In 2023, the National Academy of Sciences announced that it was presenting its Public Welfare Medal to mathematician, educator, and higher education advocate Freeman A. Hrabowski, III, for his leadership in increasing cultural diversity within the science workforce.
As president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) — a position he held for 30 years before his retirement in 2022 — hundreds of UMBC graduates went on to obtain professorships at prestigious institutions in the U.S.
In the spring of 2022, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute launched the Freeman Hrabowski Scholars Program to help build a scientific workforce that more reflects an increasingly diverse country. The $1.5 billion program honors Hrabowski for his decades of leadership in growing the pipeline of Ph.D.-level researchers through UMBC’s Meyerhoff Scholars Program. Read his most recent speech below.
Colleagues and Friends,
When I accepted an invitation this past fall to speak in Minneapolis at the 36th Annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday Breakfast, the city had not yet been dragged into the national spotlight.
I often speak at such events to bridge the Civil Rights era to the present, sharing my perspective as a participant in the 1963 Birmingham Children’s March, one of the few still living. I looked forward to an event focused on history, heritage, and a rich tradition of remembering.
Accepting this invitation turned out to be much more than that. Between the time that the event sponsors, General Mills Foundation and United Negro College Fund, invited me to speak and the event itself, the civil rights movement of a new time unfolded in the neighborhoods of Minneapolis. It has continued to spread across the nation.
I was 12 when Dr. King spoke at my church, Sixth Avenue Baptist. Initially, I was completing my algebra homework. Then he captured me with one proposition: If the children march, all of America will understand that even our young people know the difference between right and wrong. The children would go to jail, but in the end, they would be released. Eventually, we would have access to better schools. When we got home, I said to my parents, “I want to march.” They said, “Absolutely not.” Yet, after their sleepless night of tears and prayer, they relented. I marched and spent five frightening days and nights in jail. After the Children’s March, things started to change for Black people in Birmingham. We were moving toward integration.
And then, we were reminded that social progress is rarely linear.
Just 136 days after the children marched, a bomb placed in the basement of the 16th Street Baptist Church exploded and killed four little girls, including my friend Denise McNair. Three of the families chose to hold a collective funeral service at my church, and I was among the Children’s March participants who attended. I remember Dr. King looking out at the three mothers and saying, “Life can be as tough as steel.”
Many of my childhood friends could not sleep in the weeks that followed. We had nightmares about the four little girls in white dresses whose bodies were destroyed by a bomb planted behind a commode in their church.
In early January, when I saw the video of the ICE agent shooting that young mother, Renee Good, in the face on a neighborhood street in Minneapolis, I immediately thought about those four little girls. Two weeks later, watching the brutal killing of intensive care nurse Alex Pretti, I felt the echo of Dr. King’s words: Residents of Minneapolis, many of whom had not been born in 1963, are facing the steely toughness of life. They are confronting fear and uncertainty each day in their streets, neighborhoods, schools, and churches.
In the midst of these tragedies, I returned from Minnesota with renewed hope. The state’s citizens, public officials, and corporate leaders are refusing to be victims. They are not accepting lies. They are not accepting evil. They are not accepting racism.
And it is clear from protests of solidarity across the nation that much of America stands with Minnesota, and our same essential values guide all of us: compassion for fellow humans, brave witnessing, and an unshakeable commitment to truth.
For the Black children of Birmingham in 1963, the impact of hate in America was as traumatic as a war. And yet, we kept hope alive, and dramatic TV news coverage of children attacked by dogs and firehoses, of children bombed in churches, and of other atrocities pricked the conscience of the nation.
Growing numbers of citizens of all races acknowledged that America was better than the tragedies dominating the news, and elected leaders found the will to begin changing public policy, passing legislation such as the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the Higher Education Act.
Later, during the U.S. Bicentennial in 1976, President Gerald Ford took the momentous step of recognizing February as Black History Month, writing that “Freedom and the recognition of individual rights are what our Revolution was all about…Ideals we have been striving to live into ever since.”
Now, at the 250th anniversary of our nation’s founding, we have national officials who are attempting to erase Civil Rights history. We must not forget the truth and what history continues to teach us.
Minnesota is not just a place of tragedy. It is a beacon of courage. America is watching Minnesota and itself with anticipation and hope.
As Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote early in his career, “The most important political office is that of the private citizen.”
He went on to say that democracy depends on collective action by the people. I am inspired to see brave Americans of all races standing up peacefully for justice. We are witnessing the struggle for our democracy in the streets of America every day.