Lurma Rackley

Lurma M. Rackley (born April 24, 1949) is an American author, journalist and publicist. The daughter of a civil rights activist, she participated in civil rights demonstrations and was arrested 16 times before she was 13 years old. After college, she became a journalist and later, a publicist with the Washington, D.C. city government. In 1981, Petey Greene asked her to collaborate with him on his autobiography, recording audiotaped interviews with her shortly before his death. Rackley published her book about Greene in 2004.

Rackley is the daughter of civil rights activist Gloria Blackwell. Her mother and father got divorced when she and her sister were very young and were adopted by her mother's second husband, Larney G. Rackley, a professor at South Carolina State University.

Active with her mother in Orangeburg, South Carolina during the Civil Rights Movement, Rackley was arrested sixteen times by the age of 13. Once, she and her mother missed a court appearance when they used the "whites only" restroom in the courthouse and were arrested. Although an honors student, at the age of 14, she was sentenced to seven years in reform school because of her many arrests as part of the Orangeburg Freedom Movement. Then-attorney Matthew J. Perry appealed the sentence and obtained her release. When threatened with reform school, Rackley's mother wanted her to stop protesting, but Rackley refused. She told her mother she couldn't stop when others were putting themselves on the line, so they reached a compromise that neither would picket if the other were in jail.

Rackley received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Clark College, now Clark Atlanta University in 1970 and a special Masters degree from the Columbia University School of Journalism that same year. She got her first job after college in late 1970 at The Evening Star, which later became The Washington Star. In 1979, she left to work for the city government in Washington, D.C., eventually becoming the press secretary for Washington, D.C. mayor Marion Barry during some of Barry's public struggles.

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