Political Venue: The History of RFK Stadium, Part Eight

Not getting any younger

Eventually we get to the part where the Redskins played football in RFK for decades. Then left. Curly R's special series on the history of RFK Stadium concludes.

Part One: Faded Glory
Part Two: Government Intervention
Part Three: Football and Race
Part Four: A Complex Relationship
Part Five: Ernie Davis, Bobby Mitchell and Ron Hatcher
Part Six: Palace Intrigue
Part Seven: The Stadium Becomes Legend
Part Eight: Coda
References

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Responding to requests for specific RFK memories, many polled for this article did not even cite football games. RFK Stadium held other sporting matches, including spring training baseball and international soccer. Dozens of big names played concerts in RFK, including the Beatles, the Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd, the Allman Brothers, Aerosmith, Yes, Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, U2 and The Who, among others.

Today, RFK is in bad shape. The concrete is crumbling, ceilings are sagging and the stadium's only regular tenant, Major League Soccer's DC United, is complaining. One day soon, DC United will be in their own soccer-only stadium, leaving RFK empty once again.

And then what will happen to RFK? Well probably nothing in the near term. After spending six hundred and ten million dollars on a municipal stadium for the Washington Nationals baseball team, there is not much appetite in the District for a new stadium built on spec, with no guaranteed tenant.

Redskins fans wonder why the team cannot simply move back to that site. FedEx Field is old before its time and rumors have persisted for years that while Prince George's County in Maryland is trying to negotiate back the land rights to the stadium site, the District is also negotiating to get the team back right on the RFK Stadium site.

Why can't it happen? Politics. Logistics.

The Redskins have an agreement with Prince George's County to stay in the county until at least 2027, another sixteen years. Both parties, of course, could agree to nullify that contract. Meanwhile, over in the District, Dan Snyder is far too shrewd to agree to any stadium deal that does not involve him owning everything from the dirt up. That means the federal government, which owns the entire stadium site, would have to transfer the land to the District, which would then have to sell it to Dan. Of course these transactions would come with years of haggling, posturing and environmental studies.

The adjacent campus of the defunct DC General Hospital has been in development limbo for a decade, with plans for a riverwalk-style mixed use community drifting aimlessly. No enterprise redevelopment of RFK and the surrounding parcels would be permitted without attached development requirements for this area, similar to what Verizon Center did for Chinatown and what Nationals Stadium is trying to do for the Navy Yard. Who would pay for what and what guarantees could be extracted for community development add to the complexity of any possible deals.

What do Redskins fans really want? What they already had, what they miss: RFK Stadium.

They want Dan Snyder, the famous deal maker, to get it done, to tear down RFK and rebuild it as a modern stadium: Bigger, with the same shape and allure and all the amenities of modern stadiums. Redskins fans want to see that icon back on the horizon from Interstate 295, coming down East Capitol Street, coming off Metro. Redskins fans will accede to Dan Snyder's demands for luxury suites and all the necessities of making money in the modern NFL, as long as they get their beloved RFK back. Call it Son of RFK.

In the end, all Redskins fans have is memories, sometimes hazy ones, and the oral tradition of RFK Stadium to pass down to the next generation.

In our dreams, we all sit under a giant Budweiser clock.


This concludes Curly R's special series on the history of RFK Stadium, I hope you have enjoyed it. Tomorrow we will publish our list of references used for this series.



RFK Stadium: Dudley Brooks / Washington Post photo from here via here.

Political Venue: The History of RFK Stadium, Part Seven

Home cooking

Naming the stadium after Bobby Kennedy was an inside baseball affair, bureaucratic infighting at its best. The name change also signaled a change in the fortunes of a franchise. Curly R's special series on the history of RFK Stadium continues.

Part One: Faded Glory
Part Two: Government Intervention
Part Three: Football and Race
Part Four: A Complex Relationship
Part Five: Ernie Davis, Bobby Mitchell and Ron Hatcher
Part Six: Palace Intrigue
Part Seven: The Stadium Becomes Legend
Part Eight: Friday
References

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That first season in the newly renamed RFK Stadium, 1969, serves as a bridge to what fans of a certain age think of as the start of the modern era of Redskins football. Vince Lombardi had come to Washington as head coach. Larry Brown, Pat Fischer, Chris Hanburger, Sam Huff, Sonny Jurgenson, Brig Owens and Charley Taylor were all on a team that suffered fewer losses than any Redskins team in fourteen years. RFK sold out every game. Within two years, Billy Kiilmer, Jack Pardee and Richie Petitbon would be on the team that made it to Super Bowl VII, eventually losing to the only undefeated NFL team of all time, the 1972 Miami Dolphins.

Many of the traditions we took for granted in the 1980s and 1990s were established in this period: Tailgates in Lots 7 and 8 by the river, walking the promenade of vendors from Metro to RFK's front door, bouncing the north side bleachers, asking the guy with the portable radio what just happened because the sound system was always so awful at RFK.

And that is part of what made RFK so great as a football venue, so appropriate for those great Redskins teams of the 70s, 80s and 90s; it was a downscale facility in upscale town. The team and the stadium never seemed to take themselves too seriously even when no city takes itself more seriously than Washington, DC.

The design of the stadium itself became a character in the drama of Redskins football. From above, RFK is a perfect circle, but viewed from the edge, as you would on approach from parking lots or the Metro, the cantilevered roof has curves, like a 1960s calendar girl laying on her side, a lipstick kiss over the month of September. Inside the halls were cavernous, the food basic and the beer cold. Rowdiness of the type seen commonly at FedEx Field today would not ever come to RFK Stadium.

Built for use as a baseball or football venue, the north bleachers swung in and out on an arc rail to clear the outfield. Once the Senators abandoned RFK for good following the 1971 baseball season, the bleachers stayed in place, even though they were not meant as permanent seating. Their attachment to a rail assembly and not the ground itself made them less stable than permanent bleachers, and fans figured out early when things were going well that bouncing in unison would yield a resonant frequency, the visual effect and resulting noise were somewhat startling and lent to the home field advantage.

Looking up, the inward bow of the cantilevered roof was perfectly angled to bounce reflected sound from the stands directly below onto the field, making the venue much louder for the visitors than an otherwise open air stadium of fifty-six thousand might be. This specific design is cited by many Redskins fans as a key weakness of FedEx Field; despite being more than thirty thousand seats larger, all noise generated in the new stadium simply escapes into the open air above. And the cantilevered roof of RFK gaps over the upper deck, offering those in the last row views outside the stadium of the surrounding area, including the US Capitol.

Small and quirky and without a bad seat in the house, Redskins fans wish it never had to end for RFK.


Political Venue: The History of RFK Stadium concludes tomorrow with part eight, Coda.



RFK Stadium: Dudley Brooks / Washington Post photo from here via here.

Political Venue: The History of RFK Stadium, Part Six

LBJ Stadium?

Team owner George Preston Marshall could hold out no longer, black players were coming to the Redskins, but who expected Ernie Davis and Bobby Mitchell? Curly R's special series on the history of RFK Stadium continues.

Part One: Faded Glory
Part Two: Government Intervention
Part Three: Football and Race
Part Four: A Complex Relationship
Part Five: Ernie Davis, Bobby Mitchell and Ron Hatcher
Part Six: Palace Intrigue
Part Seven: Thursday
Part Eight: Friday
References

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There is evidence the Kennedy administration maintained contact with the Redskins even after the advent of black players on the team in December 1961. In January of 1962, players and coaches involved in the new collegiate US Bowl were treated to a tour of FBI headquarters and met briefly with Attorney General Robert Kennedy. Among the guests for this event: Redskins head coach Bill McPeak, the coach of the East squad, and newly signed Redskins rookie Ron Hatcher, the first black player to sign with the team. Later, in December 1963, Redskins players would haul presents at a Christmas benefit for needy kids attended by Bobby Kennedy.

Between these two events, the Redskins would improve, playing their best football in five years, averaging forty-one thousand attendance per game and a 5-7-2 record in 1962. Despite falling to 3-11 in 1963, attendance at DC Stadium continued to climb, up to forty-five thousand.

It was in this time that the legacy of Interior Secretary Stewart Udall was established: The man that forced final integration of the NFL using the power of the federal government to force private enterprise to adopt policies of equality through the use, or withholding, of public facilities. Secretary Udall's story was not done here though, he and DC Stadium would come together once more in history.

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After 1963, integration faded as a football issue in Washington, DC. Between 1964 and 1968, many players that would bridge the Redskins from the integration period into the modern era were brought to the team: Bobby Mitchell, Sonny Jurgenson, Sam Huff, Charley Taylor, Paul Krause, Len Hauss, Chris Hanburger. Attendance continued to rise at DC Stadium: Nearly forty-nine thousand per game in 1964; nearly fifty thousand in 1965 and 1966; cresting fifty thousand in 1967 and 1968, the year the Redskins streak of sellout games officially started, the streak is still alive today at over 350 games.

In June of 1968, Bobby Kennedy, then a Democratic Senator from New York, was assassinated in Los Angeles, thrusting the Redskins back into a political fray.

Following the assassination of his brother the president in November 1963, Bobby had stayed on as Attorney General for nine months before resigning to run for Senator in New York. As President, John Kennedy was succeeded by his Vice President, Lyndon Johnson. Tensions between Johnson and the Kennedys were legend. Many of the Kennedy hands resigned before the end of President Johnson's abbreviated term, or were not reappointed when Johnson won the presidential election of 1964.

One Kennedy appointee that did stay through the full Johnson administration was Interior Secretary Stewart Udall. A staunch Kennedy ally, Udall administered his department capably while defending it from political encroachment by a famously strong-willed and self-congratulatory Johnson.

It was during Johnson's full term in office that discussions began on the possibility of renaming DC Stadium in honor of someone, someone worth honoring. President Johnson seemed to think, with no trace of irony that he was the best candidate. The stadium, as the president's thinking went, could be renamed LBJ Stadium, an enduring monument to his political legacy.

Interior Secretary Udall and his coterie of former Kennedy aides, already enduring a difficult relationship with President Johnson, were not pleased with this idea and conspired to prevent the president from naming his own Taj Mahal. Examining laws governing naming of facilities on national parkland, Interior staffers discovered that the Secretary had full naming authority for such facilities, and did not require presidential approval or direction.

Thus did Interior stall any action on the renaming of DC Stadium until the last possible moment, holding the president at bay. Finally, on Saturday January 18, 1969, with two days left in Johnson's presidential term, Udall signed an order to rename DC Stadium after his friend and fellow civil rights activist, Robert Francis Kennedy. DC Stadium would now forever be known as RFK Stadium.

President Johnson was caught by surprise. Secretary Udall's staff had leaked the story to the press with just enough lead time to make reversing the event a political impossibility for the president in his final forty-eight hours in office. Coming just seven months after his assassination, it was the first major monument to the legacy of Bobby Kennedy's accomplishments as a politician.

So no, if you thought DC Stadium was renamed RFK Stadium by the Redskins to honor the man for whom they had developed a grudging respect during the difficult period leading up to integration, you would be wrong. Or if you thought the District, a predominantly black city, renamed the stadium in honor of Bobby Kennedy's fight for racial equality for all, well you would be wrong there too.

Nope, the stadium that became a hallowed football ground to generations of Redskins fans got its name almost arbitrarily, less to honor the namesake than to piss off his rival.


Political Venue: The History of RFK Stadium continues tomorrow with part seven, The Stadium Becomes Legend.



RFK Stadium: Dudley Brooks / Washington Post photo from here via here.

Political Venue: The History of RFK Stadium, Part Five

When Bobby Mitchell came

After deciding to make the Redskins a new home in DC, the government decided to get in George Preston Marshall's business. One way or another, a black player was coming to this team. Curly R's special series on the history of RFK Stadium continues.

Part One: Faded Glory
Part Two: Government Intervention
Part Three: Football and Race
Part Four: A Complex Relationship
Part Five: Ernie Davis, Bobby Mitchell and Ron Hatcher
Part Six: Wednesday
Part Seven: Thursday
Part Eight: Friday
References

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The 1961 NFL season opened for the Redskins with two games on the road before their first game in their new home, the price tag of which had risen to twenty-four million dollars. When Sunday 1 October 1961 finally rolled around, the Redskins lost to the New York Giants in a game that featured Washington scoring three touchdowns in the first quarter behind rookie quarterback Norm Snead to take a commanding 21-7 lead. The Redskins would not score again as New York quarterback YA Tittle led the Giants to seventeen unanswered points.

More than thirty-seven thousand people attended the game, sixteen thousand more than had attended either the 1960 season opener or closer.

Media opinion of the new stadium itself was mixed; DC Stadium was the first of a new breed of stadiums and most viewed it somewhat as a curiosity; its nonstandard lines were off-putting to some and the reflection of noise back from the cantilevered roof was instantly noticeable to others.

There were others at this inaugural game besides fans and media: the National Association for the Advancement of Colored people. Angry NAACP supporters picketed the stadium over the team's lack of black players, fifteen years as it was after black players came back to the NFL following the 1933 lockout, and nine years after the next to last team had begun using players of any color on its roster.

Still unsatisfied with the team's position on integration, Interior Secretary Stewart Udall pledged publicly following that first game in DC Stadium that he would personally boycott Redskins games as long as the NAACP continued picketing, which was of course by the NAACP's own position until such time as the Redskins signed black players to the active roster.

It was two more long months before the 1962 draft was held, during which time the Redskins went 0-4 in DC Stadium, averaging nine points per game on offense. When the 1962 NFL Draft was finally held on December 4, 1961, the Redskins famously drafted Ernie Davis first overall. Ernie, a Syracuse tailback, was the first black football player ever to win the Heisman Trophy and was highly coveted in both the NFL and AFL. A bidding war for his services was expected to ensue between the two leagues.

As the story goes, the Redskins traded Ernie's rights less than two weeks later to the Cleveland Browns. In a sad twist of fate, Ernie would never play a down in the NFL, he was diagnosed with leukemia in the 1962 offseason and would succumb to the illness a year later in 1963. In exchange for Ernie, the Redskins would receive Bobby Mitchell, a tailback and flanker who would come to revitalize the Redskins franchise, Bobby was elected to the NFL Hall of Fame in 1983 and remained in the Redskins organization altogether for more than forty years.

But before that trade even happened, something else memorable happened following the draft: The Redskins signed their first black player, eighth round pick Ron Hatcher, a tailback out of Michigan State. Ron was not heralded, and certainly would never have garnered the headlines of an Ernie Davis, still he will always be remembered as the first black player signed by the Redskins, the last team to include players of color in its roster. Ron would appear in three games, amassing no plays for no yards in his one year NFL career.

The cynical eye may regard Ron as the exact token black that Bobby Kennedy and Stewart Udall had no interest in seeing.


Political Venue: The History of RFK Stadium continues tomorrow with part six, Palace Intrigue.



RFK Stadium: Dudley Brooks / Washington Post photo from here via here.

Political Venue: The History of RFK Stadium, Part Four

Colored players need not apply

An intractably racist owner, a presidential administration committed to equal rights. The Redskins and the government were on a collision course. Curly R's special series on the history of RFK Stadium continues.

Part One: Faded Glory
Part Two: Government Intervention
Part Three: Football and Race
Part Four: A Complex Relationship
Part Five: Ernie Davis, Bobby Mitchell and Ron Hatcher
Part Six: Wednesday
Part Seven: Thursday
Part Eight: Friday
References

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Washington's rising new multipurpose venue was at the center of a complex federal-local government partnership, one that thirty-five years later would be a factor in thwarting Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke's efforts to keep the team in the District once RFK was no longer a viable NFL stadium. District of Columbia Stadium would be built on federal parkland, Anacostia Park, a reclaimed spit of land at the far end of East Capitol Street. Managing the stadium and the revenues from its use would be the DC Armory Board, a branch of the DC government created by Congress in 1949 to administer federally owned properties in the District for non-military and commercial uses.

Although the stadium was to be managed by the District, the ultimate authority on its use, or nonuse, was the US Department of the Interior, the federal government entity responsible for administering US parkland resources. Stewart Udall, John Kennedy's Interior Secretary, shared Bobby Kennedy's concern for the Redskins' resistance to integration, and as Interior Secretary, had the authority to back his concern with action.

In March of 1961, as DC Stadium was rising and the Redskins were planning their inaugural season in that new home, Secretary Udall wrote a letter to owner George Preston Marshall, alerting him to certain recent civil rights laws, and the penalties of prosecution for violating them.

Whatever response George and the team offered were not sufficient, for five months later in August of 1961, Secretary Udall wrote a second letter, this one to NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle. This letter was right to the point: Department of Interior would consider using its authority to prevent the Redskins from using DC Stadium if they did not hire black players. And not just any black players, talented black players, ones that would not simply ride the bench as tokens of compliance.

The Redskins owner shot right back, swearing the Redskins had no hiring bias, it was simply that the Redskins had not yet come across the black players they wanted. To bolster his argument that the Redskins did not actually have a no-blacks policy, George publicly displayed interest in Syracuse star tailback Ernie Davis, a player who happened to be black. And the Redskins had the number one overall pick in the upcoming 1962 NFL Draft, to be held in December.

The government relented and approved the Redskins use of DC Stadium for the 1961 football season.


Political Venue: The History of RFK Stadium continues tomorrow with part five, Ernie Davis, Bobby Mitchell and Ron Hatcher.



RFK Stadium: Dudley Brooks / Washington Post photo from here via here.

Political Venue: The History of RFK Stadium, Part Three

Colored players need not apply

With the government already agreeing effectively to bail out the Redskins in the form of a new stadium, all that remained was to work out the details. The absence of black players happened to be one of those details. Curly R's special series on the history of RFK Stadium continues.

Part One: Faded Glory
Part Two: Government Intervention
Part Three: Football and Race
Part Four: A Complex Relationship
Part Five: Ernie Davis, Bobby Mitchell and Ron Hatcher
Part Six: Wednesday
Part Seven: Thursday
References

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While the Redskins were struggling in the present, a famous and influential figure was examining the Redskins past. Senator John F. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, had been elected president in November 1960, upon taking office President Kennedy named his brother Robert, or Bobby, Kennedy as attorney general. Both the president and his brother were vocal proponents of civil rights and racial equality, the president having been in office as a senator during the passage of the first two major civil rights bill in Congress since Reconstruction, in 1957 and 1960.

Bobby Kennedy was personally appalled by the failure of the Redskins to integrate, the team still had not had a black player in George Preston Marshall's entire tenure as owner, dating back twenty-eight years to 1932.

Prior to George joining the fraternity of NFL owners, there had been a handful of black NFL players between 1920 and 1933, most notably Fritz Pollard. At his first meeting as an NFL owner in February 1933, George floated a package of proposals, many of which individually would be seminal in the development of the NFL as a sport of mass appeal: That the league should be split into Divisions, better to host a World Championship game; that the old school 'fat' football should be slimmed down so as to facilitate the passing game; and that the goalposts should be moved to the goal line so as to increase scoring.

George's package also included one unfortunate proposal: That roster spots should be denied, indefinitely, to black players.

The proposal before the owners was approved, with the inclusion of the lockout of black players. The proposal might not have passed were it not for the endorsement of the plan by Chicago Bears owner and coach George Halas; many believe Halas was agreeing to take the bad with the good for the better of the league.

And so the NFL did not have any black players between 1933 and 1946, thirteen long years. By 1952, every team but the Redskins had at least one black player. And nine years later in 1961 the Redskins still were all-white.

But Bobby Kennedy had found a way to exert influence on the team and its headstrong owner: Threaten to take away DC Stadium from the Redskins before they had even played in it.


Political Venue: The History of RFK Stadium continues tomorrow with part four, A Complex Relationship.



RFK Stadium: Dudley Brooks / Washington Post photo from here via here.

Political Venue: The History of RFK Stadium, Part Two

Shovel ready

By the 1960 season, the Washington Redskins had long faded from their heights of the 1930s and 40s, attendance was winding down and the city was rapidly falling out of love with NFL football. Who better to rescue the team than the government? Curly R's special series on the history of RFK Stadium continues.

Part One: Faded Glory
Part Two: Government Intervention
Part Three: Race and Football
Part Four: A Complex Relationship
Part Five: Ernie Davis, Bobby Mitchell and Ron Hatcher
Part Six: Wednesday
Part Seven: Thursday
Part Eight: Friday
References

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With Griffith Field already forty-six years old and no new local stadium projects on the horizon, in June of 1957, US Representative Oren Harris, Democrat of Arkansas, proposed legislation to authorize construction of a fifty thousand seat, municipal stadium in the District of Columbia. Representative Harris was a well known supporter of sports business, also proposing in 1957 that the NFL be granted an antitrust exemption in the style of baseball's, in place since 1922.

By June of 1958 the US Treasury had agreed to guarantee bonds worth up to six million dollars, the principal projected cost of the stadium project. One month later in July President Dwight Eisenhower signed a bill authorizing construction of the stadium into law. The new venue would be called District of Columbia Stadium, or DC Stadium for short. It would be located at the end of East Capitol Street, hard by the Anacostia River.

The first shovel went into the dirt on the site of RFK Stadium in July 1960. What emerged over the next fifteen months was the first of a generation of multiuse, or 'cookie-cutter' stadiums. Round or slightly oblong, with cantilevered roofs and miles on concrete, these venues were designed to accommodate 1960s appetites for both football and baseball, though in the end by modern standards they did both relatively poorly.

Other stadiums that would rise in the decade that followed and look an awful lot like DC Stadium included Shea Stadium (1964), Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium (1965), Busch Stadium (1966), San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium (1967), Three Rivers Stadium (1970), Riverfront Stadium (1970) and Veterans Stadium (1971).

That fall and winter the Redskins would stagger through their 1960 season, finishing 1-9-2. In a move trumping even future owner Dan Snyder's postgame firing of head coach Jim Zorn in January 2010, team owner George Preston Marshall fired head coach Mike Nixon before the team's 38-28 season ending loss to future Redskins quarterback Sonny Jurgenson and the Philadelphia Eagles.

In coach Nixon's place the owner would promote 34 year old Bill McPeak, an assistant under Mike Nixon with no previous head coaching experience.

The Redskins were limping into their new home by the river.


Political Venue: The History of RFK Stadium continues tomorrow with part three, Football and Race.



RFK Stadium: Dudley Brooks / Washington Post photo from here via here.