Miss Mary Hamilton - On September 26, 1963, the Alabama Supreme Court upheld the contempt conviction of Mary Hamilton, a Black woman who was demeaned in court by a white prosecutor. The prosecutor refused to use the word "Miss" when addressing Ms. Hamilton, and insisted on calling her by her first name, a practice that was widely used in the American South to demean and disrespect Black people. In June 1963, Mary Hamilton was a field secretary for the Congress of Racial Equality in Alabama, and one of hundreds of activists arrested during civil rights protests in the city of Gadsden. At a court hearing to determine the legitimacy of those arrests, Ms. Hamilton took the witness stand for questioning. When Etowah County Solicitor William Rayburn addressed her by her first name only, after addressing earlier white witnesses as "Miss," Ms. Hamilton refused to answer and Judge A.B. Cunningham held her in contempt. Ms. Hamilton served the jail time but refused to pay the fine and was allowed out on bond to appeal the conviction. The Alabama Supreme Court—a panel of all-white justices—upheld the conviction unanimously.