Sharon Pratt Kelly (born January 30, 1944), formerly Sharon Pratt Dixon and now known as Sharon Pratt, was the third mayor of the District of Columbia from 1991 to 1995. Pratt was the first black woman to serve as mayor of a major American city. She is also to date the only woman to have served as mayor of Washington D.C.
Though she campaigned and was elected and inaugurated mayor as Sharon Pratt Dixon, on December 7, 1991, she married James R. Kelly III, a New York businessman, and changed her name to Sharon Pratt Kelly. After their 1999 divorce she was Sharon Pratt.
Despite her historic election, however, Kelly's administration of Washington is generally regarded as a failure. The city was facing a projected $1 billion budget deficit at the close of her single mayoral term, far greater than that of her predecessor Marion Barry, with Kelly being criticized for mismanagement and inability to deliver the reforms she had promised in her initial campaign. In addition, she had strained relations with the DC Council, and allowed the popular Washington Redskins football franchise to relocate to the suburbs. Washington City Paper would later characterize her mayoral tenure as "one of the most ignominious periods in modern D.C. history."
Read more about Sharon Pratt Kelly: Personal Life, Career, Mayor of The District of Columbia, Post-Mayoral Activities, Awards
Famous quotes containing the word pratt:
“So motionless, she seemed stone dead—just seemed:
She was too old for death, too old for life,
For as if jealous of all living forms
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To catacomb their shells on western mountains.”
—Edwin John Pratt (1882–1964)