Oral history interview with Mary Hamilton, 1999

Biographical Note

Mary Hamilton (1935-2002), was a Field Secretary for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), as well as a union organizer. Hamilton was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and raised by her grandmother as a devout Catholic. She was educated in Catholic schools and graduated high school in 1953. Hamilton attended Drake University and the University of Iowa for college. Hamilton moved to Los Angeles, California to live with her father and became a first grade teacher. She left teaching after becoming active in the Los Angeles CORE chapter and joining the Freedom Rides. Hamilton was the only woman hired to be a Field Secretary for CORE, and she travelled throughout the South working with local communities to set up CORE chapters and assist them in planning protest activities. She was the plaintiff in the 1964 Supreme Court case Hamilton v. Alabama (1964), also known as the "Miss Mary" case. The case held that calling a Black person by his or her first name, in a formal context, such as the courtroom, was a form of racial discrimination. Her attorneys argued that failure to address Black citizens with the honorific Mr., Mrs. or Miss and their last name was part of a racial caste system that violated the equal protection guarantees of the United States Constitution. After leaving CORE, Hamilton worked for SEIU 1199 as a union organizer at local healthcare facilities in New York. Hamilton had one daughter, Holly

Scope and Contents

In this interview with Sheila Michaels, Mary Hamilton discusses her childhood, family dynamics, relationships, education, religion, and the complexity of being mixed race. She details her role in the civil rights movement during the 1960s. Hamilton was involved with the Young Zionists, Young People's Socialist league (YPSL), and most prominently with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). She discusses her work with CORE in several cities, including Lebanon, Tennessee; New Orleans, Louisiana; Atlanta, Georgia; Fayetteville, North Carolina; Birmingham and Gadsden, Alabama. She recounts her experiences being beaten, threatened, and jailed in prisons throughout the South, including Parchman State Prison; and the toll these incidents took on her health and life. Hamilton discusses the central role women played in the civil rights movement, and the shifts and changes that occurred with the influx of Northern white youth into the movement. She discusses how decisions were made to determine the type of protest action that would occur in each city, and the type of support received from CORE and members of the local communities in which she worked. Hamilton also discusses the shift from direct action to voter registration, group demographics in small towns versus large cities, and the tactics employed to help Southern Blacks pass literacy tests

Subjects

• African Americans--Suffrage.
• Civil rights demonstrations--United States.
• Civil rights movements--United States--History--20th century.
• Civil rights workers--United States--History--20th century.
• Congress of Racial Equality.
• Hamilton, Mary Lucille, 1935-2002--Interviews.
• Imprisonment--United States.
• Interviews.
• Literacy tests (Election law)
• Michaels, Sheila, 1939-2017, interviewer.
• Oral histories.
• United States--Race relations--History--20th century.