📍Toulminville, Mobile, Alabama, USA
1934 – 1951“I was born in Mobile, Alabama, in February 1934, the third of eight children of Herbert and Estella Aaron, and in 1942 my father bought almost two acres of land in Toulminville, a rural Black community on the edge of Mobile, for a hundred dollars and built us a three-room house. Each year he added to it. The roof leaked sometimes, and I shared space with my brothers and sisters, but it was ours, and my parents taught us to work hard and to hold our heads up in the segregated South. We couldn't afford baseball equipment, so I hit bottle caps with sticks and made balls from rags and string, practising for hours in the yard and the empty lots around Toulminville. I learned to hit cross-handed, with my left hand above my right, because nobody showed me otherwise. I listened to games on the radio, and when Jackie Robinson came to Mobile with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1948, I skipped school to hear him speak and told my father I would play in the major leagues before Jackie retired. My high school had no baseball team, so I played softball and then semi-professional baseball with the Pritchett Athletics and the Mobile Black Bears. In 1952 I joined the Indianapolis Clowns of the Negro American League, and soon the Braves signed me. In 1974 I broke Babe Ruth's home run record, despite racist threats. The house my father built was restored as the Hank Aaron Childhood Home and Museum, and in 2023 it was moved back to our old neighbourhood in Toulminville.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today