Mary Ellen Hamilton Award (annual)

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Honors a client who, on a compensated or volunteer basis, has provided extraordinary service or support to the delivery of legal services to the poor. The award honors one of the founders of the National Clients Council and the Alliance for Legal Rights. Mary Ellen Hamilton served on NLADA's Board of Directors and remained an active member of the Alliance until her death in 1985.

Mary Ellen Hamilton winners listing

Frequency:
Annual
Year:
2015
Recipient(s) name:

Charlie F. Morris

Recipient title:
Board Member
Recipient organization:
Memphis Area Legal Services
Memphis, Tennessee
Where presented :
NLADA Annual Conference
Reason for selection of recipient(s):

Mr. Charlie Morris is a product of the civil rights and equal justice movement in this country. He easily identified with the struggle to achieve equal justice for all people no matter their station in life. He not only knew Mary Ellen Hamilton but worked tirelessly beside her to ensure that the voices of clients were heard. Now in his mid-90s, Mr. Morris’s life commitment to the “Movement” did not occur in some naïve way. He witnessed segregation, racial hatred, and violence in very tangible ways in the South. One experience that affected him at the young age of 18, and continues to fuel his passion for justice even today, was the horror of his brother being shot, castrated, staked in a river, and dying at the hands of a white mob. He was bitter at first, but he turned this tragedy into a commitment to change this country.

Witnessing such a horrific act catapulted him into a life’s commitment to fight for racial, economic, and political justice in this country. Long before he joined Memphis Area Legal Services’ board, Mr. Morris became a voice for the “voiceless” in North Memphis where he and his late wife, Alma Morris, were the go-to persons in their community to address economic and political issues. There, they formed the Klondyke Neighborhood Association that served as a platform for community activism and to attain political clout that gained the attention of politicians and government leaders alike. They held their representatives accountable, never afraid to question them publically if they felt the interests of their largely minority community were not considered. In recognition of their community service, the City of Memphis presented them the Humanitarian Award and named a neighborhood swimming facility, Charles Morris Pool, in his honor.

Within the equal justice community, he was an active member of the National Clients Council serving on its national board. He was president of the Region VI Clients Council for a number of years. In that role, he organized meetings throughout the region from Tennessee to Mississippi and in Louisiana and Kentucky.

Frequency:
Annual
Year:
2014
Recipient(s) name:

Ethel Sylvester

Recipient title:
Board Member
Recipient organization:
Land of Lincoln Legal Assistance Foundation
East St. Louis, Missouri
Where presented :
NLADA Annual Conference
Reason for selection of recipient(s):

Ethel Sylvester (standing in photo) and her twin sister, Edna Mayes, were born in East St. Louis, Illinois, in 1928. Both have spent most of their adult lives advocating for the rights of the poor in East St. Louis, particularly for the rights of public housing tenants. Ethel moved to the Samuel Gompers Homes of the East St. Louis Housing Authority in 1960 and raised her five children there. For over 50 years, she has been a public housing activist. She has served as President of the
Gompers Tenant Council for close to 30 years and was at one time also on the Housing Authority Board of Commissioners.

She worked closely with Land of Lincoln Legal Assistance on the filing of the class action in 1985 that resulted in HUD, for the first time, taking control of a housing authority that was failing its residents. This led to the replacement or gut rehabilitation of almost all public housing units in the city. She and her sister, widely known in East St. Louis as “the twins,” have continued to advocate for the preservation of those gains and for the rights of tenants ever since.

Ethel has been a leader in many other community struggles, including the successful effort to preserve a community hospital. Ethel and Edna also devoted many years as volunteers for the Senior Companion and Hospice programs.
Ethel has also been a great champion of justice for the poor. Elected to Land of Lincoln’s Board of Directors in 1981 by the Advisory Council of which she was already a faithful member, she has served almost continuously as a board member for 35 years. During that time, she has attended almost every meeting and has been a champion for empowerment of clients and for the highest quality legal services.

Frequency:
Annual
Year:
2012
Recipient(s) name:

Theron McNeil

Recipient organization:
Nevada Legal Services, Inc.
Las Vegas , Nevada
Where presented :
NLADA Annual Conference
Reason for selection of recipient(s):

Theron McNeil has been involved with Legal Services in one way or another all of his adult life. Before moving to Nevada nine years ago, McNeil lived in Chester, Pennsylvania, he was elected to the Board of Director of Delaware County Legal Assistance in 1973. He also served ten years on the Board of Directors of the Pennsylvania Legal Services Center. In 1978 fourteen client members were chosen to be trained as trainers. McNeil, Paul Ward and Thelma Grady were part of that group. Today, they are still involved with legal services in some way. They were trained to train others in the areas of Landlord/Tenant Rights, Welfare Rights, Economic Development, Basic Principles of Unemployment Insurance Eligibility and Legislative Advocacy as well as Fundamental Advocacy and Skills Training ( FAST). McNeil served six years on the board of directors of the National Clients Council with Rosita Stanley.

Frequency:
Annual
Year:
2007
Recipient(s) name:

Amelia Nieto, Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles; Peggy Santos, Massachussetts

Where presented :
NLADA Annual Conference
Reason for selection of recipient(s):

Nieto has a widespread and distinguished reputation among the region’s poorest residents and a deep commitment to the low-income community. Nieto’s familiarity with current client issues comes largely from her responsibility as the director of Centro Shalom, a grassroots organization in Long Beach. In a small office with a team of community volunteers, she operates Centro Shalom as an urban “campesino center,” a concept she learned as a United Farm Workers staffer. Her office assists some 1,200 documented and undocumented
people a month, confronting hunger, eviction, family problems and immigration issues.

Nieto’s total submersion in the delivery of community-based emergency services to large numbers of lowincome people has qualified her as an invaluable and unparalleled source of both information and inspiration to Legal Aid staff.

“Amelia has the ability to bring the plight of the neediest among us to light,” said Karen Adelseck, chair of the LAFLA Client Council. “Amelia has touched and helped numerous lives through her work and passion at Centro Shalom and LAFLA.”

Mary Ellen Hamilton Award Winner Peggy Santos is a board member for the Massachusetts Legal Assistance Corporation (MLAC). Santos has been involved in social justiceactivities for more than 35 years, more than 25 of these in legal services activities.
She was instrumental in creating the MLAC client steering committee and helped to design the steering committee training manual. She has testified before the LSC board of directors on client issues and works with community organizations in collaboration with legal
services programs on issues that impact the quality of life for low-income people.

As a board member for the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute (MLRI), Santos served as a persistent voice for advocacy through many different forums and strategies. She not only pressed for low-income people to have access to attorneys, she was also a strong voice for client empowerment. She pushed legal services to provide trainings for and with low-income people. She urged the production of more community level education and personally distributed these materials. At the national level, she played an important role in making
sure clients were involved in shaping legal services’ priorities and protecting legal services from attacks.

“At every turn, Peggy has worked to get low-income people in her community information and training that will empower them” said Annette R. Duke, housing attorney with the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute. “Peggy has given her time and energy to so many projects,
so many efforts, and so many struggles – many of which have involved strengthening legal services. At her core, she values learning and is an incredible learner herself. It is what makes Peggy an incredible and life-long leader."