Doak Campbell III responds to petition calling for FSU football stadium name change
The grandson of Doak S. Campbell, who was Florida State’s first school president and namesake to the Seminoles’ football stadium, has responded to the call to have the stadium’s name changed.
Last week, former FSU linebacker and Chiefland native Kendrick Scott wrote a petition on Change.org seeking 100 signatures to change the name from Doak Campbell Stadium to Bobby Bowden Stadium due to alleged pro-segregationist views from Campbell during his time as the school’s president.
Speaking with the Palm Beach Post on Monday, his 71-year-old grandson, former Delray Beach mayor Doak Campbell III, said his “grandfather was not a segregationist.”
“I’m extremely disappointed that somebody is trying to change the name,” Campbell III said, according to the Palm Beach Post. “It sounds like he was trying to keep the school from being embroiled in a hot political topic that might have adverse consequences. He was not promoting segregation. He was concerned about protecting the tranquility of the school and not let it be dragged into something whether he believed it or not. That was his primary concern.
“As long as I knew him, he never professed that segregationism was something that was good. He was always promoting the advancement of black education.”
Former FSU fullback Freddie Stevenson posted to Twitter last week a 1957 article in the Tampa Morning Tribune where Campbell was quoted on “banning white FSU students from attending desegregation meetings,” according to multiple reports.
Campbell was in charge when the football stadium was built and he was the school president when the university became FSU from the Florida State College for Women in 1947. The stadium has been named after him since 1950.
Scott’s petition states Campbell’s “non-inclusive views of blacks as a segregationist is divisive, therefore 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.”
The Tallahassee Democrat was the first to report of Scott’s petition.
FSU president John Thrasher released a statement Monday on Twitter.
“I have been following with great interest the petitions circulating on social media asserting that Doak S. Campbell, FSU’s president in 1947 during its transition from the Florida State College for Women, resisted integration and asking that the stadium no longer bear his name,” Thrasher wrote. “I have asked Athletics Director David Coburn to immediately review this issue and make recommendations to me. I look forward to receiving his report soon.”
Since Scott’s petition called for the stadium to be named after his former coach Bobby Bowden, he called for Bobby Bowden Field to be changed to Charlie Ward Field after the former Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback.
After gaining his initial goal of 100 signatures, the petition’s goal increased to 2,500 signatures. As of early Tuesday afternoon, it has more than 2,300 signatures. Scott wrote an addendum to have the naming of the field changed to The Players Field at Bobby Bowden Stadium as an alternative to his original idea.
“Lastly, It must be clear that the end goal is the removal of Doak S. Campbell’s name from the stadium regardless of final decisions over naming,” Scott wrote.
