Emma Hamilton Dancing

James E. Stamps was born in 1890 in Marlin, Texas. He graduated from Fisk University in 1911, and then attended the Yale Graduate School for a year.

He worked as an accountant in Chicago for a few years after leaving Yale. Along with Carter G. Woodson, he was a founding member of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in 1915, and began publishing The Journal of Negro History in 1916.

In 1916, he married Georgia Morrow, and they had two children together. They divorced in 1920, and he later married Maurice Williams.

In the 1920s, he managed the Chicago Metropolitan Assurance Company and was secretary for the Black YMCA. He went on to be Director of Agencies for Victory Life Insurance Company and the vice president of the Illinois Service Federal Savings and Loan Bank, retiring in 1940. He died in 1972 in Chicago.