WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden will award the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Friday to a host of prominent Americans, including several of his most important political allies, such as former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former Secretary of State John Kerry and Rep. James E. Clyburn of South Carolina.
President Joe Biden will award the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Friday to a host of prominent Americans, including several of his most important political allies, such as former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former Secretary of State John Kerry and Rep. James E. Clyburn of South Carolina.
With an election six months away, Biden assembled a list of 19 people to honor that was heavy with major Democratic Party figures and others he has worked with over the years, including former Vice President Al Gore and former Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York. The one well-known Republican to be honored is former Sen. Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina.
“These 19 Americans built teams, coalitions, movements, organizations and businesses that shaped America for the better,” the White House said in a statement announcing the awardees. “They are the pinnacle of leadership in their fields. They consistently demonstrated over their careers the power of community, hard work and service.”
Biden will present the medals at a White House ceremony on Friday afternoon. The medal is the nation’s highest civilian award, first established in its current form by President John F. Kennedy and meant to honor “any person who has made an especially meritorious contribution” to national security, world peace or “cultural or other significant public or private endeavors,” as the original executive order put it.
Aside from political recipients, the president selected a handful of well-known figures from the worlds of civil rights, sports, entertainment and space exploration.
Among the honorees will be Clarence B. Jones, a civil rights activist who helped draft the “I Have a Dream” speech delivered by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. at the March on Washington in 1963; Opal Lee, an educator who in 2016 at age 89 walked from her home in Texas to Washington to lobby to make Juneteenth a federally recognized holiday marking the end of slavery; and Judy Shepard, who helped found the Matthew Shepard Foundation to combat anti-gay hate crimes after her son was brutally murdered in 1998.
