Velma Bell Hamilton

Bell was born in Pontotoc, Mississippi, and raised in Beloit, Wisconsin, the daughter of Walter Bell and Malvina Grace Allen Bell.^[1] She graduated from Beloit Memorial High School in 1926 and graduated from Beloit College in 1930. She was the college's first Black member of Phi Beta Kappa.^[2] She earned a master's degree in sociology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1933.^[3]

Hamilton taught sociology at Bennett College in North Carolina in the 1930s,^[4][5] and was registrar at Tougaloo College in Alabama in the early 1940s,^[6] while her husband was teaching there. In 1943, she was the founding president of the Madison branch of the NAACP.^[7] From 1950 to 1975, she taught English and was chair of general studies at Madison Vocational School,^[8] where she was the first Black faculty member, and for a time the only Black full-time teacher in Madison.^[9] She was an evaluator for the North Central Accrediting Association.^[1]

Hamilton served on the Governor's Commission on Human Rights and the Wisconsin Arts Board,^[10] and was active in other organizations concerning human rights and education.^[11] She was a trustee of Beloit College, and a member of the Dane County Commission on Aging, the Wisconsin Retired Teachers Association, and the advisory panel of the Madison YWCA.^[12] She held honorary degrees from Lakeland College (1981) and Beloit College (1991).^[1] Velma Hamilton Middle School was Madison is named for her in 1992.^[13] The Madison Community Foundation honored her as an Asset Builder in 2002.^[14]

Bell married soil scientist Harry L. Hamilton in 1934. They had three children, Harry Jr.,^[15] Patricia, and Muriel.^[9] Her husband died in 1996,^[16] and she died in 2009, at the age of 99, in Atlanta.^[1] The Velma and Harry Hamilton Papers are in the Wisconsin Historical Society.^[17] A dining hall at Beloit College is named Hamiltons Café, after her, her son, her daughter, and her granddaughter, all Beloit alumni.^[18]