Zipporah Hammond, thought to be the first African-American woman to graduate from the University of Colorado school of nursing, died in a Longmont care facility July 6. She was 87.
As a student, Hammond was allowed to live on campus, but she and Japanese students were segregated from white students, said her son Stephen Hammond of Potomac Falls, Va.
She and other minority students also didn’t have the same access to professors and even some of the facilities, he said.
“She was friendly, outgoing and quiet,” said a childhood friend, Yvonne Butler of Nashville, Tenn. “But she was also determined, and if she had something in her mind, she stuck to it.”
“She wasn’t a radical or the kind who stepped up. She just quietly pushed on,” said her other son, Darrell Hammond of Longmont. “She never fought; she just persevered when other people might have shut down.”
Hammond, who usually went by “Zippy,” was given a recognition reception by CU in 2004, but no mention was made of the earlier segregation. This week, the family received a letter from CU president Bruce Benson, noting her accomplishments.
Zipporah Joseph Parks was born in Denver on March 1, 1924, and graduated from Manual High School.
She had wanted to be a nurse from the time she was in grade school. When she was a fifth-grader, students in her class were asked to draw a picture, and she drew a nurse, Stephen Hammond said.
After graduating from CU in 1946, she was chief surgical nurse at John Andrews Hospital in the polio unit at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.
She contracted tuberculosis and was hospitalized for a time at Denver’s National Jewish Health.
After recovering, she trained to be a medical-records librarian and worked at Presbyterian Hospital and the University of Colorado medical center.
She married Sheldon Leroy Hammond on Nov. 29, 1952. He died in 2003.
For many years, Zippy Hammond was a volunteer at the Denver Public Library, helping to identify, catalog and archive photographs and artifacts of Denverites, primarily African-Americans.
In addition to her sons, she is survived by seven grandchildren.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
