Shoreline student takes on school board to honor slain civil rights leader



SHORELINE, Wash. -- At just nine years old, Sarah stumbled upon some small memorials near Shoreline's school district building. They were remnants of a decades-old school project honoring a man she had never heard of.

"Why haven't we heard of him?" Sarah asked. "Why isn't he a celebrated part? He did so much for our community."

The man on the plaque was Edwin Pratt, a local activist during the civil rights movement. He served as the executive director of Seattle's Urban League for nearly a decade before he was killed at age 38. He was assassinated answering the door of his Shoreline home in 1969, less than a year after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. To this day, Pratt's murder is unsolved.

Edwin Pratt



In his short life, he championed fair housing, school desegregation and job equality in the greater Seattle area.

"Oh man, it got covered again," Sarah said as she digs dirt out of the commemorative tiles in the park with her fingers. In the same way, she is working to unearth Pratt's legacy for the next generation of Shoreline residents.

"This was really great but people walk by it," she said. "Not everybody knows about him so I was just looking for something more, something else."

Now in fourth grade at Meridian Park Elementary School, Sarah has spent more than a year petitioning the school board at meetings to honor Pratt.

"I did a public comment and so I got up and spoke and I informed them about Edwin Pratt and who he was and made my request."

That request is to name a school after him. She set her sights on Shoreline's $35 million early learning center. It is set to be completed in less than a year, around the 50th anniversary of Pratt's assassination.

Sarah started collecting signatures at community events, then launched an online petition, which garnered about 2,000 signatures from Shoreline and all over the world.

"I think any 9 or 10-year-old could do this," she said. "I think anybody could do this. This isn't a job that's restricted to adults."

Sarah is the only child on the early learning center's naming committee. Her quest to honor Pratt has led others to recognize her, like Seattle's Urban League and Pratt's former employer. She was invited to attend the annual banquet and they mentioned her efforts in the program.

In Pratt, Sarah sees someone who worked tirelessly to change his community.

"We have to keep working," she said. "The work has been done but not all of it. It's still not finished and we have to really just keep treating each other as equals. We just have to really cement that in our brain that we're all humans."

In March, the Shoreline School District asked for public input to name the new early learning center. Sarah tells Q13 News that the naming committee is meeting Wednesday afternoon and will work to narrow down the suggestions to three options to send to the school board.