Biography
Early Life
Prathia Hall was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on January 1, 1940. Her parents were Rev. Berley C. Hall and Ruby Hall. She was the second of four children. Her father was a Baptist minister. He believed that faith and fighting for freedom went hand in hand. Her parents spent their lives helping poor people by giving them food, clothing, and support. Hall learned from their example.
Hall joined the Fellowship House in Philadelphia when she was a teenager. This group worked for peaceful relationships between different races. They taught about nonviolence using ideas from Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. The group also held workshops to teach people how to protest without violence. They helped support the Montgomery Bus Boycott and student sit-ins in the South.
Hall went to Philadelphia High School for Girls. She graduated from Temple University in 1962 with degrees in Political Science and Religion. She earned an MDIV, ThM, and PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary. She specialized in Ethics, Womanist Theology, and African American Church History.
Faith and Activism
Hall became one of the first women preachers in the 20th century to gain national attention. She called her beliefs “freedom faith.” She said, “I have always had a deep passion for justice. My parents raised me to believe that religion and politics should work together. God wants us to be free and helps us fight for freedom.”
One of her most famous sermons was called “Between the Wilderness and the Cliff.” She preached about how Christian ministry happens in difficult places. She explained the same was true in African American life and for women in ministry.
Hall was leading prayers at a vigil in Terrell County, Georgia in 1962. The Mount Olive Baptist Church had been burned down. Martin Luther King Jr. was there. He heard Hall repeatedly say “I have a dream” during her prayers for racial justice. After hearing her, King told Hall he wanted to use that phrase in his own speeches. Hall agreed to let him use it. Many people do not know that Hall said it first.
Civil Rights Work
Hall joined the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) after college. She worked as a field secretary in Maryland, Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi. She organized voter education programs, helped improve literacy, and led sit-ins at segregated restaurants. She also helped families who were integrating schools in Mississippi.
arrested with ten other activists on November 11, 1961. They were doing a sit-in at a restaurant in Annapolis, Maryland. She was shot at by nightriders while staying in a house with other SNCC workers in 1962. She suffered minor injuries from bullet wounds.
Later Ministry
She married Ralph Wynn in 1965 and moved to Roosevelt, NY where he had taken a job. This allowed her to go to Princeton Theological Seminary. Hall became pastor of her father’s church, Rose of Sharon Baptist Church in Philadelphia, in 1978. She also preached in Germany and along the Gold Coast of Africa. She was honored as a pioneering woman minister in the American Baptists’ Association.
Prathia Hall dedicated her later years to training Black female ministers. She taught at Boston University School of Theology as an Associate Professor. She held the Martin Luther King Jr. Chair in Social Ethics. She died of cancer in 2002. Her work helped prepare the next generation of women religious leaders.
