Samford Student Scarlotte Deupree Works for Adult Literacy as Miss Alabama
Samford senior Scarlotte Deupree is Miss Alabama 2002.

Samford senior Scarlotte Deupree became interested in the cause of adult literacy in high school when she discovered that 25 percent of Alabamians read below the fifth-grade level.

“That’s about 500,000 people, and that is a very scary thing to me,” she said. Some of those people cannot read at all.

To help her community of Sylacauga, she began volunteering in literacy programs as a high school student. She started a program that identifies people to serve as one-on-one tutors.

Now, Deupree has a new forum from which to promote literacy: her role as Miss Alabama. Deupree was crowned Miss Alabama 2002 at the close of the annual scholarship pageant in June. She will represent her state in the Miss America competition this fall.

Deupree’s family moved to Birmingham several years ago, and she became active in the Literacy Council of Central Alabama. Last summer, she and the council sponsored Alabama’s first Women in Literacy Summit, held at Samford.

Now, she’s taking the literacy message all over the state as Miss Alabama.

A singer, Deupree is also working on her routine for the Miss America competition in Atlantic City. She will sing “Holding Out for a Hero,” an ’80s song from the movie Footloose. She sang the national anthem when President George W. Bush visited Birmingham in July.

Deupree interned in the office of Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions in January 2001. She has also interned on the editorial desk of Southern Living magazine.

She hopes to go to graduate school in public policy after finishing Samford. But first, she’s got a big year ahead as Miss Alabama.