Whenever longtime Summerhill resident Mary Gay drives into her Atlanta neighborhood, the first thing she’s greeted with is the Olympic Cauldron — an artifact that once held the fiery torch for the 1996 Olympic Games.
Seeing the historic structure puts a smile on her face because once she sees it, she knows she’s “home.”
Last week, Gay heard that the cauldron is set to be moved out of Summerhill, one of the neighborhoods where the Games took place. Since then, she said, it’s been an “emotional time” for her and other residents. They say they were left out of the decision-making process, and it feels like another broken promise to Black, legacy residents.
On June 11, Georgia State University released a statement that the cauldron would be moved downtown to Centennial Olympic Park. The university said the move is being done in collaboration with Billy Payne, the former head of the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games, and former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, as both helped bring the global event to the city.
“We are very excited about the prominent location where the Olympic Cauldron will be displayed in Centennial Olympic Park, combining the elements of the most iconic moment of the Centennial Games with its greatest physical legacy,” Payne said about the move.
John Helton, president of the Organized Neighbors of Summerhill, said he and other leaders from the neighborhood met with GSU officials on June 8, at which time they were informed of the move.
On June 10, Helton and other local leaders, including City Council member Jason Winston and state Rep. Phil Olaleye, wrote a letter opposing the decision, saying the move rips away a piece of the neighborhood’s history.
“Our fervent request remains that the Olympic torch stay where history placed it — in Summerhill,” the letter read.“The story of the Olympic torch cannot be told without the story of Summerhill. This symbol should remain where our joint history has unfolded.”
Candra Livsey, a resident of Summerhill since 2013, said the only fair solution is keeping the cauldron in Summerhill and giving the structure the updates it deserves.
“You’re ripping it away and stealing it from where it belongs,” Livsey said. “They’re just trying to do whatever they want, and don’t care about anybody else. If the cauldron is removed, that would only solidify that point more, that nobody really cares about this neighborhood.”
Broken promises
Before the arrival of the Games, Summerhill had dealt with massive displacement in the 1960s due to the construction of Interstate 75/85 and Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium.
The neighborhood, along with other historically Black neighborhoods like Peoplestown and Mechanicsville, had endured a pattern of disinvestment and discriminatory policing over the years by the city.
In what is now called the Summerhill Uprising, more than a thousand residents took to the streets on Sept. 6, 1966, after an unarmed Black man named Harold Prather was shot and killed by a white police officer. Community members gathered to protest the killing and the ongoing neglect their neighborhoods were facing.
When the Olympic Games came to Atlanta 30 years later, it brought renewed hope for a chance at investment, but what was left in the immediate wake of the international sporting event was more displacement and a promised renewal that never came to fruition.
“There’s this other element of the Olympics that wasn’t necessarily great for Summerhill … there was more disruption, and you know, obviously the construction created some jobs and what not, but when the Olympics went away, that went away,” Helton said. “I think there was a lot of promise and hope for redevelopment and reinvestment after [the Olympics] left, and that didn’t really happen.”
Once the Olympics left, the Atlanta Braves claimed Turner Field, which served as the centerpiece of the Games, up until 2013, when the team moved to Cobb County. Now, Georgia State owns the stadium.
Gay, who moved into the neighborhood in 1998, said some legacy residents’ lives were never improvedby any of these moves.
“Some folks are still impoverished, and some people are still struggling, and it’s hard,” said Gay. “We work with a lot of the homeless community who used to live here that just can’t afford to stay anymore, but they just decided they weren’t going to leave.”
Community wishes ignored
Helton said ownership of the cauldron has passed from the Georgia University System to the Georgia Congress Center Authority.
He said the current proposal isn’t the first attempt to have the cauldron moved or its ownership changed. In 2024, $833,333 was set aside in the proposed fiscal 2025 state budget to fund the move to Centennial Olympic Park.
Helton said that at the time, state officials and others involved with efforts to move the cauldron were made aware of the community’s strong opposition. Ultimately, the money was removed from the budget.
While community members hoped that would be the end of the fight, last week’s announcement came as a shock.
Cheron Pitchford, executive director of the Summerhill Neighborhood Development Corporation, said the decision was done “behind the community’s back.” She also signed the letter in opposition of the move.
“I feel a lot of frustration because it honestly just comes across as very disrespectful to the sacrifice that people in Summerhill made in order to have the Olympics happen,” Pitchford said. “This is kind of one of those situations that it feels like time and time again Black communities will sacrifice for the larger scale purpose, and then just not even be respected for the things that they’ve kind of given up for that.”
Summerhill leaders say the group pushing for the move is a nonprofit organization called Atlanta ‘96 Legacy, of which Payne is the chairman. They believe the organization will be the one raising money for the move after the attempt to get state funding failed.
Georgia State told Capital B Atlanta the university didn’t have any information about the timeline and the total cost of the move.
Summerhill leadership say the fight isn’t over. They plan to hold a rally next week and plan to meet with the groups behind the move to find a path forward.
Community Engagement Editor Ann Hill Bond contributed to this report.
