Prathia Hall | (1940-2002)

Ph.D. History and Ecumenics

Rev. Dr. Prathia Hall Wynn’s (M.Div., 1982; Th.M., 1984; Ph.D. History and Ecumenics, 1997 magna cum laude) life was an integration of religion and politics. By her own accounts she had a deep passion for justice and exercised a “freedom faith.” Dr. Hall was an ardent activist during the 1960s civil rights movement, including serving as the first woman field organizer within the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, where she added to the demand for voting rights. Her doctoral dissertation was on the “Religious and Social Consciousness of African-American Baptist Women.” In 1962, at a prayer vigil attended by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., she led the group in prayer and repeated the phrase, “I Have A Dream.” Dr. Hall later acknowledged that King asked her permission to use the phrase in his sermons leading up to his famous “I Have a Dream Speech” at the March on Washington a year later. Dr. Hall was a womanist theologian, a social ethics professor, and one of the first women ordained in the American Baptist Association.