[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 20 (Tuesday, February 29, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S969-S970]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    GRACE TOWNS HAMILTON (1907-1992)

   Mr. CLELAND. Mr. President, ``A political leader who changes 
his stances to fit the times is often called a politician in the 
dirtiest sense of the word. One who refuses to change, who remains with 
her lifelong ideals, is often called reactionary and stubborn. But such 
a person may also be seen as possessing both honesty and intrigue.'' So 
spoke Alton Hornsby, Morehouse College historian in 1990 as the city of 
Atlanta remembered one of its greatest treasures, Grace Towns Hamilton.
  Grace Towns was quite simply, a legend in her own time. Born in 
Atlanta in 1907, Grace entered this world during a time of severe 
racial tension. In fact, her birthday came only 5 months after a 
ferocious racial massacre in Atlanta. For whites, the first decades of 
the twentieth century were the ``Progressive Era.'' For blacks, it was 
indeed a most dismal era. The end of Reconstruction had left blacks as 
an often despised and almost always disenfranchised class made up 
largely of dependent laborers with little land and even less rights. 
Atlanta University (AU), on the city's western reaches, seemed an 
island of tranquility in the South, where blacks experienced the worst 
of the racial oppression and exclusion. Grace Towns' father was a 
professor at AU and she was able to enjoy a sheltered existence where 
both the student body and the faculty were integrated.
  Grace Towns flourished while growing up at AU. Once she matriculated 
as a collegiate there, Grace became active in the Interracial Student 
Forum. She took this advantage of the opportunity to discuss a wide 
range of topics, including those which were most racially sensitive. 
For her, this was a forum to bring black and white students together. 
While she was editor of the AU student newspaper, the Scroll, Grace 
wrote of the forum, ``the Forum has given us contact. We have heard 
each other's music, and talked as fellow students.''
  After graduating from AU in 1927, Grace Towns went on to pursue a 
master's degree in psychology at Ohio State University in Columbus, 
Ohio. During her college years, she became involved with the YWCA. The 
Atlanta chapter had a burgeoning student movement that took a divergent 
approach on race that was less cautious than its parent organization at 
the time. It was interracial far before the first ``Negro'' was 
appointed to the board. After she graduated, the National YWCA offered 
her a secretarial job in one of its Negro branches. A favorite 
psychology professor at AU had a high regard for the psychology 
department at Ohio State and seeing as how the YWCA job would make it 
possible to finance her post-graduate education at the same time, Grace 
decided to go.
  Grace Towns later admitted that there was no way she could have been 
prepared for what she faced in Ohio. The cocoon of Atlanta University 
ill-prepared her for the shock that awaited her in the Ohio capital 
city. Barred from movies, restaurants, hotels, even public restrooms, 
Towns felt accepted only within the confines of the Ohio State 
psychology department. Even the YWCA, which in Atlanta had seemed so 
dedicated to the rights of all women, without regard to the color of 
their skin, had its barriers and limitations. The prejudice and violent 
attitude towards blacks at the time made the goals and the religious 
and moral precepts professed by the organization a challenge that the 
``Y'' often failed to meet.
  These factors combined to make Grace Towns not sorry to leave 
Columbus, Ohio in the summer of 1928. She returned to Atlanta to finish 
the written requirements for her master's from Ohio State, having 
already finished the course work. After receiving the degree in 1929, 
she went on to teach at the Atlanta School of Social Work and also at 
Clark College in Atlanta. She married the love of her life, Henry Cooke 
Hamilton, in the summer of 1930. They moved shortly thereafter to 
Memphis where her husband had taken a job doing triple duty as dean, 
registrar and professor of education.
  Grace Hamilton continued teaching, even through the first months of 
her pregnancy with her first daughter Eleanor, born in March of 1931. 
She had

[[Page S970]]

taken a position at LeMoyne Junior College and resumed teaching at 
LeMoyne while Eleanor was still young. She continued to teach there, 
although circumstances compelled her to undertake courses that she did 
not feel qualified to teach. In 1934, this frustration came to a head 
when gender issues and the Great Depression forced LeMoyne to terminate 
her employment. After volunteering with the NAACP and the YWCA, Grace 
took a position with the Works Progress Administration (WPA) conducting 
a survey on The Urban Negro Worker in the United States 1925-1936.
  In 1941, the Hamilton family returned to Atlanta where Grace's 
husband became principal of Atlanta University's Laboratory High 
School. Grace had never set out to be a leader, but at this point she 
was thirty-four years old, had an advanced education degree, and had 
worked steadily at professional jobs for more than a decade. She knew 
the value of community activism and education and set out to take part 
in the fight. This led her to the Atlanta Urban League.
  From 1943 until 1960, Grace Hamilton served as the Executive Director 
of the Atlanta Urban League. During her tenure, she shaped the path of 
the League to better serve Atlanta, which was increasingly being seen 
as the South's ``hub city.'' She moved the focus away from the national 
organization's emphasis on philanthropy and job procurement to a more 
Atlanta-focused program of housing, equality in school funding, voter 
registration and better medical care. Her biographers, Lorraine Nelson 
Spritzer and Jean B. Bergmark, wrote of her legacy that it ``. . .was 
better appreciated by whites than blacks. The white world glorified 
her, clothing her in virtue without flaws. The black community viewed 
her with greater ambivalence, seeing blemish as well as the best and 
came closer to discerning the real and important person she was, 
probably because she was truly one of their own.''
  After Mrs. Hamilton resigned in 1960, she set out on her path to 
political success. She ran in a special off-year election in 1965 which 
brought her and six other black Democrats into the Georgia state 
legislature. The first black woman in the Georgia State Legislature, 
Hamilton was called ``Atlanta's only real integrationist,'' ``a 
leader,'' and a ``bridge-builder.'' It was here where she made her most 
lasting contribution to her city and state, and all agreed she was that 
rare person who gave politics a good name. I remember fondly serving 
with her while I was in the Georgia state senate from 1970 until 1974.
  While serving in the state legislature, Grace Hamilton sought to 
strengthen local government, particularly the Mayor's role. She also 
worked towards equal justice for blacks, and the elimination wasted tax 
dollars by seeking consolidation of Georgia's numerous counties. In 
1971, she persuaded her colleagues in the Legislature to approve a 
sales tax increase to finance a city-wide rail and subway system--now 
known in Atlanta as MARTA, a crown jewel among the nation's urban mass 
transit systems. Her time in the Legislature was infinitely successful 
and in 1984, at the age of 78 she began to consider retirement. She 
decided for ``one last go-around'' but failed to detect the political 
risk she faced. She was defeated by a 26 year-old graduate student in 
public administration at Georgia State named Mable Thomas. After almost 
twenty years in public office, Grace Hamilton set out for the next 
phase of life.
  Grace Hamilton lived on another eight years, overseeing the care of 
her ailing husband and guiding the search for a suitable depository for 
her papers and effects. She collected numerous accolades and awards 
before she finally succumbed to illness in 1992, survived by her 
daughter Eleanor.
  As we come to the end of Black History Month, I respectfully submit 
this insert into the Congressional Record in honor of one of my 
personal heroes, Grace Towns Hamilton. Her service has been an 
inspiration to me and many others who have known her. I am proud of her 
legacy in Georgia and pleased to have this opportunity to share it. I 
would also like to thank Mrs. Hamilton's biographers, Lorraine Nelson 
Spritzer and Jean B. Bergmark, for their contribution to Grace's 
legacy--Grace Towns Hamilton and the Politics of Southern Change.
  Thank you Mr. President.

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