Hamilton, Saralee, 1945-2006

Saralee Mary Lamb Hamilton was born October 28, 1945. She was raised by her mother and grandparents in Glasgow, Pennsylvania. While studying for a B.A. at Dunbarton College of Holy Cross in Washington, DC, she was active in the National Federation of Catholic Students and worked on Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign. After a year of graduate work at New York University, Hamilton left for Philadelphia where, in 1968, she and a group of friends founded the Institute for Educational Development. The IED worked to facilitate communication between college students and administrators, and organized summer workshops and anti-Vietnam war activities.

Saralee Hamilton at the March for Women's Equality/Women's Lives in Washington, DC, April 9, 1989

In 1971, Hamilton was among the radical student activists who founded the New American Movement (NAM) to be a successor organization to Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). In 1973-74, she worked on NAM's efforts to impeach President Richard M. Nixon.

Hamilton joined the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) in 1975 as founding director of its Nationwide Women's Program. NWP was one of AFSC's three "nationwide" programs (the Third World Coalition and Affirmative Action Office being the other two) established in the 1970s to "foster new ways of thinking (and working) across the entire AFSC so that members of oppressed and marginalized groups could participate fully in the life and work of the Service Committee." The "nationwides" were created to "heighten the awareness of organizational staff, and the effectiveness of organizational programming, at all levels."

In the early years of the program, Hamilton became part of the intellectual development of modern feminism, meeting often with the emerging leadership of that movement. According to a history of the Nationwide Women's Program written for the AFSC shortly after Hamilton's death, "Saralee, and most of those who have passed through the NWP as staff or committee members, have shared a bottom-line understanding of the crucial importance of intersectionality--analytically, programmatically, and politically." It was through Hamilton's efforts that various AFSC programs became connected to women's groups around the world, such as MADRE; GABRIELA, in the Philippines; Isis International Women's Information and Communication Service, in South America; and Women Living Under Muslim Laws. She was also involved in the Reproductive Rights National Network (R2N2), and in the Committee to End Sterilization Abuse (CESA). Her vision of mutuality introduced AFSC perspectives to women's movements, and brought learnings from those movements to the AFSC. She was also adept at fostering women's involvement in issues from the policy level down to the every day actions that could bring about change. She organized delegations to women's conferences including the U.N. World Conferences on Women in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1985, and in Beijing in 1995.

Saralee Hamilton died at age 61 on December 7, 2006 in Philadelphia, PA, of complications from cancer.