Alexander Reed Sarratt, Jr. was born on September 17, 1917, in Charlotte, North Carolina.

[1] He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1937, where he received a bachelor's degree in economics.

[2][3] Sarratt served as the executive director of the Ford Foundation-funded Southern Education Reporting Service in Nashville, Tennessee from 1960 to 1965, where he tracked school desegregation in the South.

[1][2] They had two sons, Alexander Reed III, John Lester, and a daughter, Ann[2] Ranson He was a member of the Democratic Party and the Presbyterian Church.

[1][2] The Reed Sarratt Lecture Series at the UNC School of Media and Journalism is named in his honor.