INTEGRATING ATLANTA'S RINKS

Revised 05-10-2004

Movie producers are set to begin filming “Jellybeans” which is to be a story centered around the experiences of young adults who were weekly regulars at an Atlanta roller skating rink.  Many may not be aware that there actually was a rink in Atlanta called Jellybeans which was in operation from the mid 1980s to the early 1990s in the Greenbriar area of Atlanta.

Mike “Gizz” Willis, 51, an Atlanta native, recalls the rink opening and closing nights and even though he does not remember the rink owner’s name, he remembers his nickname.  “Everybody called him Jellybean because he was round just like [one].  He was a big, fat, White man who weighed 4-500 pounds,” he told RST via phone.

Before Jellybean opened a rink in Greenbriar, he ran one on Roswell Road, in a predominantly White suburb of Atlanta.  That rink was also called Jellybeans and catered to a majority White customer base, however, there were special R&B sessions held which attracted many Black skaters. That created a problem.

The Whites in that area did not like young Blacks coming to that part of town so they complained to the owner of the building Jellybean was leasing from.  Once the lease expired, the building owner decided not to renew it and that is what led to the closing of the rink.
 
GREENBRIAR SKATING CENTER

Jellybean did not give up.  He knew he had made a lot of money from those R&B sessions, so what he did was locate another facility in which to house his rink.  He found a vacant building that previously had been known as Greenbriar Skating Center (GSC).

Mike says Blacks began skating at GSC in the late 1960s, long before Jellybean took over.  GSC was one of the two rinks at that time which allowed Blacks to skate, the other place was called River Rink which was built specifically for Blacks.  That is the place Gizz first skated indoors as a teenager but unfortunately the rink ended up closing due to violence and fighting.

When River Rink closed, Black skaters found another place that would allow them to skate, Ponce De Leon Rink, but they soon found they were not welcomed by neighborhood residents.

“Whites got mad at us because we started to come there skating and they burned the rink down just to keep us out.  Atlanta had not been too long integrated, we really did not start moving until Martin Luther King Jr. was killed,” Mike said.  He lived right around the corner from the King family and knew the famed civil rights leader and even marched with him in later years.

Some time after the Ponce De Leon Rink was burned down, GSC was reopened, in the mid 1980s under its new name, Jellybeans. 

GIZZ INTEGRATES ATLANTA RINKS

As a child, Gizz and his friends used to skate in the streets on what they called Pipes.  These were clamp skates that were secured on the feet not just by tightening the skate key but also with car inner tubes that were cut into strips and tied around the skate.  Mike explained that was only for rugged skaters, the ones who used to hang onto cars and get pulled down the street at accelerated speeds.

He didn’t have his own pair of boot skates until he was a teenager and he got them from a Genuine Auto Parts Warehouse where workers used to pull orders on roller skates.  One of the employees knew how much Gizz liked to skate, so he gave him a pair.  It was common for Whites to have their own boot skates while many Blacks did not, which meant on R&B nights, if you didn’t get there early you risked not getting a pair of rental skates.

Gizz developed his style by watching ice skaters.  He had a job making deliveries in Marietta Georgia and had many opportunities to stop at different rinks to ice skate and listen in while children’s skating lessons were going on.  He took what he heard and saw and converted it to roller skating.

He considers himself to be the first Black to integrate the rinks in Georgia’s capital and the GSC in particular.  He believed that once Whites saw what he could do on skates they would accept him at their sessions.

Unfortunately, in the 1960s, the area was not integrated and neither was the rink.  Even though there were no longer any laws restricting Blacks from skating with whites, they were still hesitant to take advantage of the opportunity - until Gizz came along.

He went to GSC one night when only whites were skating and found that a lot of youth did accept him but there were others who deliberately tripped him or tried to make him fall.

At that time, police served as floor guards and one night he complained about what was happening and the guard told him he would have to protect himself if he really wanted to skate, so that is what Gizz did.

“I went back out there, then here comes one of the White kids sticking that foot out.  I went into one of those 360 spins, put that elbow under his neck, lifted him off those skates and right on his butt he went.  I stepped off gracefully with my little movement, went on around and everybody was laughing at him.  From that day on, I didn’t have anymore trouble because I took the leader down and made it possible for all the boys to come out and start skating.”

So GSC, became the skating spot for many Blacks until its closing and upon reopening as the Greenbriar Jellybeans.  The new rink was popular, in the 80s, for its Sunday night R&B session which used to be frequented by people who later became big names in the music industry, (Dallas Austin, Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins of TLC, and the members of Outkast, Atlanta’s popular hip hop duo).

Gizz also enjoyed those Sunday night sessions but feels that after they became extremely popular, the new rink owners became greedy and more concerned about packing the rink than monitoring what customers were doing once they were inside.

“It became a clientele for drug trafficking, people roller skating and buying dope inside the rink.  That was part of the closure of it, a lot of stuff went on illegally, “ Mike recalled.

At that time, the rink was under new ownership, a change that occurred after the death of Jellybean who had made it part of his will that the rink was to be sold to his long time rink manager who then ran the rink until it closed down approximately 10 years ago.

PAVING THE WAY FOR TODAY’S SKATERS

Gizz’s recollection of those days causes him to question whether today’s Black skaters recognize what others before them went through to make it possible for them to skate as often and wherever they would like today.

“When rinks first started to be integrated, you were welcome, but you weren’t welcome, it was law that they had to accept you, they could not tell you ‘ you’re Black, you cannot come in here.’  Once upon a time, they could tell you that and you could not go in that rink.  There have been a whole lot of changes made for these people to do their little skating today,” he said.

That segregation was not just found in the South but in other states like Utah.  Black youth were not allowed to skate at the same sessions with White youth which meant they could only skate after hours, at 10:00 or 11:00 at night.

Many Black parents did not have transportation, so they would car pool and find other ways to get their children to those late night sessions because they felt it important to ensure their children had some recreation and fun in their lives.

GIZZ’S PERFORMANCES

In spite of many obstacles, Gizz never gave up on his dream of becoming a pro, but after suffering an injury playing basketball, he had to adjust his plans.  Before the injury, he still skated shows at various Atlanta clubs, at concerts with groups such as Earth, Wind and Fire, The Isley Brothers, The Commodores and even on James Brown’s television show, Future Shock.

He also skated on the Harlem Globetrotter’s Southeastern tour, performing during intermissions where he, many times, received more attention than the team.  He believes they got scared of him because more fans wanted his autograph than those of the ball players.  Eventually he was told that he would have to cover his own travel expenses and since he did not have sponsors, he was not able to continue skating with the popular club.

He is thankful, however, for the experiences, opportunities and memories he was given while indulging in the sport he loves.  Even though he has been in a few car accidents and was told that he would never skate again, he is still skating once or twice a week, not doing the same tricks, jumps and acrobatics that he used to do at GSC and Jellybeans, but still spinning and showing the gracefulness and style he has continued to mature in over the years.

- Kim Muhammad -