On her way to a soccer game near her home in Shoreline, Washington, near Seattle, ten-year-old Sarah Haycox noticed a small plaque between the soccer field and the bathrooms and paused to look. It said "Edwin Pratt, 1930-1969." 

“Wow,” thought Sarah. “That’s a really short life.” She decided to find out who he was and why he died so young. What she found both inspired and challenged her. Pratt was a civil rights pioneer who led campaigns against housing discrimination, school segregation, employment bias, and police brutality. He was the Executive Director of the Seattle Urban League, and he was a founding member of the Central Area Civil Rights Committee—all this in the 1950s and 1960s, when it was often dangerous to be a visible leader in the struggle for civil rights. Sarah found that in 1969, Pratt had made a move to integrate housing in the then all-white community of Shoreline, Sarah’s hometown. Days after he moved his family into a house there, he was shot and killed while standing on his own doorstep. Leaders from all over the country—including a representative of the US President—attended his funeral. His assassins were never found.

Sarah was amazed, thinking, “Why haven’t we heard of him? . . . He did so much for our community. It was just the lack of recognition that really, I think, maybe stunned me. It just felt like he’s gotta have something more than just a plaque outside of a bathroom.” 

She saw a way to do just that. A 35-million-dollar Early Learning Center was being built right across the street from the park and the plaque; the building didn’t have a name yet. She started a petition drive and went door-to-door all over town, describing to people who Edwin Pratt had been and making the case for why the new building should be named after him. She gave presentations in classrooms and churches and met with the school board and other town officials. In weeks of efforts, she garnered over 2,000 signatures for her petition. In May of 2018, over a year after she had seen the plaque, Sarah attended a Shoreline School Board meeting for the eighth time; the Board voted unanimously to name the new school the Edwin Pratt Early Learning Center. But Sarah wasn’t finished. She started a GoFundMe page to cover transportation costs for Pratt’s family to attend the building’s opening in 2019, and to have a mural about him painted on the outside of the building—a mural a thousand times larger than the plaque by the bathrooms in the park. 

“Because of his bravery, perseverance, kindness, and compassion,” says Sarah, “Pratt set an example for adults and children alike.” 

And Sarah Haycox has set quite an example for her fellow pre-teens.