Venues challenged for their racist ties
Current and former FSU and Florida students push to rename stadiums.
Current and former Florida State and University of Florida students are pushing to rename two major sports venues — Doak Campbell Stadium in Tallahassee and the Stephen C. O’Connell Center in Gainesville — because they currently honor segregationists.
Kendrick Scott, who was an FSU linebacker from 1991-94, wants Campbell’s name removed from the Seminoles’ football stadium.
Campbell served as president of Florida State College for Women when he led its transition in 1947 to a coed campus renamed as Florida State University, now one of the state’s largest.
In his change.org petition, Scott contends Doak’s segregationist views are divisive. “Therefore views his name should be removed from a stadium that has been home to many Black football players helping to build the school and the tradition to what it has become today: a national treasure,” Scott espoused.
Florida graduate student Anthony Rojas is pushing to rename eight venues on the Gainesville campus, including the basketball arena named after O’Connell, a former
Florida Supreme Court Justice and UF president.
“In 1959, he was a member of the majority on the Florida Supreme Court when it denied entrance to a Black man seeking admission to UF on the grounds that the applicant was ‘a potential disruptive influence,’ ” Rojas wrote of O’Connell in a change.org petition that drew 5,955 signatures by Sunday night. “In 1971, UF President O’Connell arrested and threatened to expel 66 Black students who organized a sit-in at Tigert Hall as an expression of discontent with
university policies that did not encourage Black student enrollment or the employment of Black faculty members. The students were later denied amnesty for their actions and the event is remembered in UF history as ‘Black Thursday.’ ”
Students and alumni at both schools have joined a nationwide movement against racial injustice following the death of George Floyd, a Black man who was killed when a white Minnesota police officer kept his knee pinned to Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes while he complained he could not breathe.
FSU’s Doak Campbell Stadium has a capacity for more than 79,000 spectators. The stadium is said to be the largest structure constructed out of bricks in the United States.
The stadium makes frequent appearances on television because of the football program’s success.
UF’s O’Connell Center is a multi-use arena that typically seats 10,133 fans.
It also has been featured frequently on nationally television, especially during the UF basketball team’s two national championship runs during the 2005-06 and 2006-07 seasons.
By Sunday night, Scott’s petition on change.org had exceeded its initial goal of 1,500 signatures and listed a new goal of 2,500.
In an email to the Tallahassee Democrat, Scott noted most of the athletes on the FSU’s football team are Black, adding they are forced to play in a stadium named after a man who, he said, did not accord value to Black lives.
Scott suggests renaming the stadium for the team’s former coach Bobby Bowden, whose name already graces the field.
There have been no recent calls to address FSU’s use of a Tomahawk chop chant and Chief Osceola as a mascot. Every time the school has been questioned about the chop and mascot, which some Native American groups contend are racist stereotypes, officials note Florida State has the blessing of the Seminole Tribe of Florida. As a result of that endorsement, FSU was not forced to comply with NCAA rules that mandated teams change Native American mascot names that were deemed offensive.
UF president Kent Fuchs agreed last week to discontinue the popular “Gator Bait” cheer due to its racist roots, pledging to also evaluate potentially renaming buildings and removing statues with links to racism. Some current and former students praised stopping the cheer that resonates back to the use of Black children as alligator bait. Others contend that the cheer was a UF tradition and no one thought of its racist roots while chanting it.