Parker 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.