Dialog, UA Faculty and Staff News

March 8, 2004

UA Ranks High in Number of National Merit and Achievement Scholars
UA Press Offers New Book on Civil Rights Movement

UA Ranks High in Number of National Merit and Achievement Scholars

The November 2003 Annual Report from The Lombardi Program on Measuring University Performance ranked U.S. universities on the number of National Merit and Achievement Scholars enrolled in their 2002 freshman classes. Excerpts from the ranking show the results of your outstanding work!

Institution	Freshman Scholars	Rank Among All Institution	Rank Among Public/Private Cohort
University of Texas	271	2	1
University of Florida	237	4	2
University of Oklahoma	168	11	3
Texas A&M University	160	12	4
University of North Carolina	149	14	5
Ohio State University	119	17	6
Georgia Institute of Technology	116	18	7
Arizona State University	103	22	8
University of Kansas	100	24	9
Iowa State University	99	25	10
University of California-Los Angeles	94	26	11
University of California-Berkeley	67	31	13
University of Michigan	61	33	14
University of Arizona	58	35	15
University of Maryland	58	35	15
University of Georgia	56	40	17
University of Kentucky	54	41	18
University of Alabama	52	45	19
Michigan State University	51	46	20
University of Notre Dame	51	46	27

(Produced by University Relations, Marketing Communications.)

UA Press Offers New Book on Civil Rights Movement

Book cover: Cradle of Freedom, by Frye Gaillard

Cradle of Freedom: Alabama and the Movement That Changed America, by Frye Gaillard

This new offering from the UA Press is a powerful and provocative account of the civil rights movement, with particular focus on the people and events in Alabama.

Cradle of Freedom puts a human face on the story of the black American struggle for equality in Alabama during the 1960s. While exceptional leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Fred Shuttlesworth, Ralph Abernathy, John Lewis, and others rose up from the ranks and carved their places in history, the burden of the movement was not carried by them alone. It was fueled by the commitment and hard work of thousands of everyday people who decided that the time had come to take a stand.

Cradle of Freedom is tied to the chronology of pivotal events occurring in Alabama — the Montgomery bus boycott, the Freedom Rides, the Letter from the Birmingham Jail, the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church, Bloody Sunday, and the Black Power movement in the Black Belt. Gaillard artfully interweaves fresh stories of ordinary people with the familiar ones. How these ordinary people rose to the challenges of an unfair system with a will and determination that changed their times forever is a fascinating and extraordinary story that Gaillard tells with his hallmark talent. Frye Gaillard is a freelance writer and author of 19 books, including The Dream Long Deferred, Becoming Truly Free: 300 Years of Black History in the Carolinas, and Race, Rock, and Religion: Profiles from a Southern Journalist.

To order, call Elizabeth Motherwell at 348-7108.

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