Name
Hamilton, Mary Lucille, 1935-2002 (Interviewee)
Nelson, Frank (Interviewee)
Michaels, Sheila, 1939-2017 (Interviewer)
Title
Oral history interview with Mary Hamilton, 1999
Other Titles
Oral history of Mary Hamilton Wesley with Frank Nelson, 1999; Reminiscences of Mary Hamilton, 1999; Oral history of Mary Hamilton Wesley, 1999
Abstract
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 disc usses her work with CORE in several cities, including Lebanon, Tennessee; New Orleans, Louisiana; Atlanta, Georgia; Fayetteville, North Carolina; Little Rock, Arkansas; and Birmingham and Gadsden, Alabama. With Frank Nelson, she discusses 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 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. 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
Collection Name
Sheila Michaels civil rights organization oral history collection
Subjects
Civil rights movements--History--20th century.--United States; Civil rights demonstrations--United States; Civil rights workers--History--20th century.--United States; African Americans--Suffrage; Imprisonment--United States; Literacy tests (Election law); United States Race relations 20th century; Hamilton, Mary Lucille, 1935-2002; Congress of Racial Equality; Service Employees International Union. Local 1199 (New York, N.Y.)
Format
oral histories
Genre
Interviews
Date
1999
Physical Description
255 pages
Note (Biographical)
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. 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
Note
Interviewed by Sheila Michaels on November 11, November 19, and December 23, 1998, and on January 9, February 4, February 13, and March 4, 1999. The session on November 19, 1998 included Frank Nelson
Note (Provenance)
Sheila Michaels, Gift circa 1999-2005
Language
English
Library Location
Columbia Center for Oral History, Columbia University
Catalog Record
11604565
Persistent URL
https://dx.doi.org/10.7916/d8-6edr-y509
Related URLs
Available digital content for this interview.