Mid-Week History: Roy Blount Jr. Reflects on Decatur, ’96 Olympics and His Dad
Decatur Metro | May 11, 2011 | 12:38 pmParker points out this Sports Illustrated article written by Roy Blount Jr. in 1996 when Atlanta and Decatur were hoping with the energy and crowds of the 1996 Olympics. For us newer residents, it’s a more detailed look at the event that really was a key part of Decatur’s turnaround. Here are a couple quotes…
Decatur is part of metropolitan Atlanta. When I was growing up there, it was kind of like Leave It to Beaver, only with lots of black people tucked away in little ghettos with names like Eskimo Heights. Decatur was desegregating, slowly and awkwardly, when I moved away in 1968. My sister and only sibling, Susan, left in 1971. My father died in 1974, my mother in 1981. My roots attenuated.
But every so often my travels brought me to Atlanta, and I would drive out to Decatur square, where the old courthouse stands. I would stop to look at the bronze plaque that says ROY A. BLOUNT PLAZA. DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF A GREAT BUILDER OF HOMES AND SCHOOLS, AND THE RAPID TRANSIT SYSTEM WHICH LIES UNDER THIS PLAZA.
…All over Decatur people are trying to master the Burkinabe handshake–you raise your right hand high as if to swear an oath, then you sweep your palm down across your partner’s, and the two of you finish by coming off each other’s fingertips into a finger snap. The shake comes from a time when Africans were capturing and selling one another into slavery: Slaves’ fingers were broken, so the snap proved you were free.
Blount.
Yeah, I really dislike the Roy Blunt guy. But that’s just me being Decatur’s Token Democrat.
How many times have a done that now? Three or four, I think.
As best I can tell, Eskimo Heights is the housing project bisected by N.Decatur and Glendale Rd. in Scottdale, just to the West of the old Softball Country Club. It is miles from Decatur, and is an absurd thing to tar Decatur with.
Actually Eskimo Heights was in Scottdale but it was not Public Housing but was was a terrible slum of private housing mainly owned by those capitalists who exploit poor people as well a few low income struggling homeowners.,
Any history on the name? Scottsdale is a long way from Alaskan Native territory. Maybe there was an Eskimo Pie plant there once?
“When I was growing up, the whole county was, like my
prominently Methodist father, staunchly dry. And now the
[Decatur]courthouse is an Irish pub!” (from the SI article)
Wonder what he would think about the whole city being an Irish pub?