Supreme Court, Hamilton v. Alabama , decided that an African-American woman was entitled to the same courteous forms of address customarily reserved solely to whites in the Southern United States , [2] and that calling a black person by his or her first name in a legal proceeding was "a form of racial discrimination".
Hamilton, who grew up in Iowa and Colorado, wanted to be a nun and briefly taught parochial school in Los Angeles. She participated in the Freedom Rides , and was arrested in Jackson, Mississippi, in , enduring "sweltering jails, [and] invasive and unnecessary vaginal exams, answering police and jail officers with "polite noncompliance". She continued to engage in non-violent protest and helped register voters , all the while being arrested frequently at protests, [4] and rose to the position of "field secretary", the only female field secretary at the time, only the third one in CORE's history, and the first one to be allowed to work in the South.
After being arrested in Lebanon, Tennessee , a mayor who visited her addressed her as Mary, without the honorific "Miss" or "Mrs. An appeal was filed on grounds that she was denied her constitutional rights since she did not receive the same treatment as white witnesses. It was denied by the Alabama Supreme Court and ended up before the United States Supreme Court , [2] which in April unanimously overruled the lower court without hearing oral arguments.
The case made national headlines and landed Hamilton on the cover of Jet magazine, but left her tired and in ill health. That marriage ended in divorce, as did her subsequent marriage to Harold Wesley. Mary Hamilton died on November 13, after a seven-year battle against 4th-stage ovarian cancer. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Mary Lucille Hamilton. At the time, she was 25 years old. The North Country News. November 13, Archived from the original on August 27, Retrieved November 29, Barron's Educational Series.
Retrieved July 13, National Public Radio. November 30, Retrieved November 30, Race, Law, and American Society: Present. Prosecutorial Misconduct: Law, Procedure, Forms. The Civil Rights Movement Archive. Westwind Writers Inc. Namespaces Article Talk. Views Read Edit View history. Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file. Download as PDF Printable version. Wikimedia Commons. Add links. Activism during the Civil Rights Movement, Hamilton v. Alabama Civil Rights Movement.
