Oral history interview with Mary Hamilton and Frank Nelson, 1998

Biographical Note

Mary Hamilton was born in 1935 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. She was a Field Secretary for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and a union organizer for SEIU 1199. During the civil rights movement, 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. Hamilton passed away in 2002. Frank Nelson was born in New York City in 1938. He was an active leader in the civil rights movement, the antiwar movement, and for various other progressive causes. In 1961, Nelson went south to join the Freedom Rides in an effort to desegregate public facilities in Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, Florida, and North Carolina. During this time, Nelson was arrested, jailed, and beaten various times. Nelson ultimately settled in San Francisco and was active in progressive activism there until his death in 2005

Scope and Contents

In this interview, Mary Hamilton and Frank Nelson discuss their stint in the Parchman Farm Mississippi State Penitentiary during the Freedom Rides of 1961. They also describe pleading their cases in court. Hamilton details how she was offered a job as a field secretary at the New York chapter of Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) after she was released from jail. She comments on the organizing work she did in many Southern cities such as Lebanon, Tennessee; Gadsden, Alabama; and Little Rock, Arkansas. She also mentions her involvement with the News and Letters Committee in Detroit, Michigan. Hamilton details her experience working with the Service Employees International Union Local 1199, and picketing the Flower-Fifth Avenue Hospital during a unionization drive

Subjects

• 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
• Michaels, Sheila, 1939-2017, interviewer.
• Nelson, Frank--Interviews.
• Nelson, Frank Interviewee
• Oral histories
• Service Employees International Union. Local 1199 (New York, N.Y.)
• United States--Race relations--History--20th century.