‘She lit the path’: Sacramento honors trailblazing Councilwoman Lauren Hammond

Lauren Hammond, who made history as the first Black woman elected to the Sacramento City Council, was remembered as a Sacramento trailblazer, leader and mentor to a league of new women leaders. Her legacy was reflected in the hundreds who gathered Friday for her memorial service at at her alma mater, California State University, Sacramento.

Hammond died unexpectedly Jan. 18, at the Sacramento home she shared with wife Margaret Maher. Hammond was 68.

“This wonderful woman, this leader, loved her city and its people. Lauren always did the work,” said Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, who worked alongside Hammond as a city council member. “She was a fierce advocate for her district, but I admire her more for her quiet work mentoring, especially young women starting their careers.”

Steinberg envisioned what Hammond told them: “’Be real. Show up. Do the work. Love your district, your community, your city, from your heart,’” he said. “Look at the people who showed up today. It’s legacy, and it’s earned.”

In the crowd were childhood classmates from McClatchy High School and friends from Hammond’s many years working in the California state Senate, many dressed in her signature colors of red and black. There were neighbors, advocates and the women she shepherded along their path to public service.

Among them, Sacramento City Councilwoman Katie Valenzuela and State Sen. Angelique Ashby, D-Sacramento, who spoke at the service.

“She was iconic....She lit the path,” said Ashby, who, a day earlier, adjourned the Senate chambers in Hammond’s memory. “She left a lasting impression. She helped so many of us.”

And, the family who knew her simply as Lauren, sister, aunt, wife and friend.

“You know her as an activist — and, yes, she was active — but she was Lauren. She was our sister. She broke ceilings, but she did other things,” said sister Carol Hammond.

During the service, Hammond was remembered for devouring Walter Mosley’s mystery novels set in her native Los Angeles and dancing to James Brown. Niece Claire Hammond remembered her aunt’s Saturday dance parties and a playlist of Beyonce and Lady Gaga.

“She’d lift us up to touch the ceiling,” Claire Hammond said. “We felt like we were flying.”

A lifetime of activism

Lauren Rochelle Hammond was born Nov. 27, 1955, in Los Angeles, and raised in Sacramento; her passion for public service and her lifelong activism stoked as a child by the 1965 Watts riots.

“Lauren has been an inspiration for me. She had a glint in her eye,” said local social justice advocate Diana Madoshi. “As short as Lauren’s life was to me — I’m 78 — there are some people you’ll meet who are like the light of a candle. She is a candle that never goes out. Her legacy is that that candle brightly remains.”

Hammond graduated from C.K. McClatchy High School and Sacramento City College before earning her degree in government at Sacramento State. She soon entered what would be a lifetime of public service: 22 years in the California State Senate as a contract administrator and the Senate’s Coordinator for the Americans with Disabilities Act, before making history at Sacramento City Hall with her election victory in 1997.

Hammond served 13 years on the council, becoming only the second Black woman to sit on the dais after the historic 1975 council appointment of Oak Park community leader Callie Carney.

Hammond was the “heart that is District 5,” and fought fiercely for it, said former mayor Heather Fargo, Hammond’s close friend and ally. Fargo dressed like so many on Friday in Hammond’s signature black and red. Both became crucial mentors to local women entering the public sphere.

“Stockton Boulevard, Franklin Boulevard, 24th Street — all the streets she worked so hard to improve,” Fargo said. “She worked so hard to improve those communities, to make them safer.”

Hammond battled predatory lenders and fought for mandatory dashboard cameras in the city’s police cruisers and body cameras for its officers years before other cities followed suit.

She would go on to lead the Sacramento chapter of the National Women’s Political Caucus, identifying, recruiting and training women candidates for public office. She was planning the year ahead for the group at the time of her passing.

“Her legacy is broad and very deep,” Fargo said. “And, it’s really the future, because she mentored so many other women to be in elected office that we’re going to see her legacy for a long, long time.”

Hammond is survived by her wife, Margaret Maher, siblings Marcia, David, Carol and Kevin Hammond, her aunt, Fran Burton, cousins, nieces and nephews.