Sharon Pratt

Sharon Pratt (born January 30, 1944), formerly Sharon Pratt Dixon and Sharon Pratt Kelly, is an American attorney and politician who was the mayor of the District of Columbia from 1991 to 1995, the first mayor born in the District of Columbia since Richard Wallach who took office in 1861 and the first woman in that position. Personal life Sharon Pratt was born to D.C. Superior Court judge Carlisle Edward Pratt and Mildred "Peggy" (Petticord) Pratt. After her mother died of breast cancer, her grandmother, Hazel Pratt, and aunt, Aimee Elizabeth Pratt, helped to raise Sharon and her younger sister. Pratt attended D.C. Public Schools Gage ES, Rudolph ES, MacFarland Junior High School, and Roosevelt HS (1961, with honors). She excelled at baseball but did not pursue the sport in adolescence. At Howard University she joined the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority (1964), and earned a B.A. in political science (1965). She received a J.D. degree from the Howard University School of Law in 1968. She married Arrington Dixon in 1966 and has two daughters with him; they divorced after sixteen years. She campaigned and was elected and inaugurated mayor of DC as Sharon Pratt Dixon, but when she married James R. Kelly III, a New York businessman, on December 7, 1991, she changed her name to Sharon Pratt Kelly. After their 1999 divorce, she resumed her maiden name, Sharon Pratt.