Exie Lee Hampton

Exie Lee Kelley (or Kelly) was born in Boone County, Missouri. She attended Lincoln Institute in Jefferson City, Missouri,[1] and Kansas State Agricultural College,[2] earning a bachelor's degree in home economics. She pursued further training in summer sessions at Columbia University and the University of Southern California.[3]

Hampton was a home economics teacher. By 1921, she was a teacher-trainer at West Virginia State College, at Wilberforce University,[3] and at Branch Normal School in Pine Bluff, Arkansas.[4][5] She taught for five years at East Side High School in El Centro, California.[3][6]

In the early 1930s, she became executive director of the Clay Street Clubs, which she developed with others into the Clay Avenue YWCA, a branch that served African-American girls and women in San Diego's Logan Heights neighborhood.[3][7] She left the San Diego work to join the national board of the YWCA, in the USO division, during World War II.[8] She was also active in the San Diego chapter of the NAACP.[9]

In 1946, she became executive director of the Eastside Settlement House in Los Angeles.[8][10][11] In 1961, she was leader of the Victoria Business and Professional Women's Club of Riverside, California.[12] She was on the first board of directors of the Inland Area Urban League, when it started in 1966.[13]

Hampton was active in the black sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha for many years. In 1937, she attended and spoke at the western regional conference of the group.[14] In 1950, she chaired the western regional conference.[15][16][17]

Exie Lee Kelley married a pastor, Charles H. Hampton, in 1929, and as the pastor's wife was active in women's groups in the Baptist churches in El Centro and San Diego.[18] Rev. Hampton was president of the Western Baptist State Convention for over thirty years, before he died in 1979.[19] Exie Lee Hampton also died in 1979, in San Diego, in her eighties.

• A photograph of Exie Lee Hampton in the 1940s, "Children receive food at the Eastside Settlement House, Los Angeles, ca. 1941-1950", in the Charlotta Bass / California Eagle Photograph Collection, University of Southern California Libraries.
• A photograph of Exie Lee Hampton with other members of the Riverside NAACP, at Riversider website.
• Exie Lee Hampton at Find a Grave