Hrabowski saw his friends readying for the Children's Crusade march for civil rights. He convinced his parents to let him join in as a youth advocate, but soon into the march he was swept up in a mass arrest. Birmingham's notorious Public Safety Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor spat in his face and arrested him. When he was 19 years old, Hrabowski graduated from Hampton Institute with high honors in mathematics. During his matriculation there he spent a year abroad at the American University in Cairo, Egypt. At the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, he received his MA in mathematics and four years later his PhD in higher education administration and statistics. Career at UMBC UMBC was a relatively young school in a Baltimore suburb when Hrabowski arrived in 1987 as vice provost, then executive vice president, and president in 1992. Over nearly three decades as president of UMBC, Hrabowski gained a high public profile. Hrabowski emphasized STEM education, and co-founded the Meyerhoff Scholars Program, aimed at promoting minority achievement in STEM fields. Under his leadership, "more black students earn bachelor's degrees in science and technology from UMBC than from any other non-historically black university in Maryland, even College Park, which has three times as many students." Hrabowski was an advisor to President Barack Obama on higher education policy, and was appointed by Obama to serve as chair of an advisory council on excellence in African-American education. He received an honorary doctorate from Harvard University in 2010. Hrabowski retired from UMBC in 2022. Awards and honors Hrabowski has received, among other awards: Membership to the American Philosophical Society 18th Annual Heinz Award in the Human Condition category UCSF Medal - 2020 Black History Month 2017 Honoree, Mathematically Gifted & Black References External links "Freeman Hrabowski discusses changes to the SAT on PBS" on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. July 2, 2002, NewsHour Productions, American Archive of Public Broadcasting "In Black America; Beating The Odds with Dr. Freeman Hrabowski". October 1, 1998, KUT Radio, American Archive of Public Broadcasting 1950 births Living people Activists from Birmingham, Alabama Presidents of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County Hampton University alumni University of Illinois alumni African-American academics Urban Institute people Members of the American Philosophical Society 21st-century African-American people 20th-century African-American people