 Hamilton was born as Fouzi Demitri Hindaly in Jaffa, then part of Palestine, in July 1919.He graduated from the American University of Beirut, and married Lilly Bell Drake, an American, in Libya, who persuaded him to go to the United States.By his own account, he became a naturalized U.S. citizen, and was licensed as a teacher in Georgia but was denied work because he was an Arab.