A petition was started to change the name of FSU’s Doak Campbell Stadium. Here’s why.
.jpg "Florida State Seminoles head coach Willie Taggart, center, leads his team onto the field before an NCAA college football game against Florida in Tallahassee, Fla., Saturday, Nov. 24, 2018.")
Former Florida State linebacker Kendrick Scott, who played in the early 1990s for the Seminoles, started a petition to change the football stadium’s name, according to the Tallahassee Democrat.
The stadium is named after Doak S. Campbell, who was the school’s first president in 1950. The university morphed from Florida State College for Women in 1947 into FSU, and Campbell was in charge when the football stadium was built, the Tallahassee Democrat reported.
But while Campbell was president at FSU, he exhibited pro-segregationist views that is at the center of the Chiefland, Florida,
resident’s petition, the outlet reported.
As of Friday afternoon, the Change.org petition secured 75 of the 100 signatures it listed as a goal.
The petition, which seeks to change the stadium name to honor legendary coach Bobby Bowden and change Bobby Bowden Field to honor former Heisman Trophy winning quarterback Charlie Ward, reads as follows:
“The stadium at FSU was named after Doak Campbell a former FSU President. While, the tradition has been preserved, in reflection his non inclusive views of blacks as an 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.”
“Therefore, this petition seeks to change the name of the stadium to the Bobby Bowden Stadium and change Bobby Bowden field to Charlie Ward field. Charlie Ward was recently polled at the greatest Seminole of all time and rightfully so. He broke a modern day color barrier by being the first Black football player to win a Heisman Trophy at a Florida School. He remains the most decorated college football player in history.”
Former FSU player Freddie Stevenson, a Bartow, Florida native who was a fullback in the backfield with Miami native and Vikings running back Dalvin Cook, posted an archived newspaper article from the Tampa Morning Tribune regarding Campbell’s segregationist views to Twitter on Thursday.
