The timing is almost too poetic. Sunday marks 30 years since the opening ceremony of the 1996 Olympic Games — and the anniversary arrives just as Atlanta wraps its run as a FIFA World Cup host city, closing out a second global summer three decades after the first.
The symmetry was not lost on the crowd at Wednesday's final Atlanta match. Brothers Marcus and John Makar, soccer fans who remember the '96 Games firsthand, were both in the building. John spent that Olympic summer running an international hostel and restaurant out in Decatur — nonstop work, he recalled, but a great time. Marcus had a more personal connection: three athletes from his Tulsa, Okla., high school competed in those Games.
GPB is marking the anniversary with The Games in Black and White, a documentary centered on the pivotal friendship between Ambassador Andrew Young and Atlanta Olympics CEO Billy Payne — the partnership that carried the city's improbable bid to the world stage. Filmmaker George Hirthler marvels that a story from three decades ago has taken on such social relevance and urgency for the present moment.
The Games in Black and White airs Monday, July 27 at 9:30 p.m. on GPB TV.
Original reporting: Georgia Public Broadcasting (2026-07-17)