Linda Hamilton
On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Monday, January 18, the Eugene Human
Rights Commission presented its annual Human Rights Award to Linda
Hamilton, a 30-year resident of Eugene who has served on more than 20
local educational and governmental boards and committees. "I call it
community civic engagement," she says, "being at the table to drive the
change you need around equity. I'm usually the only black person on
those boards." Hamilton was the seventh of 12 children in her family,
growing up in the bayous of northeast Louisiana. "My mom, Fannie Akins,
was Cherokee and Black," she says. "We all called her Madea. Dad hunted
alligator, turtle, rabbit, duck and deer. We grew sugar cane,
watermelon, collard greens; and raised chickens, hogs, and cows." By
age 12, Linda wanted out. "I was scared," she recalls. "I saw young
girls getting pregnant. Kids dropped out to work in the fields." She
saw her chance at age 15, when her uncle and cousin from Las Vegas came
to visit. "I packed my stuff in a brown paper bag," she says. "We told
my mother that I'd be back." Instead, she wound up living with her
aunt, her mom's baby sister, in Salem, Oregon. She was the only Black
in her 1985 McKay High School graduating class. "I got a lot of
attention," she recalls. "People were so accepting, loving and kind."
She studied criminal justice at Chemeketa Junior College, but left to
pursue real-life experience as a store detective: Nordstrom's sent her
to its flagship Portland store. She went from there to the Oregon
Department of Corrections, where she was one of the first women to work
in an all-male maximum security prison, the Oregon State Penitentiary
in Salem. In 1996, she was promoted to Correctional Counselor/Parole
and Probation Officer in Eugene, where she lives with her husband,
Senior State Trooper Rick Hamilton, and where they raised their
daughter Tiwanna. In 2015, she was elected to an at-large position on
the Lane Education Service District Board of Directors. "I got an award
from the University of Oregon," she notes, "for juggling the most
meetings!"
happening people
photograph and story by Paul Neevel
Eugene Weekly / 11 February 2021
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