Live well—wear your own shoes - by Joy Bennett Kinnon MOST women can't wear another woman's shoes. Even if they are the exact same size, another woman's shoes will pinch and hurt and will eventually be flung aside. But while we can't wear another woman's shoes, we sometimes let other women tell us how to live our lives. Overheard at the wedding of a much-married friend--"Is this her last husband?" Overheard at the supermarket about a woman with more than 2.3 children--"Girl, I hope this is her last baby!" General discussion from a group of singles--"How many jobs has she had? Is this her last job?" Overheard at a high school graduation--"You know that gal ain't gonna be much." It is amazing how jackleg soothsayers can pronounce with great finality over your life. Even more amazing is that some women, particularly young women just starting out in life and older women afraid of gossip, try to live their lives by what others say. Focusing on their history instead of their destiny, these women may never achieve their full potential. It's better to just be yourself. As the old Black church Sister once said with ungrammatical brilliance, "It's hard enough being who you is, let alone who you ain't." Serena Williams found that out when she decided to stop trying to copy her big sister Venus and just be herself. She told EBONY, "I was Venus." But she didn't become the No. 1 tennis player in the world until she became Serena. "I realized that I liked doing different things, things' that Venus didn't like to do. I realized that just because she didn't like it didn't mean that I didn't have to like it. It had taken me all this time to realize that my name was Serena Williams, not Venus Williams." She is now at the top of her own game. We recently lost two powerful examples of women who lived their own lives and the world and Black people were richer because of their courage. The first, the Rev. Dr. Prathia LauraAnn Hall, became a preacher when few people believed that women belonged in the pulpit. In 1996 she was one of EBONY's 15 choices for "Greatest Black Woman Preachers," leading the nominees in the magazine's historic first survey of the best women ministers. A community activist since high school and a graduate of the Freedom Movement of the `60s, she told me that the central commitment of her life could be summarized in two words: faith and freedom. Her oft-repeated statement is the mantra of Black female ministers: "I stood in the total authenticity of my being--Black, preacher, Baptist, woman. For the same God who made me a preacher, made me a woman. And, I am convinced that God was not confused on either count." We need women like Prathia Hall to stand in the gap. We need to stop wasting our precious time trying to fit our lives into an accountant's ledger, adding, subtracting, dividing and multiplying and tallying the totals. We need to discover what God has called us to do, spending time in prayerful meditation trying to discover our own task. "Service is the rent you pay for living," says Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the Children's Defense Fund. "It is the very purpose of life and not something you do in your spare time." There are some pronouncements that cannot be made this side of the grave. As long as there is breath in your body, you can serve. Another Black woman who lived life on her own terms was the writer June Jordan. She knew that life is not a dress rehearsal and there is no time to do it over. Jordan succumbed to breast cancer this year, but she never allowed the disease to define her. The college professor was the author of more than 25 books, including poetry, fiction, essays, journalism, plays and even a libretto. She was defiant in the face of the disease. "I don't define myself by what assaults me or tries to destroy me, whether it's disease or sociopathic hatred," she said. Jordan knew that labels tend to confine and distract and sometimes destroy our uniqueness as women. And what we learn from Williams, Jordan, Hall, Edelman and others is that every day is opening night. We learn from them that every day is a new day and that you are more than the sum totals of OPP (other people's predictions) on your life. The world badly needs your light, your own unique contribution to heal our land. Wear your own shoes. And wear them well. COPYRIGHT 2002 Johnson Publishing Co. COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group Prathia Hall grew up in Philadelphia, but her family's Southern roots were deep. Her father, Reverend Berkeley Hall, was a Baptist minister and a passionate advocate for racial justice. Hall was nurtured in what she would later describe as "Freedom Faith," the belief that she was God's child and was therefore loved and important. As a young girl, she lived sheltered from the indignities other black people in America dealt with. But her family could not always keep her safe. At age five, on a train ride South to visit her grandparents, she and her sisters were forced to sit in a car behind the engine. Hall recalls the incident as her first encounter with the dehumanizing effects of racism. Hall attended predominantly white schools until college, so she was insulated from Southern racism. By age 15, Hall ached to join the Civil Rights Movement. After graduating from Temple University, she joined the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). She became one of the first women field leaders in southwest Georgia. Hall and her companions in the Freedom Faith movement found courage and spiritual transformation in the prayers, songs, and examples of their peers. Prathia Hall lived to tell her story. Many who fought with her were not as fortunate. Hall was ordained a Baptist minister and became pastor of her father's church, Mount Sharon Baptist Church in Philadelphia. She received her doctorate in theology from Princeton, where she specialized in womanist theology, ethics, and African-American church history. In 1982, Hall became the first woman to join the Baptist Ministers Conference of Philadelphia and Vicinity. Hall was also an associate professor at Boston University School of Theology, holding the Martin Luther King Jr. Chair in Social Ethics. Prathia Hall died on August 12, 2002, following a long illness. KEY MOMENTS OF FAITH BORN WITH A MISSION Prathia Hall had a sharp eye and ear for the causes that affect social justice, and she described her origins in "freedom faith" as follows: "Well it sounds presumptuous to say you were born with a mission, but I have always had a deep passion for justice. I was raised by my parents in what I believe to be the central dynamic in the African-American religious tradition. That is, an integration of the religious and the political. It is a belief that God intends us to be free, and assists us, and empowers us in the struggle for freedom. So the stories of our history helped me to understand that we were called to be activists in this struggle for justice. " SNCC: ACTIVISM AND DANGER Prathia Hall helped Charles Sherrod to pilot SNCC's 22-county SW Georgia Project. Prathia was one of three voter registration workers wounded by night riders' shots in Dawson, GA in the summer of 1962. Charles Sherrod remembers: "Out of the night that covered us, pitch black, there were two blasts. Jack Chatfield (now an Associate Professor of History at Trinity College/Hartford) crouched, gliding into where I was. Suddenly, he snaps around, explaining quite suprisedly but not too excited - 'I'm hit.' Prathia Hall and Christopher Allen were grazed, one on the finger, the other on the arm. We were all on the floor. We were working together on Voter Registration. We had been shot at. Some were hit. There was blood. We were afraid. Where was the Federal Government? We crawled about on that floor as if we were in Korea on Pork Chop Hill." BLOODY SUNDAY The 600 marchers meant to call attention to their struggle for suffrage by marching from Selma to Montgomery. But state troopers at the Edmund Petttus Bridge blocked their way. Then they attacked. Television cameras recorded the event; public outrage over it led to passage of the Civil Rights Act. But that day, Prathia Hall's faith in the strategy of nonviolent confrontation was shaken. In retrospect, Hall said that a nonviolent movement "has to make space for the expression of authentic anger, even rage…we might have had even greater power if we had somehow found a way to allow space for the expression of righteous anger." CRISIS OF FAITH AND PERSONAL TRAGEDY Through four or five years, Hall struggled through a crisis of faith before deciding to go to Princeton Theological Seminary to take up her father's profession. She became one of the first women ordained in the American Baptists' Association. She suffered through tremendous personal tragedy — her daughter died at 23, after suffering a stroke; and she herself battled continued health problems stemming from a car accident. POST CIVIL RIGHTS: PRATHIA HALL'S NEW MOVEMENT Prathia Hall answered the challenge to her faith by digging deeper. She worked tirelessly through ministry to make a difference. She served on the steering committee of the American Baptist Conference (the Northern Baptists' conference) on the Partnership of Women and Men in the Community of Faith and served as chair of the Program Committee of the Progressive National Baptist Convention. She became known as a womanist theologian. Hall held the Martin Luther King Jr. Chair in Social Ethics at Boston University. Rev. Prathia Hall died August 12, 2002. Biography of Prathia Hall
