I am the granddaughter of Eula and RP Sirls, sharecroppers in Texas and Alabama in the 1930s, and the great-granddaughter of Rosa (formerly enslaved) and George Thrikill; and the granddaughter of Elizabeth Jean Pratt and Daniel Pratt of Freetown, Sierra Leone.
I am the sister of Awadagin Pratt, one of the “one of the great and distinctive American pianists and conductors of our time.”
I am the mother of Emmanuel Pratt-Clarke (@emmanuelaopc), an amazing talented African-Diaspora artist and painter based in the United States and the Bahamas whose art is highlighted on this website, and Raebekkah Pratt-Clarke, a powerful, determined Blackwildgirl “dominating the field” in sports management.
I’ve been struggling. Struggling to stand against the weight of the anti-; the anti-this; and anti-that; and the anti-all things in America that I thought were stable, good, wonderful, beautiful, different. I am a firm believer in the importance of positive energy and I believe in hope. I am still
Coretta Scott King was a Blackwildgirl: A woman with incredible persistence, purpose, passion, determination, conviction, with a fierce and unwavering commitment to justice and love. Just over a year after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, Coretta Scott King wrote a book about his life and her life in June 1969.
Though bastardization is traditionally associated with someone or something negative, I’m using it in thetraditional Black way, like when we say, “you bad,” it means, “You are really good.” That’s kinda thebeauty of Black culture and Black language, and the power of corrupting traditional understandings andmeanings of words. I didn’t
