BLACK ENGINEER OF THE YEAR AWARD WINNERS
2013 H
others to follow. The history always matters.
That is even more apparent when that high achiever in consideration is Freeman A. Hrabowski, only the second-ever college president to take top honors in USBE&IT’s annual selec- tion of super-competitive industry leaders, military stars and role models for tomorrow’s youth. For Dr. Hrabowski, president and CEO of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, is both a maker and shaper of history and the bringer to fruition of a tradition launched nearly 150 years ago by an almost-forgotten African-American educator and social activist named Octavius V. Catto.
Similar beginnings, a century apart The parallels are strong. The young Freeman Hrabowski came into the world at a critical time in American history, begin- ning his life in segregated Birmingham, Ala., just as the Civil Rights Movement was gearing up the campaign to challenge segregation in the streets. Howard Law School Dean Charles Hamilton Houston and his prized student Thurgood Marshall were tearing away the underpinnings of the Jim Crow laws in the courts, while in Montgomery, Ala., First World War veteran E. D. Nixon and his cohorts where gearing up to challenge Jim Crow in the streets. Octavius Valentine Catto, born in South Carolina before the
Civil War, grew up in the stormy years of national contention over slavery. His father grew up a slave millwright and, once freed, married a free black woman, became a Presbyterian min- ister and moved his family north to Baltimore. The elder Catto later moved on to Philadelphia, where his son Octavius, taking advantage of educational opportunities denied his father, became a widely regarded anti-slavery activist and educator during the 1850s and ‘60s.
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Early crusader A century later, the young Freeman Hrabowski plunged into activism, too. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., brought to national prominence after his dynamic leadership of the bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala., joined Birmingham minister James Bevel in launching a children’s crusade against segregation. The infamous Bull Connor turned fire hoses and police dogs on the children, horrifying TV news audiences around the world, and actually spat in the face of 12-year-old Freeman Hrabowski, keeping him and other children locked in jail for a week. The national revulsion over that outrage spurred Con- gress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, an accomplishment that must give huge satisfaction to the grown-up Dr. Freeman Hrabowski.
As a teenager, Hrabowski was an early-admit to historically Black Hampton University, just as the young Octavius Catto did at the Institute for Colored Youth, today known as histori- cally Black Cheyney University of Pennsylvania. Both men completed their studies before either had attained legal age, and each man decided that teaching—preparing the next generation of leaders who could move the community of black achievers to ever-higher levels—was the calling of his life.
Math skills came first
Octavius Catto excelled at geometry and trigonometry as well as in Latin and Greek studies, presaging the academic ca- reer of the young Freeman Hrabowski, the great-great-grandson of a Polish slaveholder who graduated from Hampton summa cum laude in math, continuing his studies with a master’s degree in mathematics and a doctorate in academic administration at the University of Illinois.
USBE&IT I WINTER 2013 17
Black Engineer OF THE YEAR
Freeman A. Hrabowski President and CEO, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
istory always shines through. It is expected that a story about the Black Engineer of the Year will look back at his achievements, the obstacles faced, the challenges met, the precipitous climb while forging a wholly new pathway for
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