Holding Fast to Dreams: Empowering Youth from the Civil Rights Crusade to STEM Achievement

by Freeman A. Hrabowski III

Overview

An education leader relates how his experiences with the civil rights movement led him to develop programs promoting educational success in science and technology for African Americans and others.
 
In Holding Fast to Dreams, 2018 American Council on Education (ACE) Lifetime Achievement Award winner Freeman Hrabowski recounts his journey as an educator, a university president, and a pioneer in developing successful, holistic programs for high-achieving students of all races.

When Hrabowski was twelve years old, a civil rights leader visited his Birmingham, Alabama, church and spoke about a children’s march for civil rights and opportunity. That leader was the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., and that march changed Hrabowski’s life.
 
Until then, Freeman was a kid who loved school and solving math problems. Although his family had always stressed the importance of education, he never expected that the world might change and that black and white students would one day study together.
 
But hearing King speak changed everything for Hrabowski, who convinced his parents that he needed to answer King’s call to stand up for equality. While participating in the famed Children’s Crusade, he spent five terrifying nights in jail—during which Freeman became a leader for the younger kids, as he learned about the risk and sacrifice that it would take to fight for justice.
 
Hrabowski went on to fuse his passion for education and for equality, as he made his life’s work inspiring high academic achievement among students of all races in science and engineering. It also brought him from Birmingham to Baltimore, where he has been president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County for more than two decades. While at UMBC, he co-founded the Meyerhoff Scholars Program, which has been one of the most successful programs for educating African Americans who go on to earn doctorates in the STEM disciplines.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807003442
Publisher:	Beacon Press
Publication date:	05/05/2015
Series:	Race, Education, and Democracy
Pages:	208
Sales rank:	1,011,658
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Dr. Freeman A. Hrabowski III is a recognized leader and innovator in American higher education.  He chairs the US. President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for African Americans.  He has been named one of the “100 Most Influential People in the World” and one of the “10 Best College Presidents” by Time, and he is the recipient of a Top American Leaders Award from the Washington Post and the Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership. He and his wife, Jacqueline, live in Owings Mills, Maryland, and have a son, Eric.

Read an Excerpt

From The Introduction

They were crying. Our parents—perhaps a hundred or more—had come to hold an evening vigil of song and prayer for all the jailed children, and as they looked up at the walls of the detention center where we were held, they openly wept. They wept at the thought of their children in narrow, overcrowded cells; they wept out of fear for and maybe also pride in those children they held so dear; they wept, frustrated with an oppressive system whose time to go had come.
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Holding Fast to Dreams"
by .
Copyright © 2015 Freeman A. Hrabowski III.
Excerpted by permission of Beacon Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Introduction

1. Standing Up for Justice

2. Development of an Educator

3. Inclusive Excellence in Science and Engineering

4. Raising a Generation of Achievers

Afterword

Acknowledgments

A Note from the Series Editor

Notes

Index

Editorial Reviews

A noble personification of the civil rights movement and an inspirational manual on instilling empowerment and possibility in today's youth.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Dr. Hrabowski’s personal experiences as a child of the Civil Rights Movement being raised in a community committed to educating African-American children with high expectations during difficult times, reminds us we have an obligation to support all children. This message could not come at a more opportune time. While clear that there is still much work to be done, Dr. Hrabowski provides a blueprint for anyone interested in taking up the challenge of ensuring that no child in America ever has his or her dream deferred.”  
—David J. Johns, Executive Director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans
 
“Freeman Hrabowski is the son of Freeman  Hrabowski Jr., son of Freeman Hrabowski (firstborn free man and farm owner in Lowndes county near Selma), son of Tom Hrabrowski, born into Lincoln’s age as a slave. In Holding Fast to Dreams, he speaks to a twenty-first century America, addressing Lincoln’s ‘House Divided’ conundrum: ‘If we could first know where we are and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do and how to do it.’ Get the book. Read all about it.”
—Dr. Robert P. Moses, President and Founder, The Algebra Project, Inc.

“Freeman Hrabowski has gone from being a frontline soldier in the Birmingham Children’s Crusade to a national leader in the twenty-first century movement to expand access to education. In this inspiring and hopeful book, he shares his extraordinary story and lessons learned from a lifetime of striving for, studying, and nurturing excellence against any odds.”
—Marian Wright Edelman, President, Children’s Defense Fund

“A mathematically gifted African-American grows up in the segregated South, nurtured by loving and caring adults. He spends 5 frightening days in a Birmingham jail at age 12 for joining a peaceful protest. A keen observer with a scientific mindset, Dr. Freeman Hrabowski explains how he continually learns from a series of such experiences to become a great leader—creating a new pathway that enables many other African-American males to likewise succeed as scientific, engineering and medical intellects. This is a wonderful story, told by a man who serves as a role model for all Americans—regardless of race.”
—Bruce Alberts, President Emeritus, US National Academy of Sciences

From the Publisher

05/01/2015
Hrabowski (president, Univ. of Maryland, Baltimore Cty.) has lived a historic life, having been part of the Birmingham Children's Crusade in 1963 and consequently spending five days in jail. His experiences throughout the civil rights movement, along with the high expectations and encouragement of his parents during his youth, led him to become a champion for all students to acquire a college education, no matter their race or circumstances. In this work, Hrabowski relates his educational journey from his own schooling through his current leadership position. By way of a conversation in 1988 with Baltimore philanthropist Robert Meyerhoff, Hrabowski created the Meyerhoff Scholars Program. Begun as a program to teach black men science, math, and engineering, the program aimed to demonstrate that this specific population could succeed as well as, if not better than, any other—and it has. Meyerhoff scholars now also include women and all races. Key to the program's success is its emphasis on teamwork and group cohesiveness. Hrabowski demonstrates that by changing the perceptions and culture of educational systems from negativity and inadequacy to encouragement and support, even in the midst of failure, any student can do well. A large part of his school's success is undoubtedly Hrabowski himself, but other educational institutions that follow his lead can achieve similar greatness if they, like their students, are willing to work hard. VERDICT Educators truly desiring to do the best for all their students will find this work of great interest.—Terry Christner, Hutchinson P.L., KS

Library Journal

2015-02-11
A potent hybrid of prideful memoir and galvanizing guidebook derived from lectures on race and education.Esteemed youth leader and president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Hrabowski (Overcoming the Odds: Raising Academically Successful African American Young Women, 2002, etc.) was barely a teenager when he was arrested for participation in the anti-discrimination Children's Crusade march in central Alabama in 1963. His highly personal account retraces this event and its impact on his life and livelihood, which began in oppressive Birmingham, where he was raised by hardworking teacher parents who fostered his early affinity for mathematics. With his parents' ambivalent blessings, Hrabowski, just 12, joined the historic civil rights march against antagonistic segregation and was swiftly corralled in a mass arrest and jailed with hardened criminals for five days. The words of Martin Luther King Jr. would soon motivate him into forging a career in education, the promotion of critical thinking curriculums such as goal-based academic disciplines, and youth advocacy. In other sections of the book, the author praises the evolution of his university's innovative culture and the impressive role it has played in promoting undergraduate education and research work amid an all-inclusive, unsegregated atmosphere conducive to learning. His discussion dovetails nicely with the book's concluding chapters, which address the historical advancement of American educational and economic opportunities, particularly for African-Americans. Spawned from the speeches Hrabowski delivered during the Simmons College-Beacon Press Race, Education, and Democracy Lecture series in 2013, the book's strength derives from the advancements achieved by African-American students, in which the author has played a significant role. Still, he acknowledges that there is much more work to be done with regard to overall unemployment rates, income levels, and civic equality. A noble personification of the civil rights movement and an inspirational manual on instilling empowerment and possibility in today's youth.

Kirkus Reviews