Atlanta Centennial Park at Protest Crosshairs

(ATR) Centennial Olympic Park was the scene of protests taking place in downtown Atlanta for three consecutive days starting May 29.

When a generally peaceful protest turned violent on Friday evening, the park sustained fire damage in the park and along western border street, but was generally cleaned up by noon on Saturday.

The park is one of several downtown Atlanta locations with connections to the 1996 Olympic Games damaged or vandalized during events of May 29 and May 30. Graffiti was painted on marble walls at one park entrance and next to the popular "Rings" fountain.

A peaceful protest involving hundreds of marchers on Friday afternoon quickly escalated into an hours-long series of violent and destructive acts, which some officials attribute to out-of-town instigators who blended in with a generally peaceful rally.

Highly visible protests started across the United States in response to a May 25 killing of an African-American man, George Floyd of Minneapolis, Minn., who died in police custody while bystanders filmed his arrest. The lead police officer captured on film was charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter on Friday, angering many, both stateside and abroad, who perceive it as too lenient.

As the sun set on Atlanta May 29, at least three Atlanta police vehicles were set ablaze near or adjacent to Centennial Olympic Park and the neighboring CNN Center, world headquarters for the international network.

Instigators also set a welcome center on fire inside the park, with the blaze not extinguished until well after midnight as demonstrators blocked firefighter access.

As the sun rose over the city on May 30, the fire was extinguished. Other damage to Centennial Olympic Park included spray paint graffiti tagged on the parks Olympic Rings sculpture installed in 2018.

A statue of modern Olympic Founder Baron Pierre de Coubertin, installed when the park opened in 1996, also received white paint damage on the coattails of the oversized figure. Two trees damaged by vehicle fires on the park’s western wall were charred but likely to survive.

Vandals damaged other downtown Atlanta landmarks frequented during the 1996 Games with several ground-level windows and doors shattered. The Hard Rock Café, CNN Center, Apparel Mart (1996 International Broadcast Center), and several hotels were boarded up by noon Saturday.

The downtown Marriott Hotel, the city’s largest and home to the International Olympic Committee in 1996, was untouched, but the historic Rialto Center for the Arts, which hosted Cultural Olympiad events and the premiere of Bud Greenspan’s film "16 Days of Glory – Atlanta" in 1997, had graffiti and some broken windows.

Statues of Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games CEO Billy Payne and ACOG co-chair Ambassador Andrew Young, in Centennial Park and another urban park, respectively, had no visible damage.

In response to the events in Atlanta, several local residents showed up downtown to help clean up glass and remove litter or graffiti where possible. Protesters who returned on Saturday afternoon found no access to Centennial Olympic Park, with U.S. National Guard soldiers standing at attention about every 10 meters inside the Olympic site.

By Sunday, the increased presence of law enforcement and the implementation of a 9 p.m. citywide curfew for Atlanta had helped to keep the protests peaceful. The limited skirmishes between police and protesters were largely due to people not abiding by the curfew order.

Over the weekend, similar peaceful protest events turned violent in other U.S. Olympic host cities including Los Angeles (1932, 1984 and 2028) and St. Louis (1904) as well as Salt Lake City (2002). Specific proximity of these demonstration events to U.S. Olympic venues is not yet known. Outside the U.S., news reports cited George Floyd-inspired gatherings in past and future Olympic cities including Berlin, London, Milan, Munich, Tokyo and Vancouver.

Bystander video capturing police brutality toward black men in the U.S. first captivated worldwide attention with the infamous video of Rodney King filmed in Los Angeles during March 1991. Violent protests followed the acquittal of the police officers charged with beating King.

Protesters in the current wave of events commonly cite the King incident and dozens of other similar police actions as the inspiration for their participation in demonstrations.

Andrew Young, a former mayor of Atlanta and civil rights leader, wrote in an op-ed in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the latest example of "the sickness of our law enforcement community"should not be a distraction from the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and the economic crisis it has caused.

"We must come together, and think together, and work together, and pray together to restore the vibrant society and economy that we have created here in metro Atlanta.

"Like everyone else, I wanted to get angry over the deaths of too many of my younger brethren. It reveals a deep and sad sickness plaguing our nation. But we have also lost more than 100,000 of our citizens to an unseen, viral enemy. Those are both things from which we are now suffering.

"We’re already short now some 40 million jobs, and our economy has suffered blows the likes of which I have not seen in my lifetime of 88 years. It is tragic. As awful as racism is, we may suffer more in the viral world that we’re enduring now. It’s a matter of percentages."

Written by Nicholas Wolaver, an Atlanta-based public relations executive, lifetime member of International Society of Olympic Historians (ISOH) and founder of the website Olympic Rings And Other Things.

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