As president and CEO of the Atlanta History Center, Sheffield Hale maintains the 175,000-square-foot museum dedicated to preserving and exploring Atlanta’s history.
At 3:30 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy, Hale will discuss this work in the closing installment of the 2025 African American Heritage House Lecture Series.
In 2021, Hale received the Georgia Governor’s Award for Arts & Humanities from Gov. Brian Kemp for his work at the Atlanta History Center, which at the time had just launched a new strategic plan focused on connecting people, history and culture to strengthen community and democracy.
“We will hold democracy at the center of our research, scholarship and storytelling,” Hale said in a blog post on the center’s website following the announcement. “As people across our city, state and country consider what it means to create a democracy functioning by and for everyone, Atlanta History Center will use its resources to explore the history of the components that make a healthy democratic system. We will be a home for meaningful conversations.”
The Atlanta History Center will celebrate its 100th anniversary
in 2026.
Under Hale’s leadership, the Atlanta History Center has led the Confederate Monument Initiative, and Hale has served as co-chair of the Advisory Committee on City of Atlanta Street Names and Monuments Associated with the Confederacy. In addition to his work at the Atlanta History Center, Hale is chair of the advisory board of the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, an ex-officio member of the board of the Old Salem Museums and Gardens, and a member of the Advisory Board for the Center for the Study of the American South. He is also past chair of the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation.
An Atlanta native, Hale received his Bachelor of Arts in history from the University of Georgia and his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law; prior to joining the Atlanta History Center in 2012, Hale served as chief counsel of the American Cancer Society and was a partner in the firm of Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton.
“If you want to be persuasive, you have to approach people where they are,” Hale told UGA Today in 2023, reflecting on his pivot from law. “You have to give them the ability to be surprised or to learn something that might shift their viewpoint a little bit. And this crosses all ideologies. No one has a monopoly on truth or knowledge. We all can use a little bit more perspective.”
