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The Civil Rights Journey of Rev. Dr. Prathia Hall Courtney Pace Lyons

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The Civil Rights Journey of Rev. Dr. Prathia Hall Courtney Pace Lyons ABSTRACT “Freedom Faith”: The Civil Rights Journey of Rev. Dr. Prathia Hall Courtney Pace Lyons, Ph.D. Mentor: C. Douglas Weaver, Ph.D. Rev. Dr. Prathia Hall’s theology revolved around freedom faith, the belief that God wants all people to be free and equips those who work for freedom. This dissertation offers a thematic biography of Hall, paying particular attention to her activism in the Civil Rights Movement and her womanist preaching ministry, through the lens of freedom faith. Hall first learned of freedom faith from her father, growing up in North Philadelphia. Through her training in Fellowship House and her activism with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Southwest Georgia and Selma, Alabama, Hall’s freedom faith matured. After the Movement, Hall returned North and pursued theological education at Princeton Theological Seminary, where her freedom faith culminated in womanist liberation theology. Copyright © 2014 by Courtney Pace Lyons All rights reserved TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements vi Introduction 1 Introduction and Purpose 1 Historiography 5 Outline 8 “I See Africa Rising”: Prathia Hall’s Early Life 10 Introduction 10 Early Life and Family 18 Fellowship House 24 Freedom Faith: To Go Or Not To Go? 40 “Living in the Face of Death”: Prathia Hall in Southwest Georgia 43 Introduction: SNCC, SCLC, and the Albany Movement 43 Prathia Hall Joins SNCC 50 Freedom Faith Put to Feet 73 “We Who Believe in Freedom Cannot Rest” 88 Freedom Faith Matured 117 “Equality Now”: Prathia Hall in Selma and Alabama 122 Introduction 122 The Selma, Alabama Voter Registration Project 126 Atlanta 133 Africa 144 Executive Committee and Hall’s Other Service to SNCC 145 “A Bloody Mess”: The Selma March 154 Freedom Faith in Transition 163 Who Had the Dream?: Prathia Hall and the “I Have a Dream” Speech 164 Introduction 164 Prathia Hall the Preacher 166 Prathia Hall the Dreamer 172 Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” Speech 177 Who Had the Dream? 181 Conclusion 191 “Black, Baptist, Preacher, Woman”: Prathia Hall as Womanist Preacher 194 Hall’s Life after the Movement 194 Hall’s Womanist Preaching 206 Developing a Womanist Hermeneutic 208 iv Advocacy for Women in Ministry 216 Preaching Justice and Liberation 227 Prathia Hall’s Legacy 236 Conclusion 241 Bibliography 253 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project would not have been possible without the guidance and support of so many. The generous research fellowships received from Baylor University’s Institute for Oral History, the Glen Hillburn Dissertation Travel Award, the National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion aided my work tremendously. Thank you to Becky Shulda for her fabulous help in equipping me for my research interviews. I am grateful for the helpful archivists at Temple University’s Urban Archive Collection who assisted me in my research of Fellowship House. Princeton Theological Seminary allowed me generous access to Prathia Hall’s student records. I am also grateful to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee for opening its Fiftieth Anniversary celebration to students, which allowed me to form relationships with so many who knew Prathia Hall: Martha Norman Noonan, Judy Richardson, Bob Zellner, Mary King, Penny Patch, Peggy Dammond Preacely, Faith Holsaert, Sheila Michaels, Rep. John Lewis, John Perdew, Peter DeLissovoy, Charles Sherrod, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Rutha Harris, Larry Rubin, Jack Chatfield, Chuck McDew, Connie Curry, Courtland Cox, Don Harris, Charles Nesbitt, James Lawson, Joyce Ladner, Dorie Ladner, Julian Bond, Frank Smith, Betty Garman Robinson, Ivanhoe Donaldson, Danny Lyon, and Wyatt Tee Walker. In the course of my research, I also was fortunate to locate several of Prathia Hall’s dear friends, who welcomed me and offered me invaluable resources for my project: Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Daryl Ward and Vanessa Ward, Presstonia Davis Brown, and LaGretta Bjorn. vi Thank you to my community of Baptist women scholars (also known as “GAs Gone Bad”) who continually remind me of the importance of women’s studies and of working together to advance social justice. I am lucky to learn from and with these sheroes: Betsy Flowers, Eileen Campbell-Reed, Karen Seat, Susan Shaw, Melody Maxwell, Mandy McMichael, Lydia Hoyle, Alyson Dickson, Delane Tew, Laine Scales, Pam Durso, Carol Holcomb, Isabel Docampo, Jann Aldredge-Clanton, and Pamela Smoot. Baylor University is one of the best places to be a graduate student. Not only did the Graduate School support me in establishing a parental leave policy, but they have also provided funding for research and conference travel and helped me find assistantships to support myself as I finished my work. The Department of Religion has likewise offered a community of support and resources to assist me in my work. Thank you to my dissertation committee and other Baylor faculty who have guided my work along the way: Bill Pitts, Stephen Sloan, Rosalie Beck, Bruce Longenecker, Beverly Gaventa, James Sorrelle, David Whitford, and my advisor/mentor/friend, Doug Weaver. Gratitude is also in order for my students, past and present. I am also grateful for my team at Baylor, including my wonderful assistant Roberta Shipp, and Sinda Vanderpool, who makes going to work each day feel like dreaming big with a friend. Outside of academia, I am blessed to have a wide community of support and encouragement. After completing my comprehensive exams, I celebrated my transition to dissertation writing with a performance at the Waco Civic Theater with my good friends Becky Fox, Rachel Leigh Landry, Amanda Rose Fisher, and Joel Michaelis. As a life- long figure skater, my “skating family” – my coaches Peter and Darlene Cain and my vii favorite training buddies Ashley Cain and Kathryn Cotton – has offered both support for my work and the much needed balancing effect of insisting that I stop thinking about my work when I’m on the ice. I am grateful for my Lake Shore Baptist Church faith community, particularly the spiritual guidance of my pastor, Dorisanne Cooper. And to my two best friends – Elizabeth Grasham-Reeves and Kyndall Rothaus – who have slogged, trudged, clapped, and danced with me every step of this journey, I am forever blessed beyond measure. And finally, and most importantly, none of this work would be possible without my family. Families just don’t come more supportive than mine, and I cannot thank my parents, Roger and Janyce Pace, or my grandmother, Colyne Johnson, enough for the countless ways they have been the hands and feet of Christ to me as I finished this project. Thank you to my Papa Stanley for always believing in me. And a special thank you to my son, Stanley, just for being you. viii CHAPTER ONE Introduction Introduction and Purpose This dissertation is a thematic biography of Rev. Dr. Prathia LauraAnn Hall (1940-2002), an important figure in the Civil Rights Movement as well as a model of “Freedom Faith.” According to Hall, freedom faith was the belief that God created humans to be free and assists and equips those who work for freedom. Phrased more colloquially, Hall defined freedom faith as: “This sense that I’m not a nigger, I’m not a gal, not a boy. I’m God’s child. It may cost me my job, it may cost me my life, but I want to be free. So I’m going to go down to the courthouse, I’m going to sign my name. I’m going to trust God to take me there…and bring me back. That’s freedom faith.”1 Hall explained freedom faith as the central concept of her theology, and my thematic biography will examine her life, especially her Movement activism and preaching ministry, in light of her freedom faith and how this idea developed throughout her life. Hall was a civil rights activist with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and became a highly significant Baptist minister. Raised in Philadelphia, she assisted her father, Rev. Berkeley Hall, in his social gospel oriented church ministry. Her father was her primary spiritual and intellectual mentor, and he shaped her initial understanding of freedom faith. Having attended predominantly white schools, Hall first experienced Jim Crow segregation at age five when traveling to Virginia to visit her grandmother, and the experience galvanized her commitment to racial justice. She was involved with Fellowship House, a Philadelphia social 1Wesley Hogan, Many Minds, One Heart: SNCC’s Dream for a New America (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 73. 1 justice organization for youth and college students, where she studied the philosophy of non- violence and social justice, which further developed her understanding of freedom faith. After her father’s death in 1960, Hall became extensively involved in the Civil Rights Movement, joining the Freedom Rides and SNCC, practicing her understanding of freedom faith. Hall is a significant figure of the Civil Rights Movement for several reasons. Because of the real and present danger involved in door-to-door voter registration done by SNCC field workers, women in the movement predominantly helped with secretarial work and through education programs at churches. Hall was one of the few women field workers in SNCC. She was also second-in-command of SNCC’s Southwest Georgia Project in Albany, Georgia, led by Charles Sherrod. When Martin Luther King, Jr. or any other high-profile civil rights leader visited Albany, Sherrod frequently chose Hall to speak at the mass meeting. She later became the leader of SNCC’s Selma, Alabama voter registration project. She was included in a very short list of SNCC leaders who traveled to Africa in 1964 upon invitation by the Guinean government. Hall described her time in the Movement as the best education she ever received. In Southwest Georgia, Hall’s freedom faith was contextualized and achieved maturity.
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