Sports History

As baseball fans across North America rejoice over the opening of the 2025 Major League Baseball season, Atlanta History Center celebrates baseball heroes of the past by examining the teams and players of the Branch Rickey League. From 1956 to approximately 1969, Black baseball players from Atlanta and surrounding areas participated in highly competitive amateur leagues filled with future professional baseball players. Atlanta History Center has launched a project to locate and interview former players and participants in these leagues.

More Than Brave tells the story of Henry Aaron from his time in Mobile, Alabama, to his record making baseball career and through his life as a leader in baseball, business and charitable causes.

Muhammad Ali’s 1970 comeback fight in Atlanta against Jerry Quarry at the Atlanta Municipal Auditorium on October 26, 1970, is often relegated to the footnotes of Ali’s legacy despite its crucial role in the growth of Atlanta and the rebirth of his boxing career.

Atlanta’s Paralympic Games represent many significant benchmarks for Paralympic and disability history.

Honoring the legacy of baseball player, racial equality activist, and historic home run record breaker, Hank Aaron.

Students attend a ballet class at Norma’s Academy of Fine Arts on Campbellton Road in southwest Atlanta on November 17, 1973.

The Angel Drill Team, the championship team from the Waukean-Zion-North Chicago area, perform in Woodruff Park in 1974.

A group of children prepare for a pickup game of basketball in the Bedford Pine neighborhood in January 1971.

Portrait of a young woman with her bicycle taken by Kuhns Studio in 1895.

An unidentified woman beats the heat by taking a swan dive in 1946.

Boxer Young Stribling gets wholloped by an even younger boxer.

Atlanta’s Games included legendary athletes, intense rivalries, and exciting underdogs. We’ve collected a few of our favorites from the summer of ‘96.

On July 4, 1970, 150 runners gathered in the parking lot of Sears & Roebuck on the corner of Peachtree and Roswell Roads and ran 6.2 miles to the Central City Park finish line in the inaugural Peachtree Road Race.

In 1987, Atlanta attorney William Porter Payne founded the Georgia Amateur Athletic Foundation with a quest to win the bid for the Centennial Olympic Games for Atlanta.