Institutional racism and functional anonymity are two concepts from the political corpus of Dr. Charles V. Hamilton, but it was his advocacy of Black Power that gave him long standing academic prominence and respect. A scholar who was more interested in conveying his ideas in the classroom, leaving the bullhorn to Stokely Carmichael, Hamilton’s reticence almost made his death in November in Chicago go unnoticed. He was 94, and no causes of his death were reported.
Dr. Hamilton might have quietly continued to teach without public attention, but the book he co-authored with Carmichael (who later changed his name to Kwame Ture), “Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America,” thrust him momentarily on the ramparts, though it was Ture’s promotion that gave the concept its popularity in radical circles. While Ture shouted “Black Power,” Hamilton was content to stay in the stacks, conducting research that led to his biography of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. in 1991 and other political issues and debates.
Hamilton was born in Muskogee, Okla., on October 19, 1929, and in 1935, his family moved to the south side of Chicago. During his formative years, he expressed an interest in journalism but was convinced that little opportunity existed there for African Americans. In 1951, he graduated from Roosevelt University, at that time a vortex of social and political turbulence. Six years later, he had his master’s degree from the University of Chicago, and in 1958, he began his teaching career at Tuskegee University.
Noted political scientist and author Wilbur Rich recalled having Hamilton as a teacher. In his profile of Hamilton in Columbia magazine, Rich said that “unlike most Tuskegee professors, who always seemed so deferential toward the school’s traditions, Hamilton was not afraid to discuss the Civil Rights Movement or other controversial issues in class.”
Rich said that Hamilton was “always challenging his students to raise their questions about commonly accepted ideas, Hamilton encouraged us to debate the issues of the day. But whenever anyone commented on the top of his head, Hamilton would shoot back, ‘Show me your data.'”
Showing the data would be the watchword of his research, just as taking a stand against racism would be part of his calling. Rich offered another example from his days at Tuskegee: “When Martin Luther King Jr. visited Tuskegee in the late 1950s, school administrators, fearful of reprisals from the white community, would not permit him to appear on campus, so he spoke at a local church instead.
“Sitting in the audience,” Rich continued, “I realized that Hamilton was the only Tuskegee professor in attendance. At a time when many people (both black and white) saw King as an outsider whose methods of nonviolent protest would only stir up more trouble for black people, Hamilton stood on stage with King and even had his photograph taken with him.”
In 1964, he returned to the University of Chicago and earned his doctorate before teaching at several colleges, and by 1969, he was a professor at Columbia University, where his reputation would be considerably advanced. As a Ford Foundation-funded professor in urban political science, he became one of the first African Americans to hold an academic chair at an Ivy League university. To some extent, the radicalism at Roosevelt University prepared him for the turmoil that erupted at Columbia.
Even so, the classroom was his bailiwick, and again, Rich, after being recruited to join the faculty, renewed his friendship with his mentor.
“During the seven years I spent at Columbia,” Rich recounted, “I taught undergraduate courses in political science and contemporary civilization. More importantly, I had a second opportunity to learn from Hamilton, whom I had not seen since our Tuskegee days 13 years earlier.
“Not only did I come to call him ‘Chuck,’ but I also got a chance to watch him teach both undergraduate and graduate students. He once told me that when he first started at Columbia, every course he taught had the word black in the title. However, since his expertise was far broader than protest politics, he soon began to teach graduate courses on public policy and undergraduate courses on American government. Despite his busy schedule, Hamilton was always approachable. The hallway outside his office at the southwest end of the SIPA building was often filled with students discussing city administration, presidential politics, and changes in the black leadership class.”
During his tenure at Columbia, Hamilton lived in New Rochelle until his retirement in 1998. He later moved back to Chicago to be closer to his niece.
Among Dr. Hamilton’s other books was “The Dual Agenda: Race and Social Welfare Policies of Civil Rights Organizations” (1997), which he wrote with his wife, Dona Cooper Hamilton, a professor at Lehman College in New York. She died in 2015. He is survived by a stepdaughter, Valli Hamilton. His daughter, Carol, who was press secretary to Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown, died in 1996 when a plane carrying Mr. Brown and others crashed in Croatia.