The following appeared Jan. 13 on Egghead, a UC Davis blog at blogs.ucdavis.edu/egghead:

Horace Hampton was elected president of the UC Davis student body in 1949, one of the first blacks to be elected to such a post at a major U.S. university and the first in the UC system (UCLA students also elected a black student body president later the same year).

Hampton was a former Marine attending UC Davis on the GI Bill. One of a handful of African Americans on campus at the time, he was also editor of The California Aggie student newspaper. He resigned as student body president after six months, however, finding that it took too much time from his studies.

In an article in the summer 1992 issue of UC Davis Magazine, alumnus Mark Clevenger, who managed Hampton’s campaign and worked with him at the Aggie, described him:

“He was a small guy who smoked a big black cigar and always had a smile on his face. He had an almost indescribable leadership quality. He was one of those individuals who was so sensitive to the person he was talking to that it was as if he saw inside them. I never met anybody who didn’t like him.”

Like President Obama, Hampton campaigned on a call for change. In Hampton’s case, he urged that the student government be more active and conduct outreach.

He graduated in 1950 with a degree in agricultural education, and later headed the Fresno West Development Corp. and the Yosemite Capital Investment Co., organizations that fostered African American businesses. Hampton died in 1991.

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