The Golden Opportunity

Six generations or so before Samaranch opened his envelope, Atlanta smoldered. It was November 1864, six months before the end of the Civil War.

For the next century, the wider world mostly knew Atlanta only from Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone With the Wind.” The best-selling book and iconic movie that followed romanticized the slave-holding culture of the old South and fostered the notion that Atlanta and Scarlett O’Hara had been victimized by cruel fate and an invading Northern army.

Atlanta rose from the ashes, like the mythical phoenix that became its symbol.

The city prospered, but as a paradox — a rigid, often-violent system of Jim Crow segregation created wealth for whites, but somehow a Black mecca of education and commerce thrived too. As a business capital, Atlanta epitomized the progressive New South. But white supremacy remained deeply entrenched, glaringly evident in a 1906 race massacre that killed dozens of Black residents.

Not until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s would global perceptions of Atlanta change.

As the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., a native son of the city, led a national equality struggle for Black people, Atlanta won a new reputation — now of tolerance and justice. Police in Birmingham, Ala., set attack dogs on Black residents. Mounted officers in Selma, Ala., clubbed marchers. But Atlanta, in full public view, emerged as “the city too busy to hate,” in the famous words of former Mayor William B. Hartsfield.

The world now beheld a prosperous Southern city that believed in a more expansive view of human rights.

“Since the Civil War,” says Atlanta journalist and GSU alum Jim Auchmutey (B.A. ’77), “Atlanta had been obsessed with rising from the ashes and proving itself a great city. Even from the time of journalist Henry Grady in the 1800s, Atlantans were exquisitely concerned about what other people thought of them.”

Auchmutey points to the 1895 Cotton States and International Exposition, an event that symbolized a resurgent Atlanta on its feet again after Reconstruction.

“We always tried to emulate New York and Chicago to prove ourselves important,” Auchmutey says. “We beat our chest. We showed boosterism and a certain ambition, and when you care what others think of you, you behave a different way.

“Winning the Centennial Olympic Games was really the culmination of that long march of boosterism.”

Without question, the key figure in bringing the Olympics to Atlanta was the civil rights icon and Atlanta mayor during the Olympics bidding competition, Andrew Young.

Mayor Young, whose name later became part of GSU’s own Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, had international credibility. He’d been a trusted lieutenant of MLK. He was the first Black U.S. congressman from Georgia since Reconstruction and the first Black U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. He helped pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act. As Atlanta mayor since 1982, he’d been working relentlessly to transform the city into an international business hub.

In truth, the outside world knew more about Andrew Young than it did Atlanta.

“Andy embodied civil rights,” Auchmutey says. “And he also embodied Atlanta boosterism. Those two currents came together in him.”

For wooing the Centennial Olympic Games to Atlanta, Young proved to be exactly the right man — in the right place — at the right time.

Once upon a time, Georgia State University was two buildings in downtown Atlanta. Most students carried briefcases to night classes. They were business professionals chasing degrees after working their day jobs, commuting home late.

The university had begun in 1913 as the Georgia Institute of Technology's "Evening School of Commerce." Twenty years later, it split from Georgia Tech to become the Atlanta Division of the University of Georgia.

Then, just after World War II, in 1947, the institution evolved into Georgia State College of Business Administration, still catering to downtown working professionals in night classes. In 1969, the school achieved full university status as Georgia State University.

In all those decades, and in its first 25 years officially as GSU, not one student lived in an on-campus residence. Scholars still commuted in and commuted out. After hours, the campus around Hurt Plaza was a lonely place.

But a singular event was coming that would vault the university from a commuter college to the status of a major urban university.

The springboard?

The 1996 Centennial Olympic Games.

Michael L. Sanseviro (Ph.D. ’06), now GSU’s vice president for Student Engagement, came south from Long Island to attend Emory University as an undergraduate in 1986. He fell in love with Atlanta.

Even so, his career path eventually took him back north, working with an engineering school in New York City.

Michael L. Sanseviro, now Georgia State's vice president for Student Engagement, was the complex director for University Housing during the 1996 Olympics. He lived at the Olympic Village and helped support services for the athletes.

“Those polytechnic administrators wanted someone with a liberal arts background to teach engineers how to be human,” Sanseviro says. “I created an orientation program that took them out into the countryside, taught them camping and taught them life skills.”

Importantly, Sanseviro also developed new university housing.

He’d been in NYC a couple of years when a recruiting call came from Atlanta.

“The pitch got my attention,” Sanseviro admits. “‘The Olympics are coming. We need people with expertise. We want to develop residences for students for the first time. It’s an amazing time to be here. Oh, and you’ll be working directly with the Games.’”

Sanseviro threw his hat into the Olympic ring.

The decision left his family dumbstruck. How could he give up the sophistication of New York for the backwards South?

“I remember in 1986 one of my relatives asking me,” Sanseviro says, “if there was indoor plumbing in Georgia.”

Sanseviro moved to the Olympic Village in May 1996. He was subcontracted to the IOC and officially started work June 1, 1996 – 49 days before the July 19 opening ceremonies of the Centennial Games.

He lived and worked out of the first facility completed for the Village, one of a four-building multistory complex, each with a Greek name – Sparta, Ithaca, Athena and Olympia. The complex at the corner of North Avenue and Techwood Drive, today called North Avenue Village, ranged from five to 13 stories.

A capstone feature of the Atlanta plan was the Olympic Village – and, by design, when athletes departed, GSU would convert a share of Village living spaces to residence halls for college students.

For the first time, GSU students could live on campus the way students did at UGA, Emory, Georgia Tech and other classic universities.

“The Olympic Games were absolutely transformational for GSU,” said Sanseviro. “I’m not sure we would have become a residential university without the housing built for the games.”

A creative writer in advertising, George Hirthler, wrote Atlanta’s pitch for the 1996 Games at the commission of Billy Payne, a middle-aged Atlanta real estate attorney who had dreamed up the far-fetched notion of bringing the Olympics to Atlanta.

Hirthler’s immersion in Olympic history and lore later led to an award-winning historical novel, “The Idealist” (Ringworks Press, 2016), based on the life of Pierre de Coubertin, father of the modern Olympic Games. In 2024, after years of work, Hirthler and co-director Bob Judson, a former Georgia State professor and GSUTV managing director, released the documentary “The Games in Black and White,” detailing how Atlanta won the Centennial Games. (Several details in this article are sourced from the film.)

Six candidates made the Centennial Games short list: Athens, Belgrade, Manchester, Melbourne, Toronto and Atlanta. At that time, any one of the other five finalists likely had greater international luster than Atlanta.

But Atlanta had two resources no other city would be able to match: Payne and Young.

Payne had been a jock, an offensive and defensive end on Vince Dooley’s 1966 Southeastern Conference championship Georgia Bulldogs football team. He held folk hero status among Dawg fans for catching a game-clenching touchdown pass in the 1966 Sugar Bowl. Then, after working quietly in law for decades and dealing with significant heart health issues, Payne found a spark of civic calling when he led efforts to raise $2.2 million for the new sanctuary of St. Luke’s Presbyterian Church.

“It was the first thing I’d ever done where there was nothing in it for me,” Payne confesses in the documentary.

Now, Payne felt an even bigger calling.

He convinced some friends and colleagues to become The Atlanta Nine, a bid committee for winning the Olympic Games. And they went to see Mayor Andrew Young.

With the alchemy of Payne’s vision and Young’s pragmatism and connections, Atlanta launched one of the greatest charm offensives in U.S. history.

The pitch to the IOC emphasized Southern hospitality, Atlanta as a “city in a forest,” the centennial of the modern Games, and the unique partnership between Black and white leaders in MLK’s birthplace — “the world capital of human rights.” Young tapped his extensive international connections, especially with nations in Asia and Africa, where there were crucial IOC votes.

Atlanta technology wowed the IOC. The city gave members a “fly-through” of future venues using a groundbreaking computer animation developed by Georgia Tech and Pixar. Atlanta also pitched an Olympic Ring concept that concentrated most events within a two-mile radius of downtown — music to the ears of IOC members who had been exhausted by efforts to reach the dispersed venues at the 1984 Los Angeles Games.

Atlanta’s private funding model appealed to the IOC. The city assured the committee that the Games would be primarily financed through private investment and ticket sales. This alleviated fears of government debt that shadowed the Los Angeles Games — never mind the massive, long-term debt (about $1.5 billion U.S.) incurred by the 1976 Montreal Olympics. Corporations in Atlanta, most notably The Coca-Cola Company and NationsBank, promised significant financial and promotional backing.

Finally, Southern hospitality turned out to be an irresistible force.

Atlantans found ways to woo International Olympic Committee members at every turn — at meetings in their home countries, on site visits to Atlanta and seemingly everywhere else. The Atlanta Nine, led by Payne, hosted 78 of the 88 IOC voting members in Atlanta on personalized tours and events. Atlanta even reportedly tracked the personal preferences of IOC members to tailor its hospitality — including gifts like a pet bulldog, the University of Georgia mascot, for a Cuban delegate who loved UGA.

Such an approach to persuasion came naturally to Young. In his time at the U.N., Young found he could win trust, friends and votes by hosting diplomats in his own home. Often, he and Jean, his wife, served dignitaries home-cooked meals with ingredients brought up from Jean’s hometown of Marion, Ala.

That same human touch now won over IOC members. They found themselves simply “niced” by Atlantans into believing the city would be the best on Earth for the Centennial Games.

The city put backbone into its Games proposal, too.

The IOC liked the vision of a new stadium to showcase the Games (a stadium that would one day belong to GSU). Payne, staring out his office window, dreamed up Centennial Olympic Park to replace a blighted downtown industrial zone. A Games transportation plan — moving athletes around using small electric trains and buses — met with approval, and so did proposals to use the Georgia Dome and other existing facilities to house events. (The GSU Sports Arena would be the venue for Olympic badminton.)

The IOC liked the attention Atlanta paid to dozens of other creative details that would ensure a successful event witnessed by billions of people around the globe.

Photos courtesy of the Georgia State Library's Digital Collections.