Minnie Bruce Pratt

Minnie Bruce Pratt was born September 12, 1946, in Selma, Alabama, in the hospital closest to her hometown of Centreville. She graduated from Bibb County High School when it was under segregation, and entered the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa a year after George Wallace “stood in the schoolhouse door.” She received her B.A there, where she was also Phi Beta Kappa. She took her Ph.D. in English Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In addition to this academic education, she received her education into the great liberation struggles of the 20th century through grass-roots organizing with women in the army-base town of Fayetteville, North Carolina, and through teaching at historically Black universities.