By all accounts, he was enamored with Prathia’s gifted oratorical skills, and they were both featured speakers at the first anniversary celebration of the Albany Project. Hall through the Fellowship House and their mutual commitment to social justice. Fellow SNCC members teased her as Prayer-thia Hall.ĭr. Years later, SNCC secretary Judy Richardson was moved to tears transcribing the audio tape of a sermon Hall gave in Birmingham describing her as “a woman who could absolutely magnetize a mass meeting…such a command of the language.” She was an SNCC spiritual leader in every way, and always quick with the Word. At Mount Sharon, Prathia’s mother Ruby had children perform in front of the congregation, so her public speaking started young and became her calling card. Hall was renowned for her oratory skills and considered to be a pastor of the civil rights movement in her own right, long before she officially followed her calling.
#I HAVE A DREAM SPEECH TEXT FULL#
Berkeley Hall considered Prathia his successor, which would come to full fruition in 1978 when she took over.)
Hall also knew from the pulpit, as her father founded the Mount Sharon Baptist Church in 1938. While in college, she was arrested attempting to integrate Barnes Drive-In, an Annapolis restaurant next to the State House, for which she did jail time. She immersed herself in the principles of nonviolence during high school at the Fellowship House, a social justice organization in her hometown of Philadelphia, PA. At 22, Hall had only recently graduated from Temple University with a degree in political science, but she was a civil rights veteran. On September 6, three days before she would plant the dream seed in King’s mind, Hall suffered a mild wound when segregationist night riders shot up the home where she was staying.Īmidst the rubble, Hall led the vigil attended by 50 African-Americans including Dr. The local sheriff and his lackeys menaced both meetings and masses and held particular enmity for “outside agitators” like Hall and her organizing partner Rev. “ Tombstone Territory,” a dark nod to the omnipresent violence activists faced. She was the first female field officer in rural Southwest Georgia, which included Terrell County, a.k.a. The church was a meeting place for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which Hall joined in 1962.
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