Celebrating nearly a century of Black women’s basketball in Atlanta
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
On March 2, 1940, 24-year-old Almeta Hill scored 11 of her team’s 13 points in a Saturday afternoon, six-person, half-court basketball game at the Butler Street YMCA.
She was captain of the Atlanta Ladies Tennis Club basketball team, which had just beaten the Business and Professional Women’s Club 13-5. By Monday morning, she had returned to her full-time job as teacher at Bush Mountain School in Southwest Atlanta.
Black women’s basketball in Atlanta has a centurylong history. But as the game becomes more popular nationally, a lot of the local history has been forgotten.
Almeta, who was an unstoppable scorer in the 1930s and `40s, is an example of a standout player and coach who is not well known but whose legacy is important to the game.
The Atlanta Dream‘s 2025 home opener is Thursday. Before the Atlanta Dream’s Rhyne Howard or Allisha Gray became local stars, players like Hill competed for their Atlanta high schools, colleges, women’s club teams and sometimes their employers.
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
These women played at some of Atlanta’s most storied Black institutions, and the community was big enough to have an All Star Ladies basketball game in March 1940.
Hill was a winner. She won titles as a player and a coach, which were celebrated in the Black press. Today, the details of her success mostly exist in archival documents. The same is true for the women she competed with in Atlanta’s Jim Crow era Black women’s basketball community.
Through Hill’s career, it’s possible to better understand when and where they played.
Credit: Newsp
About Almeta
Sarah Almeta Hill was born in about 1916. It is not clear where she grew up, but she attended Booker T. Washington High School, the first for Black students in Atlanta, and was a senior in 1930.
Hill grew up during the Jim Crow era. At that time, Black Atlantans were legally barred from most public spaces, so they created their own economy, schools, community centers, and entertainment venues, where Black women like Hill played basketball.
After finishing at Washington High, Hill attended Clark College from 1930 to 1935, competing in both tennis and basketball. She completed training school before pursuing her bachelor’s degree.
In the early 20th century, tennis was popular but basketball was on the rise. The sport was said to have been invented in a YMCA in 1891 before spreading rapidly around the country as an adaptable, fun and, at times, respectable game.
In addition to Clark, other local Black higher education institutions played competitively: Forsyth‘s Teachers College, Grady Nurses Training School, Apex College Beauticians and Morris Brown College. Spelman College during this time valued intramural basketball and the sport for its health and wellness benefits — not competition.
Teams played both men’s and women’s rules, depending on the location of the game and their team. Rules changed over time, but the biggest difference was that women used six players instead of five and only played half-court.
In March 1932, Hill started at right forward for Clark in a game against Washington High, her alma mater, in a Friday afternoon game at Sunset Casino, a dance hall within an amusement park in Vine City.
The casino was an entertainment venue that hosted dances, concerts and sporting events. Duke Ellington and his orchestra performed there in 1937. Hill played basketball there for at least a decade. She also occasionally played indoor tennis matches there as well.
“Basketball Treat of the Year”
This was an important location for the Black women’s basketball community not only because they hosted games, but because promoters treated the games like serious entertainment events. They even brought in out-of-state competition because they knew it would draw a crowd.
Hill didn’t play in what the Atlanta Daily World called the “Basketball Treat of the Year” in 1938, when the Atlanta Ladies Tennis Club All Stars (a mix of club, college and high school players) hosted the World Champion Philadelphia Tribune Girls, who won 26-19.
For this event, Sunset Casino charged 30 cents for advanced tickets and 40 cents at the window. The Atlanta Daily World encouraged people to “come early in order to get seats!”
Another notable Black woman athlete made a stop at Sunset. Two years before she became the first Black woman to win an Olympic gold medal, Georgia’s own high jumper, Alice Coachman of the Tuskegee Tigerettes, played against Morris Brown in February 1946.
Credit: (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)
For the players who did play competitively — like Hill, Helen Clemmons, Dora Harvey and Laura Demery — there was an opportunity to play after graduation. Many of them played for basketball teams that were sponsored by women’s clubs.
Women’s clubs were often organized and developed to work toward the advancement of African Americans, but at times they existed as a status symbol designed around different communities and interests.
Hill appeared to have taken a break from competing in both tennis and basketball during the 1936 and 1937 seasons. During this time, she began her career as a teacher. She returned to basketball the next year, playing one year with the Bon Mot Club, a social club founded by teachers in 1934, and then moved to the Atlanta Ladies Tennis Club, for whom she played both basketball and tennis.
In March 1938, she led the Bon Mots to a 32-28 upset over the undefeated Liberty Co-Eds, with six field goals and two free throws in a “sensational battle for feminine cage supremacy in the Gate City,” as the Atlanta Daily World wrote.
That game was held at the Butler Street YMCA, the community center once known as Black Atlanta’s City Hall, which was built in 1920. It was another important location for the Black women’s basketball community.
Credit: Daniel Varnado
A YMCA women’s basketball league formed in 1939 and was called the Atlanta Women’s Athletic Association. This league featured Grady Nurses, Morris Brown, Liberty Co-Eds, Business and Professional Women’s Club and the Atlanta Ladies Tennis Club. Trophies for the 1939 AWAA title were sponsored by Atlanta Life Insurance Company, Jackson Electrical Appliance Inc and Alexander and Company Insurance Agency. The trophy was put on display for multiple days in the show window at 184 Auburn Ave.
For the 1947-48 school year, Hill began coaching at David T. Howard, where had recently been hired. She worked there as a physical education teacher, basketball coach and tennis coach. This school, in Old Fourth Ward, was attended by future NBA star Walt Frazier, civil rights leaders Lonnie King Jr. and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Maynard Jackson, who went on to become Atlanta’s first Black mayor.
Championship Legacy
At Howard, Hill became the “winningest coach in the city” in basketball, according to the Atlanta Daily World. Only a few years into the job, Hill won five consecutive city championships and back-to-back state titles in 1950 and ‘51.
In the Howard gym that still stands today, Hill coached a team whose success constantly appeared in the press. There are photos of Hill posing with her championship teams and their trophies or Hill receiving honors from the Howard High School principal. Olympic gold medal winner Mildred McDaniel was a member of Hill’s state championship team.
“Hers has been a success story at Howard,” longtime journalist Harmon G. Perry wrote in 1953. “Her patience, understanding and superb coaching strategy has produced five city and four state championship teams.”
As the 1940s turned to the `50s and eventually the `60s, and the city’s Black population grew, more high schools and competitive girls basketball teams began to pop up. That basketball scene was competitive with teams like Howard, Washington, Henry McNeal Turner High School, Luther Judson Price High School, Samuel H. Archer High School and Carver Vocational School.
These teams were a part of the Georgia Interscholastic Association, which was formed in 1947 because Black high schools were legally barred from competing against white schools until 1967.
In 2002, Hill was one of the many coaches of the GIA that legendary Atlanta high school coach Don Richardson — who won six state titles at Southwest Magnet High from 1971-90 — advocated to be included in the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame
Hill is still not in the hall, yet she was described as one of the best players developed at Clark, which inducted her into its Sports Hall of Fame for women’s basketball. Hill passed away in 2014.
There are still many unanswered questions about the Jim Crow era Black women’s basketball community, as well as Almeta Hill’s life and career. However, as the 2025 WNBA season begins and women’s basketball continues to grow in popularity, it’s important to remember that there is history and legacy of women who came before the current stars.
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