Part of a special issue on the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Atlanta appears to be tailor-made to play host to the Centennial Olympics. It is extremely in tune with the Games' unspoken tradition of institutional idealism and business-minded, slogan-wielding aspirations of uniting the world. The city contains a number of obstinate uncertainties, however. It is both Southern and Northern, global and provincial, and black run and white controlled--a liberal conservative small town dressed in a three-piece suit. The city's central dilemma is how to balance the bright new equality imagined by the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. with the 'don't-give-a-damn' romance of the Old South immortalized by Margaret Mitchell. In addition, it needs to work out how to capitalize on a past that is the source of both its allure and its shame while marketing itself as a place of the future