Listen to Learn:
How the church influenced Dr. Hampton’s civic involvement
The myriad of tests that African Americans had to pass in order to be considered for integration
History of the Little Rock Nine
What she learned after traveling through Arkansas about the population she sees as at the most economic risk.
Sybil Jordan (Hampton) was born on September 1, 1944 in Springfield, Missouri to Lorraine H. Jordan and Leslie W. Jordan. Hampton grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas, where she was among the second group of African American students to attend Central High School in 1959, two years after the Little Rock Nine integrated the school. Hampton graduated in 1962, and received her B.A. degree in English literature from Earlham College in 1966. She then earned her M.S.T. degree in elementary education from the University of Chicago in 1968, her M.Ed. degree in higher education from Columbia University Teacher’s College in 1982, and her Ed.D. degree, also from Columbia, in 1991.
Hampton worked as an elementary school teacher at the Louis Champlain School in Chicago, Illinois, and as an academic administrator at Iona College and served as director of the Higher Education Opportunity Program in New Rochelle, New York. In 1985, she became the contributions manager of education and culture at the GTE Corporate Foundation in Stamford, Connecticut. She then worked as the assistant dean of student academic affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Family Resources and Consumer Sciences from 1987 to 1993, when she became the special assistant to the president at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas. From 1996 to 2006, Hampton served as president of the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation in Little Rock. She was the general manager of the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra for the 2006-2007 season. In 2007, she founded her own business consulting firm, Sybil Jordan Hampton and Associates.
