"Grace Towns Hamilton"[February 10,1907-June 17,1992.]

The first African American woman elected to the Georgia General Assembly,she was also the first female of her race in the Deep South to hold a public office of such consequence.She was among eight African Americans sent to the state legislature in a special election in June 1965;they were the first to enter the lower house since the end of Reconstruction.Grace represented her district in mid-Atlanta continuously for the next eighteen years,becoming known to her peers as "the effective woman legislator the state has ever had."Born in Atlanta Grace the oldest of the four surviving of Harriet McNair & George Alexander Townes.She grew up in the sheltered environs of Atlanta University (later Clark Atlanta University),an integrated institution,where her daddy was a professor of English and pedagogy.Taught from her earliest years that she had a duty to serve her race,she was educated,from grade school through college at Atlanta University,where she received an undergraduate degree in 1927.At Ohio State University,which awarded her a master's degree in psychology in 1929,Grace earned her expenses by working in Columbus for the Young Women's Christian Association.Returning to Atlanta,Grace taught psychology at Clark college and the Atlanta School of Social Work.In 1930 she married Atlanta native Henry Cooke Hamilton,the son of prominent builder Alexander D.Hamilton.The couple spent the next decade in Memphis,Tennessee,where Grace gave birth in 1931 to their only child,Eleanor.In Memphis she taught psychology at Lemoyne College,where her husband also taught;surveyed African American workers for the works Progress Administration; and developed interracial programs on numerous colleges campuses for the YWCA.In 1941 her husband became head of Atlanta University's high school program,and she returned with him to Atlanta where the couple spent the rest of their lives.In 1943 Grace was appointed executive director of the Atlanta Urban League (AUL),becoming one of the earliest women to hold such a post.Under her leadership the AUL chose not to follow the National Urban League's emphasis on employment instead waged intensive campaigns within the confines of segregation for advance in schooling,health care,housing,and voting rights for African Americans.Sidestepping the issue of segregation eventually brought her into conflict with NUL,which established tighter controls over it locals.In 1961 Grace lost her AUL post.An interim of private consulting preceded her subsequent-and best  known career in the Georgia legislature,where Grace worked tirelessly between 1965 & 1985 to expand political representation for African Americans in city,county,& state governments.She was a Principal architect of the 1973 Atlanta City Charter,which replaced a century-old predecessor and brought African Americans onto the Atlanta City Council for the first time in a number commensurate with their proportion of the population.Grace was a leader in congressional and legislative reapportionment battles.In 1972 Andrew Young became the first African American to represent Atlanta's Fifth District in Congress after white legislators had repeatedly manipulated district district lines to thwart him at the polls,and he credited Grace with making his election possible.Following the 1980 census the Fifth District figured in another reappointment battle this,one more brutal than last.Grace took the side of the white leadership against militant young African Americans who wanted Atlanta redistricted to the advantaged of African Americans.Her opposition to a seat made to order an African American exacerbated her conflicts with her opponents.Grace was defeated in her bid for reelection to her legislative post in September by Mabel Thomas,a woman one-third her age.Grace held only one other public post,as advisor to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission from January 1985-January 1987.