The Atlanta Olympic story: are blacks getting any of the real gold?

Ebony, Feb, 1995 by Laura B. Randolph

Though company president Roy Terry expects the agreement to generate millions of dollars in sales, he says he and his brother didn't go after a direct license merely for short term gain. "We expect this to be a stepping-stone into the licensed apparel business," says Terry, whose company also has a sub-contract to perform Olympic embroidery and screen printing for license-holder Champion Sportswear. As part of its licensing agreement, the Alabama-based company will open a production facility in Atlanta which will employ 50 or more Atlanta residents.

THE ATLANTA UNIVERSITY CENTER

While ACOG is contributing $47 million to build the $147 million Olympic village on the campus of Georgia Institute of Technology, ACOG is also contributing $51 million in physical and operational enhancements to the campuses of the six predominately Black Atlanta University Center institutions: a 15,000-seat stadium at Morris Brown College; a 5,000-seat stadium at Clark Atlanta University, which will also be the permanent home of the Olympic track; a conference center at the Interdenominational Theological Center; a 6,000-seat basketball arena at Morehouse College; medical laboratory facilities at the Morehouse School of Medicine (which will conduct drug testing of athletes during the Games); and tennis training facilities at Spelman College.

At the close of the Olympic Games, the new facilities will be donated to the schools. "They are the only Olympic venue construction that will be left to private institutions," notes Shirley Franklin, senior policy advisor to ACOG President Billy Payne.

"We are particularly excited about the new basketball arena," says Morehouse College Acting President Wiley Perdue, "because we will no longer have to turn away our own students because of space limitations. This really is a lasting legacy."

The new 6,000-seat facility (which will host Olympic preliminary basketball rounds) will be constructed on a vacant, two-acre site and is being designed by the African-American-owned firm, Moody/Nolan Ltd. Inc.

In addition to its new tennis facilities, Spelman College is also hosting some of the theater and dance events for ACOG's Cultural Olympiad, a four-year, multicultural, multidisciplinary arts and culture festival that is designed to provide a sustained and continually evolving air of celebration and excitement in the years preceding and during the Games.

ACOG and Clark Atlanta University have also established a program to train 1,200 students at the AU Center and other colleges and universities in state-of-the-art broadcast and telecommunications technology. The program will provide the Atlanta Olympic Broadcasting Unit with as many as 800 interns trained specifically to work on the international broadcast of the Olympic Games.

The Host Broadcasting Training program has also facilitated the updating of equipment in Clark Atlanta's communications department, employing the digital video technology that will be used during the broadcast of the 1996 Games.