigan, which is now a foe. Okay, we won't jump into that yet, but completed his doctorate at the University of Michigan, and he currently the executive director of the Eric H. Holder Initiative for Civil and Political Rights at Columbia, as well as serving as a professor of history. Excuse me. I gotta give full credence to the title. Dr. Kenneth and Karetha Ford, Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies. My apologies. We have Frank here because he's been a great historian when it comes to not just sports but understanding the other impacts that come around sports. His second book, The Sports Revolution, How Texas Changed the Culture of American Athletics, was something that really drew me to Frank's work, as well as his most recent book, The Stadium, An American History of Politics, Protest, and Play. Excited to have you here today. I think it's going to be a fruitful conversation, particularly around your research, how you got to where you are and where we're going, right? And the folks that are most prepared to talk about where we're going, particularly around sports, culture, politics, and You know, research history, if you will, are the folks that are in it that are going to the libraries to look up new things that are going to the stadiums to really see what's out there. So it's a pleasure to have you here today and welcome. Alvin, thanks for having me on your podcast. It's a pleasure to be here. This is wonderful. So while we got you, let's, let's go ahead and jump right into the first question. Just open up for everybody. How does your PhD, which is your doctor, prepare you to examine sports, society, politics, and history? Yes. So, you know, I, so I got my PhD, as you said, University of Michigan, the Department of History. And I wasn't actively studying sport. I was like a black Atlantic black diaspora historian. And I was really interested in In, you know, at the time in the field of black history, it was kind of going through what I guess you could call a diaspora turn. In which, even though there were long-standing traditions of writing about black people here and there, to kind of paraphrase the great St. Clair Drake, There's a real emphasis on thinking about the black experience in the US, you know, in a kind of diasporic context. This is in the aftermath of Paul Gilroy's Black Atlantic, which came out in 1993. I was in grad school in the late 90s, early 2000s. Robin Kelly's work. A number of people were really thinking through the question of diaspora and black studies. And, you know, given that my family's from the Caribbean, you know, I always had an interest in the black experience in the Caribbean, particularly in the Spanish-speaking Americas. And to make a very long story short, I wound up doing research on Cuba. And kind of the struggle for black freedom in Cuba in the aftermath of slavery and in the early years of the Republic of Cuba leading up to the revolution that put Fiorno Castro in power in 1959. And, you know, as I was digging through archives in Cuba. It became clear to me that Afro-Cubans and Cubans in general were very plugged in to debates about race in the United States. And so for me, it became less a question about, you know, race only in Cuba, but thinking about race diasporically. And to see how black Cubans and African Americans learn about each other's struggles, read each other's work, engage each other constantly in those years. This is before the Cold War when travel was much easier between Cuba and the United States. And so, you know, this was my way of learning black history, histories of struggle and resistance, histories of politics, culture. And, you know, I would also say, you know, from the perspective of black communities themselves, not just the history of racism per se. And so, you know, that, those lessons which I learned through that work really came, you know, it really continued as I shifted into sports after my first book was published, Forging Diaspora. Because I was fundamentally interested in how do black folks survive? How do they constitute community? And one of the things that became clear, and I knew this in my own experience as somebody who plays sports, is that Sport is one of those arenas where black folks, you know, found themselves, found opportunities, created opportunities, created institutions, right? Whether it's in the South or in the Caribbean, in, you know, northern contexts. And that, you know, that really, those questions which I started looking at in the Cuba work really became, you know, alive again in the work as I shifted to the U.S. into sport. And I, and I think, you know, I'm sort of like Derek White, who wrote a great book about black college football in the South, or Lou Moore, for example, another eminent black sport historian now, you know, among others, Amira Davis, there's just a great group of black historians and others. Doing work on, on, on sport in the United States from the perspective of black communities. And not just documenting racism, but just figure out ways that black folks use sports as a way to advance and sell social. To advance their desires for freedom and equality. To advance the, you know, their notion of community that was denied to them because of Jim Crow racism. And I think that those lessons I started learning In my graduate work, and I just continue to learn them as I continue my research in subsequent years. That's very interesting. That was, that was your entrance, right? That was, that was a way to like, okay, this is how I learned about it. And it became so prominent just in terms of it being entangled with Like, the sports experience is entangled very deeply with the Black experience. Absolutely. And I think it also has informed my own experience growing up in New York City. Um... You know, I was a public school kid, uh, you know, multicultural, black, Jewish, West Indian, Latinx community. And, you know, I went to schools and most of my high school was really underwhelming to be honest with you. And, um, The place why I've said that I found myself was on the pitcher's mound. That was a place where I learned how all the kind of formulaic lessons, right, that you learn from sports, you know, teamwork and try your best and that sort of stuff. But I also learned how committees are constituted on the field and how, you know, that field brought people together and how I was able to sort of engage in the work of self-definition without realizing at the time When the schools really didn't see me in ways that they should have, you know, in 1980s Bronx, for example. So, I mean, so if some of that was from my own experience as a practitioner, I was a baseball player. I could play pickup basketball, but I wouldn't bring good at it. And if you were going to New York City and you're going to play pickup, you're going to play playground basketball, you had to be like, and I just couldn't, I couldn't hang with cats. I just, I just didn't have the skills. So I stayed on the baseball diamond. I get it. I get it. We've seen a lot of folks talk about a, you know, stick to sports, right? And at sports, a lot of folks say that sports is really an apolitical space and, you know, it, it, If you could just dribble the ball or if you could just throw the ball or if you could just catch the ball, just focus on that and let them keep the politics out of sports. Yet we know that's not the case for everything. So may I ask you this? As a research that, that is, you know, very steeped within the understanding of sports and how it impacts culture, people, so forth. Why do researchers use sport as a setting to discuss society's isms, as I like to call them. So it's racism, sexism, colonialism, you name it. Why use sport as an arena to discuss that? Great question. Because sports has an outside impact in our country, the United States, for better and for worse. You know? One, because it's a billion, multi-billion dollar industry. Whether we're talking about College football, whether we're talking about the National Football League, whether we're talking about the NBA or Major League Baseball, these are... Gigantic businesses that occupy the attentions of many people in this country and around the world, right? I mean, in a world context, you talk about football and rugby and other sports. As well. So these are huge industries that pay to the most talented and lucky and gifted enormous salaries. And that, you know, had occupied the attentions because of the extreme coverage in the media that sports gets. Okay. So even if you're not a sports fan, it's kind of hard to ignore sports. You know, it's going to show up on your on your social media feeds, going to show up on whatever device you're watching, and it generates enormous tons of money for a few rich billionaire owners, right? That's one. It's a huge industry. Number two, after Jackie Robinson breaks the color line for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1946, 1947, sports becomes this place where, at least until recent years, and still, Where Americans like to point to as the place where meritocracy reigns. That this is the place where anybody who is gifted and talented can make it in sports or at least, you know, whether that's at the professional level, the collegiate level, or even in the youth sports level. Right. So it's this place where we house notions of democracy and freedom to some degree and meritocracy. Right. Now, of course, that's a myth in a lot of ways. But it is a tried and true belief that I think many people in this country have across the racial and class spectrum, right? So, so those are two reasons alone that make sports in the Interesting place to look at how the isms of our society operate, whether it's racism or classism or sexism or the, or the, or the OBS or transphobias or homophobias, et cetera, right? So it's, it's just a, it's a delightful place, I would say. to examine these questions because you're going to see evidence of apparent transcendence whether it's on the field or the pitch and you're going to see Clear cases of exclusion and domination and patriarchy and unequal pay for women athletes and discrimination against, you know, marginalized athletes, et cetera. So you see all the dynamic in a public way. And so why not look at them in the realm of sports? Yeah. And I think because, because, and they're often used by politicians, including the people in the White House right now as a place to stake their own vision of what America should be as far as they're concerned. It's, it's, it's one of those arenas that I think is still understudied by academics. So I do think sports. Studies is really growing in the field in exciting ways. And so, I mean, those are just some of the reasons of all where I think that it becomes a great place to examine critical questions of our time. It's, it's interesting. I mean, we bring it up and this is the weekend after the Kentucky Derby. Right. And just going through the history again of, of Isaac Murphy. Um, and. You know, the rich history of black folks and slave folks that, you know, worked with the horses. Spent a lot of time with a lot of the animals and one of the most recent Kentucky Derby winners, there was a black gentleman, I cannot remember his name, caught it briefly, but he had been working with the prize horses. And it was eighty-one Oz didn't win and he ended up winning. So it's, it's just a really rich history that surrounds it. And when you take out The part of experience around race or sex or gender or anything like that, you're removing a lot of the story. A lot of, a whole lot of the story. Cause I mean, a lot of folks wouldn't have known about Isaac Murphy. A lot of folks wouldn't have known about Jackies, you know? That's exactly right. And I think, you know, again, those who argue that sports, you know, is not political. I mean, if you go to any sporting event, you know, the minute the national anthem gets played at a sporting event, the event becomes political. And that's just one reason, right? So, and because it is, it is an industry that has relied on particularly the, you know, the, the big popular sports in this country, certainly basketball and football, it relies on the labor of people from marginalized communities. Right. So, and, and also, you know, those tend to be overrepresented as black folks. So, you know, those, that's another reason why, uh, you know, it, Again, like, this is the arena where we're, that's touted as a place of equality and look at how much money Steph Curry makes or LeBron James or whoever or You know, whoever your prominent black athlete is, but that obscures, you know, the explorative dynamics that make the industry go, you know, and that's another reason why it becomes an important place to look at critical questions of injustice as much as justice. Absolutely. And, you know, speaking of football and basketball, particularly in American context, right, those are some of the, I guess, or as I should ask you, stadiums particularly, those are, I would say, some of the largest monuments in the United States. Um, largest seating capacities, you name it, right? And I remember you in watching a panel that you did in 2004, particularly talking about your third book, you had mentioned that stadiums cause gentrification, right? Right. Can you unpack that for us a bit? So particularly around explain, I guess you could say, what is the impact of that gentrification process on cities, fans, citizens, and athletes? Can you unpack that for us a bit? I certainly can. Yeah, so I mean, in my last book, I write this sweeping history of stadiums from the time they emerged in the late 19th century as circus tents and like wooden ballparks to the gigantic Glass and steel temples that, you know, that populate cities across the country. What we see happening, you know, in the last, I would say after the start of the 1990s is the stadium gets reimagined as a, as a, as a revenue generator, as a way to generate economic development. For a formerly dormant post-industrial city, the Clevelands of Chicago was the, well, Chicago's a little different, but you know, um, you know, places like that, Indiana, Indianapolis, et cetera. And then that Baltimore is a great example where the Camden Yards in Baltimore starts this phenomenon of the inner city urban ballpark that's supposed to generate tourism, generate economic dollars, development, and et cetera. And so what we see happening is that the stadium gets turned into this, this, this essentially this dynamic in which it's facilitating gentrification and which is providing entertainment for the 21st century gentrification. And, and, and increasingly expensive cities. And there was certainly seen this in New York and San Francisco and Chicago and, and in many urban areas across and Baltimore as well. So, so, you know, stadiums which were imagined primarily as, certainly after World War II, as, as publicly owned finance buildings that were designed to bring people to see sports and other entertainment. Get turned into this imagined economic generator, a generator of economic development. And all reputable economists have shown Alvin over and over and over and over again that the cost of construction and maintenance is Outweigh whatever revenues stadiums generate. Stadiums are money pits by definition. They have been that way from the beginning. You don't build them because they're going to generate economic development. You build them because they bring people together. And so, uh, you know, they might, they might generate economic activity, but again, the costs usually because they're so costly to maintain, not just build. Yeah. You know, they really are places that, you know, when sports franchises tell us over and over again that that's what they are. That's a myth. And the research has shown that. So, so what happened is that as they moved into cities in the 1990s, early 2000s, they become these generators. One of the, one of the kind of pillars of the making of the 21st century Gentrified city for the Apple classes of America. And that's, and that's, you see this over and over again. And I think now that, you know, stains are built all over the place. They're not just built in Inner cities. I mean, they built in suburban context. Anywhere a franchise wants to build them, they'll try to build one. And we saw this with the Braves when they moved from downtown Atlanta to Cobb County to suburban Atlanta. Um, And that's been the story pretty much all the way through and notwithstanding the claims of sports franchises. And so franchises, you often get their way, but there have been cases like we just saw in Philadelphia, for example. The Sixers were trying to build an arena in the former, in the historic Chinatown district of Philadelphia. And neighborhood residents bowed back, pushed back, and they were able to beat that stadium built. And the Sixers are going to get the arena somewhere else in the current location in South Philadelphia. But they weren't, they're not going to get it there. But there was enormous pushback, great research done, and a well-coordinated campaign to say, like, no, this is not what our community wants. And I think that you do see that, you know, often, and I think Philadelphia is the latest example. So in, in that case in particular, what, what type of research or what type of pushback did they provide to the folks who are trying to build this? Well, so they, so they, they tackle the question of economic development. I mean, again, it's not hard to find economic, there's a great historian, an economist named Bradbury, who probably, he publishes his work on social media all the time. Who's, you know, done very close analysis of more recent stadium projects to show, again, the cost benefits of stadium construction. And then, and then they just, they, they, they looked at the proposal very clearly and they saw the enormous investment that would be involved in creating new transport for that facility in, in that neighborhood in Philadelphia. Uh, you know, they dissected the claims of the franchise. And they showed that, in fact, that their claims were not going to pan out for that community and that it would result in displacement and enormous disruption. And I think the other thing that it showed too is that, you know, even if you build an accessible stadium, it's always, it's going to create problems because anytime you bring sixty 70,000 or even 10,000 people together in a confined space. You've got to create bottlenecks. You've got to create traffic. You've got to create conditions of unruliness. You know, conditions of danger. That's what stadiums bring. They bring all sorts of great things, but they bring enormous nuisances for, for neighborhood residents who happen to live around them. And I think that they were able to make that case very clearly. I mean, that is interesting, particularly because, you know, most folks think, oh, it's a stadium that's going to come, there's going to be more businesses that come down there, it's going to be a lot more, but you don't think about the adverse effect of it, right? The foot traffic that brings different things, public intoxication, it brings, you know, a lot more trouble for some communities than others, right? Absolutely. And including, you know, increased police presence, which, you know, I guess some people might feel safe in their contacts like that. But, you know, again, these facilities are heavily securitized, some cases like militarized. And you know, who wants to live near a situation like that? I mean, more often than not, most people don't actually. And again, I like going to ballpark. So I mean, I think it can be great, but I wouldn't want to live near one. That's for sure. I get that. And, you know, speaking of the stadiums themselves, right, and the actual events or stuff that happens within the stadium, I just want to shift gears just a little bit, just talking about the importance of it around protest, right? So when I think about protest and when I think about stadiums, I think about 2016 in San Diego when Colin Kaepernick first took a knee during the National Anthem. Or I think about the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. Or I think about, you know... Just monumental things that have happened, particularly around sports in, in those large buildings. But For you, why is it important or why would you, you know, explicate that it's important for folks to understand and examine the history of protests, particularly around stadiums or in stadiums and in American athletics, if you will. Yeah. Stadiums are over-determined as sport and entertainment venues only. Okay. And that makes sense because most of the time when we see them, we might, if we don't go to an event or concert or Beyonce concert or Nets game or a game to see the Seattle Seahawks or whatever, The Mariners, you know, they seem to be that's what they're for, for entertainment. But in fact, they've always had a larger purpose. Certainly since the 19th, again, when they started emerging in the 19th century, because they've become Great ways because of the way they're designed, right? They're designed for the spectacular. You've got tens of thousands of people in confined space. And the Romans knew this back in the ancient world. This is not something that was invented by the Atlantic world, the powers of Europe and the United States. This is something that we see in the ancient world that they become places where the state, the government elite project their power. Power, state power, et cetera, right? They become places of political rallies for, as we saw last year with Democratic and Republican National Conventions happening in Milwaukee and Chicago. They become places where, you know, presidents drop the first ball at major league baseball games. They become places where we see the jet flyovers now. After 9-11, the kind of militarized spectacles that we see in stadiums across the country, they become ideal places for the government to project their power. And the message to the public. And we see this certainly at all the major mega sporting events, the Super Bowl or whatever it is, the World Series or the NBA Finals or whatever, right? So... There's that. But there's also long histories of marginalized peoples approaching the space as a place to express their desires and discontent for the same reason. Because there are great places to make a message. And we saw that certainly in the era of the civil rights movement when Martin Luther King's SCLC, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Stage rallies on Soldier Field in Chicago, DLA Sports Arena in Los Angeles, Cobo Arena in 1963, where Martin Luther King gives his first version of the I Have a Dream speech. You know, anti-war rallies happening across the country. The very famous Black Power Spectacle Concert known as Wattstacks of Los Angeles in 1971. And we see other marginalized Kurdish Chicanos, Mexican-Americans, and then in the 1980s, the LGBTQ movement, staging rallies like the gay games and other protests. At stake, because they are these iconic, you used the word earlier, monumental spaces that are perfect to design, that are a great place to project your message and your desires for equality and citizenship. And we saw this, of course, Very powerfully in the summer of 2020. after the murder of George Floyd where people congregated at stadiums across the country including right here in New York City and Brooklyn at the Barclays Center to express their outrage at yet another black person being killed by police and demanding That the question of police brutality and police violence against black communities be addressed right now. So the stadiums, again, because they are You know, centrally located, easy to get to, large. They are, they are a great place to project your messages and what's interesting is to see how elites and the state can try to contain that dynamic, right? So they want to project Their own images and their own messages, but they don't necessarily want marginalized people to protect their messages either. So you also see intense policing at the stadiums and you certainly see this in recent years as they become really securitized by the state and private security companies. Finally, you know, interesting the last point is you talk about the state really wanting to project what they want to project and I think back to You know, when Hitler had a speech, I think it was in Madison Square Garden in 1936 right? And you had Nazi flags, you know, just, or banners draped from, you know, the top of the MSG and it's like, you know, It just gets me to think around that like that was actually a thing that happened within an arena, an American arena. It's like this is about basketball and it's, you know, we were under the guise of a political yet that happens. That was back in the 30s, right? And, you know, you go to even Muhammad Ali's decision to have the thrill in Manila or, you know, to go to Zaire, right? And not be on American soil to have, you know, some of the biggest fights of his career, right? It's just really an interesting space to think about the erection of a space to talk about politics, to talk about sports, have a sporting spectacle, but you have a captive audience, not but, and you have a captive audience, right? Exactly, exactly. Yeah, and, you know, certainly in the case of the Nazis, I mean, so Hitler didn't have a rally at the Garden, but Nazi supporters certainly did multiple times during the 1930s. Of course, Hitler made his You know, his appearance at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, right? The same Olympics that Jesse Owens, you know, won his gold medals and approved. The fallacy of white supremacy, at least on that day. Right. So absolutely. And of course we saw a version of that phenomenon when Donald Trump had his rally at Madison Square Garden, you know, last, last summer in August of 2024. This becomes an interesting space and a lot of them are now, you know, being funded, have city, a lot of tax dollars, a lot of support from, but it's like, what do the citizens really get back from it? Well, that is the question. That is the question. And I think, I think that even, even a so-fi stadium, which was built by Stan Krenke or private money is still contingent on the enormous marshalling of public resources, whether it's infrastructure. Whether it's, uh, tax abatements, no stadium is only privately constructed. I don't care what they say. Um, and if this, if the public is going to invest in them in some way, then the payback has to be more than giving a chance for people to go spend a lot of money to see a concert or a baseball game or a soccer game or a football game. Interesting. It feels like a lot of economic decisions being made more so than others, if you will. Yes. Yeah. Okay. And let me shift gears a little bit and talk about your second book. So I know they say everything is bigger in Texas. I know you, you having been at the University of Texas and spent a considerable amount of time there, the sports culture there, Is understandably distinct. I would say when it comes to football, basketball, and, and track and field, and baseball, you know, University of Texas is good at baseball every five years. That's not fair. They're good at baseball. Ah, but you know, the, the, the culture is a bit distinct, right? So... In your second book, you focus on Texas, right? And that just the culture that exists there. So why examine Texas as a place that changed American athletics? And what is it about their sports culture? Yeah. So I, as you said, I lived and taught, I lived in Austin and taught the University of Texas Austin for eleven years. And it was during those years when the UT football team won the national championship led by Vince Young there. Historic, amazing victory over the USC Trojans at the 2006 Rose Bowl. Uh, one of the most stunning college football games I've ever seen. San Antonio Spurs are winning in the midst of their Tim Duncan, uh, Tony Parker, Manu Genovi, a great popfisher just is now no longer the coach of the Spurs. Mavericks were doing good. It was kind of an interesting time in Texas sports. Houston teams were doing well with Astros. So, you know, some of it was just kind of getting swept up into that. But then I started doing some research. This is when I started working on sport history. And it started with research on the Houston Asset Dome, which is the first dome stadium that was built in this country for baseball and football and opened in 1965, And I was like, oh, that's interesting. And it had an enormous impact. Enormous impact on stadium architecture. The luxury suite is pioneered by the Astrodome. Like I said, it was the first indoor stadium. It was the first with synthetic grass, right? It was all these firsts. So then as I started digging around some more as a historian, you know, we dig around in archives and like, you know, there's a lot of firsts that are happening in Texas in this period. 60s, 70s, you know, and I said, you know what, this is worthy of a story. And I want to write a book about Texas that was not just about football because that's the sport that's the most popular, that's the one that's the most associated with Texas because of From the great book by Buzz Bissinger, Friday Night Lights and the spin-off TV series or movies, et cetera. But also where you, again, where I saw marginalized communities find their places in Texas. And I saw that in black Texas history. I had the privilege Of being the director of the Center for African American Studies. And, uh, you know, it was communities in Texas. It was dedicated to preserving black sports history in the era of Jim Crow. It was a group of, and they're still around. Called the Prairie View Interscholastic Coaches Association. And their whole function was to preserve and promote black Texas sports history that have been overshadowed in the era of Jim Crow. So, I mean, you know, spokes, I was like, wow, this also deserves interesting stories and many things that deserve attention there. So, So part of it was just about telling, like you said, the distinctness of Texas sports history. But then, you know, then you started looking at it some more. Like, you know, a lot of things that change American sporting culture at the professional, the collegiate level, Coming out of Texas, right? So, for example, it's in the 1960s where the National Football League emerges as a major power In part, propelled by the owners of the American Football League, particularly Lamar Hunt, who owned the Dallas Texans, and KS Bud Adams, who owned the Houston Oilers, who are now the Tennessee Titans. The Texans became the Kansas City Chiefs. And it was these rich oil man sports entrepreneurs that transformed professional football. As the same entrepreneurs and the visionary Roy Hofflines who built the Houston Astrodome. It was a Dallas Cowboys sports franchise that really revolutionized scouting and marketing of sports in the 1960s and 70s, including the sexualization of dance teams and cheerleaders by the famous, infamous, famous Dallas Cowboys Chewers in 1970. Then this is a Jim Crow society. This is a place that had been, you know, had excluded black folks from the predominant, you know, schools and the franchise of the state. And I became really interested. They're like, why was it that all of a sudden the 1960s, he's white. Folks who benefit from DreamCrow decide that it was time to integrate their collegiate programs or their professional teams. So I looked at that story. I looked at the ways in which, you know, far-sighted entrepreneurs realized that if they were going to make Texas a place, uh, a sporting capital, they knew they needed black athletes. They didn't know that right away and not all of them knew right away, but certainly the University of Houston knew that at the collegiate level, the Southern Methodist University Mustangs in college football understood that. Aiden Fry, when he signs Jerry Levias as the first black player To, to play for the SMU Mustangs in 1965, sixty-four sixty-five So the question of integration emerges in an interesting way. It's in Texas where we see before Louisiana and before Georgia and other southern states, we start to see desegregation happening. Right? So, and then it becomes the place where one of the most famous cultural events that happened in American sport history, and I would argue in the history of gender relations, the very famous Billie Jean King, Bobby Riggs tennis match that occurred in the Houston National once again in 1973. Which helped, you know, cement the second wave feminist movement in the American consciousness where Billie Jean King beats the 55-year-old man on the Houston Astrodome turf. So there's all of these like monumental things that are happening in Texas are coming out of the struggles of black freedom and out of the economic transformation that you see. In Texas sports, it has a ripple effect throughout the country. And that's the story I wanted to tell. And I wanted to tell it in a way that I think readers who also were not from Texas could appreciate Everything from, you know, those stories to also the history of Mexican and American friends in San Antonio is a story I know very well. Mary Long is from San Antonio. Um, I want to understand how the Spurs became a prominent franchise and prior to it was through smart sports marketing in the 1970s, right? Appealing to the Texas, Tejano, Mexican-American working class that was, you know, a big part and still is of the San Antonio Spurs. Fan base. So, you know, those are stories I wound up telling the book and I, and I, and I try to offer a view of text that I think most people really, you know, don't, they might know some of the individuals, but to put them in a historical context, I'm not sure that anybody had done that before I did, but that book. This is interesting. I mean, you know, as, as you're going through the history of, of Texas, I was like, this, wow. Yeah. It's, it's been a lot of, a lot of firsts, a lot of game changers, a lot of just doing, I'll say better, but differently than a lot of folks who really have the success with it. Absolutely, and then just the sheer talent that's coming from, you know, I mean, to me, it's like Texas and California and maybe Florida or maybe later become hugely impactful in the development of sports and certainly football and basketball and baseball. It's undoubted. I mean, it's like the staggering number of NFL Hall of Fame has come out of Texas. Actually, it's a significant number of players. It really is. You know, that's not by accident. I think that's because of this particular environment that, you know, at once, you know, you know, kind of scared Certainly, you know, was predicated on exclusion and Jim Crow, but also created conditions for, again, black community formation, black folks able to kind of take advantage of opportunities, project their desires and their talents on the athletic fields. And that's what we see in Texas for sure. That, uh, you know, and I also haven't been there as well. I got my doctorate at University of Texas and, you know, during a time when the Texas football team wasn't as successful. You could say. It's coaching changes. A lot of things different happened. Basketball team was doing decent, but the women's team had been on the rise and you really saw a community kind of, you know, fold in around them. And obviously Austin is, a lot of Austin is, is University of Texas. I get that. But it was just unique to be in that space at a time where, you know, the prominent sports weren't exactly doing what they were going to, but you saw sports go well at the University of Texas, including baseball, women's basketball. Track and field was always doing well and just the, the, I don't know, the, the push behind it from the fans and culture and the fan, the fan behavior behind it, you could tell that there was a lot of love, a lot of pride in it. Um, and I, I was speaking with a couple of folks that were getting doctorate at the same time and, you know, we had talked about, man, they, they, they, they really love you when you're on campus as long as they think you're playing a sport. This is true. I bet. And sometimes I thought a good thing, but yeah, I mean, I get it. No, I totally get it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's interesting. It's interesting. And. You know, Texas as a place, I, I do, I do see a lot of the, the pioneering parts of it and I do see a lot of the, the celebration and, you know, just as a community, I would say as a black community, there's a lot of, A lot of support, a lot of value in athletics, especially. No doubt. And, you know, I think that, you know, also has to, has to do when they become adults. It's like, we still value this. We find this, you know, as something that we want to pass down. And I don't see it as much in a lot of other places. California, I wouldn't say as much. I wouldn't say as much, particularly in Washington State. It's like if you play basketball, great. Play football is kind of an afterthought. You play pickleball, which is the state's official. Yeah. Uh, But it's a growing sport all over the country. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, sure. I mean, you know, it's not, it's not the same. So I appreciate you unpacking, you know, this is why Texas is Texas. This is why, you know, sport has changed a lot. This is a lot of stuff I didn't think about. A lot of stuff folks don't necessarily think, okay, this was, this was a merger and this is how different teams were created. This was the first time, you know, you got to see feminism You know, friend center. That's right. In an arena. That's right. You can't understand modest sporting, you can't understand the modest sporting industry without understanding text as a role in it. You absolutely can't. I mean, that's the argument of the book, you know, and I think that's, I think people know these things if you're, if you're interested The history of the NFL or maybe, you know, certain, you know, Athens. Again, I'm an older head, so these are for young folks. People don't know who any of these people are, but, but I think that to put the whole story together, that was what I was trying to do with the book. Yeah. So in, in your time, particularly shifting your focus to sports history, you know, What have been some of the biggest challenges that you, you know, come across, whether it be your work, the theories you put forth, whether it be the way that you, you know, explicate history, but whether it just be the fact that you're, you're talking about. Black history. You're talking about black sporting history. What are some of the biggest challenges that you've come up across? Yeah, there have been a number of them. I think Number one, in the academic realm, I think there's still a bias against sports studies. I think there's this sense that it's just fluff and it's not that important. And I mean, I think that's changing. I do think that what we're seeing, you know, in academia, in the social science and the humanities as a growing field of sports studies, that's very exciting. Very exciting. You know, and I'm one of the older heads in this world. I mean, there's just younger scholars Who are out there now, who are publicly engaged, you know, or folk are a little bit younger than me, for example, a little more, for example, a story he's written, his basement book was about The black quarterback in the NFL, Derek White, Amira Davis, among others. There are others. It's really an exciting field of people writing citations on all sorts of things, you know. Gender and sexuality in sports, sport and film, sport and policing. You know, there's an organization called the North American Society for Sport History that's got a lot of young scholars operating in now. So it's a great time, but yet there's still a bias, I think, in the field. Like even my last book, The Stadium, which is not really a sports history, but at every, at many academic events, people feel the need to confess that whether or not they're a sports fan. So I actually don't care if you're a sports fan. I watch you read the book if you really don't like sports, right? And to some extent, that's the kind of challenge that every scholar faces. How do you convey the importance of your work to a non-specialist, whether that's a student in your class or somebody who is your mom or your grandparent or any person who's in the in the general public? I mean, that's just the challenge we all have. Right. And I think that. Part of the task, I think, of this generation of sports clubs is to convey the importance of this aside from the fact that they might be a, you know, a fan of, you know, of a Premier League team in Europe or an NBA franchise, a WNBA franchise, right? I think that's a challenge that's throughout I think that's going to change, but it's going to take some time. I think that's, I think that's, that's among the bigger challenges. I think the other ones is also like, how do you break through In the general public, when you're in a, an outlet that, a world that's dominated by a plethora of media outlets, you know, podcasts every turn. I mean, the implosion of so many mainstream media outlets Has created enormous opportunities for people to get their name and their, their knowledge out there or their, whatever they're doing or whatever, their TikTok video or whatever it is. But it makes for a very crowded field and it's very hard to kind of Right, true. I know a lot of us are really trying to break through and reach readers or an audience beyond the academic realm. And I've been fortunate with the sports, with the stadium book, you know, it's got a fair amount of mainstream press. I'm very grateful for that. I was in NPR and all this stuff. That's been great. And so, I mean, that's been very gratifying because I thought, okay, I was able to reach people who I would not have reached otherwise if I wrote, if I kept writing about Cuba, which is, you know, an important topic, but it wasn't going to have the same reach that my last two books and certainly this book passed. So, you know, how do you break through and how do you influence change? How do you help change happen? I mean, I write this book because I'm interested in social justice. I'm interested in Marzai's people getting the most opportunity they can get. I'm interested in inertia of freedom. And because I do think sport allows us to imagine what freedom looks like, even if it's just watching Steph Curry do his thing like he did last night in game seven against the Rockets. You know, there's something, you know, exhilarating watching an athlete perform at a high level. It invites a kind of inspiration and a sense of possibility. Yeah. Um, you know, how do we bottle that up and how do we like convey that, you know, to a board of public that's not just about generating enormous profits for the Golden State Warriors or the, or the plethora of, Franchises who, uh, you know, corporations invest in sports. I mean, I, you know, those are the, those are just some of the challenges that come to mind. And I think that, I think, you know, Some of us are able to do that, but it's very hard to do. And I think it's hard because, you know, there's historic exclusion in the mainstream media outlets and then there's just the very crowded social media world that's very difficult to penetrate. Yeah. I mean, I also ask just to, to lay it out there for the folks that are, that are coming to buy, you know, the folks that want to research and, you know, we'll get to the end where I'll ask you about your experience and the advice that you have for those folks as well. But Just thinking about, okay, here are some areas that are, you know, being challenged. Is that we need more voices in the field? Absolutely. Here are some areas that there's a challenge just because we're trying to You know, display it to a general crowd. I mean, these are all things that I feel like scholars, once we have more voices and we have a lot more research going into it as years pass, it becomes, you know, one of the things that's commonplace, right? And, you know, from my perspective, particularly just being around Uh, college athletics and stuff like that. There's a lot of debates about sports history. There's a lot of different ways that folks are starting to recognize sports history as, you know, as, as, and see it as Adjacent to the United States history and the pieces and the connectivity that came from our race and capitalism. So I think there are a lot of thinkers that are continuing to To find new avenues to talk down sports history and to use it as a way to, you know, talk through transphobia, to talk through. To talk through, you know, as we were talking about the Islam's xenophobia before. So I appreciate you, you know, talking through the challenges that you've had thus far. And my hope is that the more folks that come behind, the more the field becomes a solidified day. And it's something that... People can continue to wrap their head around as important and necessary and another avenue to continue to look at the world and how we exist within. But I appreciate that. I never thought about the, some of the challenges that you brought up as well. I do think that it does, you know, it just, just one last thing on this. I do think that because the sport does pull in people from different backgrounds, it can, it produced that kind of light bulb moment for people. Oh, I didn't know that. You know, I've had that experience in the classroom. I've had that experience with people reading my book. And, you know, I do think, you know, even now in our extremely polarized time that, that, Sport is a way to reach different people, at least for the time being. Who knows how long it's going to last, but I do think it does present that possibility that's unique. Absolutely. Absolutely. There's a lot of, there's a lot of parallels and a lot of stuff. There's a lot of light bulb moments. Which is a good thing because a lot of folks think of sports is like, oh, it's just they're out there competing. They don't talk. They're not people. They're not humans. They're not dynamic. They're just playing a game. You have to really get the understanding behind everything is it's. It's new and exciting for folks. So I'm, again, glad you're able to, you know, have that experience with students and the folks that are reading your book. Can we, can we flip, you know, flip the switch a little bit in the future? Maybe we'll talk about history. Go ahead. But just in, in your, your opinion, you know, your, just your, your vision. Of the way the future looks. And particularly when we think about the culture of sports stadiums. So SoFi Stadium being the newest build and everything that happens in the stadium. Thinking about the fans. Thinking about, you know, sports betting. Where do you see the culture of sports stadiums going in the future with respect to capitalism, sports betting, and sports spectation or sports spectators? Yeah, it's hard to feel optimistic, but I'm going to try. Because I think those questions are tied to a bigger question, which is what is democracy going to mean in this country going forward? I mean, I'm going meta because I do think that that's the question that's, that's behind a number of the questions you're posing here, which is, Yeah. Are we going to construct stadiums that are just for the affluent crowd to sit in the fancy seats? Is that what we're going to do? Like, we do with our airlines, our airplanes now, and you know, like, we're just going to make The world say to the VIP crowds of the world, or are we going to have a country that really does try to, you know, create space for everyone? Right? You know, are we going to have sports that are just going to generate enormous amounts of revenue for a sports franchise and then the various parasites that operate in the youth sports world? Or are we going to fight to protect And create spaces where young people could actually find themselves on the field like I did. Not to romanticize my past, but I do think that was the case for me. I wasn't, I wasn't raised in a youth sports environment that was overturned by me. You know, by all the companies that are invested in youth sports today, right? You know, are we gonna, you know, what kind of country is it gonna look like? Because the stadium is a barometer of what the country looks like. That's what I argued in my last book. And I think it's there is a barometer, you know, at least the big ones. I mean, I do think there's some fascinating spaces today. Like certainly in the number of the soccer leagues that are, you know, very interesting or even Formula One. I mean, there's some interesting venues that I don't talk about. That probably are different, maybe more representative of what America really is than what, you know, what, what the Seahawks stadium or, or whatever the, the, the Mariners stadium is called now, whether it's, you know, whatever the recent, you know, corporate name it has now. So I feel like it's just about where's this country going in the 21st century in the light of, you know, an authoritarian or at least a state that's designed to, you know, certainly aspire to be an authoritarian regime. I mean, I think that's the real question here. What's the role of sport in that process? It's certainly going to play a role of furthering the status quo. But if we look at foreign history, as I have with the last two books, you always know that it also presents moments of resistance and freedom aspirations. And I think that we're going to see that moving forward. It's going to look like things we haven't seen before. That's typically what happens. And I feel like that's, that's, you know, that's, that's my feeling at this moment. I think I wrote my last book in a moment of optimism that was coming out of 2020. You know, now we are, you know, over 100 days into the Trump administration. You know, the environment is very different than then. It makes it feel that way to me. And I think, you know, I have a more I'm a sober mind about these things, but I do think because of the outside impact sport has, whether it's just that spectator or practitioners, it's going to have something to say. It's going to play a role in what this country is going to look like moving forward. Interesting. Very interesting to think about. Sorry. As administrations or as the culture of the United States changes, so will the stadiums and are going to reflect where we are. Yes. And reflect and maybe, and maybe even catalyze. You know, I think it's both. I think, because I think sports, You know, so the stadium does this, but I think sports, you know, doesn't just reflect, it actually, it can catalyze, it can facilitate change too, right? And I think that that's That's, you know, for better, for worse. Uh, I think that we're lucky to see that, you know, in the months and the years to come. And I would say I'm excited for that, but as you said, it's been a different, it's been a different experience at this moment, right? Speaking with a sober mind, as you say, or a sobering thought about the current moment we're in. It's going to be interesting to see. In particular, the thing about the youth, I've got two little ones, eight and six, and they're getting interested in sports, you know, as a way to not only meet friends and kind of build a camaraderie, but, you know, to develop skills and All that kind of stuff. And, and, you know, I'm kind of looking at the world like, where are we going from here? You know, what happens next? I feel like capitalism has touched sport in a way that It's very different than the past. That and I would say media has had, whether it's social media or you name it, it's had its, its hand In the money aspect of sports and it's starting to creep lower and lower and lower, right? And back to Texas a bit, you know, the stadium, the high school football stadiums and tracks and arenas that they build in Texas are... Sing it to nine. Yes. You know, I'm wondering if that's going to be, you know, something that continues to happen. And you know, they have some in California, they have some in Florida, definitely in Georgia. But none like Texas. And I wonder if it's going to duplicate itself across the United States, particularly as the money starts to creep lower and lower and lower. Um, and you're right behind it is a society. You know, what, what type of society do we live in and how does that work? How does that impact, right? Because a lot of the high schools, they're public schools. They use those publics to then create those, you know, those monuments to sport. So it's going to be interesting to see where we're at. And, you know, I'm hoping we get out of this conversation again in twenty years and look back and say, hey, this is what happened and this is why. And this is what happened ten years from that conversation. This is literally what we sat and we talked through. Um, it's going to be interesting. No doubt. It's going to be an instant world. So, coming to the end here, but I do want to ask, as I've asked all of our All of our folks that, that visit the, the recent or African-American sport podcast, what advice or experience are you willing to share, um, For the future generations, the future researcher, the future sports historians, the folks that want to sit in your seat and do what you do, what advice or experiences are you willing to share with those folks listening? Don't be afraid to study something you're passionate about. You know, I think, I think, I think I was talking about the bias against sports studies. I think, you know, I feel like I have run across students who kind of stumble into a class of mine. Oh my God. I didn't know you could actually look at this sort of thing. I know you could write a thesis about it. I know people folks about it. You know, I think people know about sport management. Sport management, you know, that's a business program, you know, and that's an important function, no doubt, but the idea of sport is to study sport from a humanistic standpoint, that's still novel for a lot of people, so I feel like You know, ideally, the people who have a humanistic interest in sport get into the sport industry and start shaping the decision making that's happening in sports franchises or sports institutions at every single level from the youth To the Olympic and the professional level. So, you know, I feel like anybody who has a passion for this should figure out a way to get involved, should figure out a way to studying, you know, at any level from, you know, whether it's high school or, you know, college or and beyond. And to, to, to not, to resist the temptation to think that the thing about sport isn't that important because it is important. You know, I think that's, that's a big one. You know, and it's up to people in my generation to make sure that there's spaces with people to study and that's becoming an increasingly challenging situation in light of a You know, the war that the Trump administration is waging against higher education. It's something I know firsthand about here at Columbia University. So, you know, they are Your job is to try to fight like hell and protect spaces for our young people to pursue their passions in the educational realm, you know? And so I think that's, you know, I really think that I encourage people that are So, I mean, it's those who can, you know, who are blessed to be able to go to college and study, you know, the humanities to be able to pursue their passions and, and if support their passions, study in a humanistic way, the words literature or sociology or history. I thought that I think there's just enormous opportunities to be totally impactful as people in this realm because, again, of its outsized impact because of the many lives that it touches. And I think that's, you know, we need more people. We need more people to study and get involved and try to make change and to, you know, and the process of making change, producing new forms of knowledge that are going to help us move forward. Absolutely. Great message. Great message for young folks. For any folks that are graduating with their masters or their undergraduate, are you graduate students? That's a great question. I think we're in a, you know, I think there, I would love to work with more students. I'm being perfectly frank. I think Columbia is in a very difficult place right now. But if we can get through this period, you know, I think that, you know, I think we have outstanding scholars to work with here. We have amazing graduate students. You know, and the students at all levels here are absolutely inspirational. And they keep me sane every single day. It's an amazing environment to study, even though right now we're in a very difficult position. But the whole country is right now. So that's not unique. Good to know. Good to know that I'm glad there's, when the death settles, there's opportunity. Yes. Wonderful. Wonderful. Well, Dr. Garitti, I really appreciate your time today. Uh, for listeners that were able to tune in, I know for a fact you took a nugget or two with you. Just know and understand that there's a lot of things we could do around sport. And Frank is a great example of how you just, you take your lane and you go deep in it and that's what you do and has built a career on it. So it's amazing to have you here today. And again, thank you for sitting down with us at the African-American Sports Podcast. For listeners out there, again, thanks for tuning into this episode. We would love to have you come back to the next one. Um, so continue just following, liking, supporting, doing everything you can for this African-American sports podcast. And until the next time, we'll see you then. Thank you for joining today's class. If you learned from and like what you heard, please leave a review, give the class five stars, or donate to our Patreon. A link can be found in the show notes.