Presidential Medal of Freedom
Updated August 5, 2020 |
Infoplease Staff
The Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, recognizes exceptional meritorious service. The medal was established by President Truman in 1945 to recognize notable service in the war. In 1963, President Kennedy reintroduced it as an honor for distinguished civilian service in peacetime.
| 1993* | Arthur Ashe, Jr. (tennis professional) |
| 1993 | William J. Brennan, Jr. (jurist) |
| 1993 | Marjory Stoneman Douglas (conservationist) |
| 1993 | J. William Fulbright (public servant) |
| 1993* | Thurgood Marshall (jurist) |
| 1993 | General Colin L. Powell1 (soldier) |
| 1993* | Joseph L. Raugh, Jr. (civil-rights and labor activist) |
| 1993 | Martha Raye (entertainer) |
| 1993 | John Minor Wisdom (public servant) |
| 1994 | Herbert Block (cartoonist) |
| 1994* | Cesar Chavez (labor leader) |
| 1994 | Arthur Flemming (government servant) |
| 1994 | James Grant (executive director, UNICEF) |
| 1994 | Dorothy Height (civil-rights leader) |
| 1994 | Barbara Jordan (public servant) |
| 1994 | Lane Kirkland (labor leader) |
| 1994 | Robert H. Michel (public servant) |
| 1994 | R. Sargent Shriver (government servant) |
| 1995 | Peggy Charren (children's television advocate) |
| 1995 | William Thaddeus Coleman, Jr. (public servant and civil-rights advocate) |
| 1995 | Joan Ganz Cooney (children's television advocate) |
| 1995 | John Hope Franklin (historian) |
| 1995 | A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr. (jurist and civil-rights advocate) |
| 1995 | Frank M. Johnson, Jr. (jurist) |
| 1995 | C. Everett Koop (public-health worker) |
| 1995 | Gaylord A. Nelson (public servant and conservationist) |
| 1995 | Walter P. Reuther (labor leader) |
| 1995 | James W. Rouse (urban planner) |
| 1995* | William C. Velasquez (voting rights advocate) |
| 1995 | Lew R. Wasserman (media executive) |
| 1996 | James Scott Brady (gun-control advocate) |
| 1996 | Cardinal Joseph Bernadin (Catholic leader) |
| 1996 | Millard D. Fuller (founder, Habitat for Humanity) |
| 1996 | David Alan Hamburg (physician and children's advocate) |
| 1996 | John H. Johnson (founder, Ebony and Jet) |
| 1996 | Eugene M. Lang (founder, “I Have a Dream“ Foundation) |
| 1996 | Jan Nowak-Jezioranski (WWII Polish resistance fighter) |
| 1996 | Antonia Pantoja (Puerto Rican educational and economic advocate) |
| 1996 | Rosa Parks (civil-rights leader) |
| 1996 | Ginetta Sagan (advocate for political prisoners) |
| 1996 | Morris Udall (public servant) |
| 1997 | Robert Dole (public servant) |
| 1997 | William J. Perry (soldier) |
| 1998 | Arnold Aronson (civil-rights advocate) |
| 1998 | Brooke Astor (philanthropist) |
| 1998 | Robert Coles (psychiatrist and author) |
| 1998 | Justin Dart, Jr. (founder of Americans with Disabilities Act) |
| 1998 | James Farmer (civil-rights leader) |
| 1998 | Dante B. Fascell (public servant) |
| 1998 | Zachary Fisher (philanthropist) |
| 1998 | Frances Hesselbein (former leader of the Girl Scouts of America) |
| 1998 | Fred Korematsu (activist redressing Japanese-American internment in WWII) |
| 1998 | Sol M. Linowitz (jurist) |
| 1998 | Wilma Mankiller (former Cherokee Nation leader) |
| 1998 | Margaret Murie (environmentalist) |
| 1998 | Mario G. Obledo (activist for Mexican-American civil rights) |
| 1998 | Elliot L. Richardson (public servant) |
| 1998 | David Rockefeller (philanthropist) |
| 1998* | Albert Shanker (educator) |
| 1998 | Adm. Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr. (soldier) |
| 1999 | Lloyd M. Bentsen (public servant) |
| 1999 | Edgar M. Bronfman, Sr. (president of World Jewish Congress) |
| 1999 | President Jimmy Carter (public servant, activist) |
| 1999 | Rosalynn Carter (human-rights activist) |
| 1999 | Evelyn Dubrow (lobbyist) |
| 1999 | Sister Isolina Ferré (advocate for the poor) |
| 1999 | President Gerald Ford (public servant) |
| 1999 | Oliver White Hill (civil-rights lawyer) |
| 1999 | Max Kampelman (arms-control expert) |
| 1999 | Helmut Kohl (former German chancellor) |
| 1999 | Edgar Wayburn (Sierra Club leader) |
| 2000 | Aung San Suu Kyi (human rights activist) |
| 2000 | James Edward Burke (businessman, antidrug activist) |
| 2000* | John Chafee (public servant) |
| 2000 | Gen. Wesley Clark (soldier) |
| 2000 | Adm. William Crowe (soldier) |
| 2000 | Marian Wright Edelman (lawyer, president of Children's Defense Fund) |
| 2000 | John Kenneth Galbraith (economist) |
| 2000 | Monsignor George Higgins (labor movement advocate) |
| 2000 | Rev. Jesse Jackson (civil-rights activist) |
| 2000 | Mildred Jeffrey (women's labor activist) |
| 2000 | Mathilde Krim (AIDS researcher) |
| 2000 | George McGovern (public servant) |
| 2000 | Cruz Reynoso (lawyer, civil-rights advocate) |
| 2000 | Rev. Gardner Taylor (author, civil-rights advocate) |
| 2000 | Simon Wiesenthal (concentration camp survivor, Nazi hunter) |
| 2000 | Daniel Patrick Moynihan (public servant) |
| 2002 | Hank Aaron (baseball player) |
| 2002 | Bill Cosby (comedian and actor) |
| 2002 | Plácido Domingo (tenor) |
| 2002 | Peter Drucker (management theorist) |
| 2002* | Katharine Graham (newspaper publisher) |
| 2002 | Dr. D. A. Henderson (leader in eradication of smallpox) |
| 2002 | Irving Kristol (author and editor) |
| 2002 | Nelson Mandela (former president of South Africa) |
| 2002 | Gordon Moore (Intel cofounder) |
| 2002 | Nancy Reagan (former first lady) |
| 2002 | Fred Rogers (children's television host) |
| 2002 | A. M. Rosenthal (editor and columnist) |
| 2003 | Jacques Barzun (writer, historian) |
| 2003 | Julia Child (chef) |
| 2003* | Roberto W. Clemente (baseball player) |
| 2003 | Van Cliburn (pianist) |
| 2003 | Vaclav Havel (playwright, Czechoslovakian president) |
| 2003 | Charlton Heston (actor) |
| 2003 | Edward Teller (physicist) |
| 2003* | R. David Thomas (Wendy's founder) |
| 2003* | Byron R. White (Supreme Court justice) |
| 2003 | James Q. Wilson (professor) |
| 2003 | John R. Wooden (basketball coach) |
| 2004 | Robert L. Bartley (editor) |
| 2004 | L. Paul Bremer (diplomat) |
| 2004 | Edward Brooke III (politician) |
| 2004 | Doris Day (actress) |
| 2004 | Tommy Franks (U.S. Army general) |
| 2004 | Vartan Gregorian (historian) |
| 2004 | Gilbert Melville Grosvenor (president of the National Geographic Society) |
| 2004 | Gordon B. Hinckley (president of the Mormon Church) Gordon B. Hinckley |
| 2004 | John Paul II (pope) |
| 2004 | Estee Lauder (founder of cosmetics company) |
| 2004 | Rita Moreno (dancer and actress) |
| 2004 | Arnold Palmer (golfer) |
| 2004 | Arnall Patz (ophthalmology researcher) |
| 2004 | Norman Podhoretz (journalist) |
| 2004 | George Tenet (former CIA director) |
| 2004 | Walter Wriston (economist and banker) |
| 2005 | Muhammad Ali (boxer) |
| 2005 | Carol Burnett (comedienne and actress) |
| 2005 | Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn (software code designers) |
| 2005 | Robert Conquest (historian) |
| 2005 | Aretha Franklin (singer) |
| 2005 | Alan Greenspan (chairman, Federal Reserve Board; economist) |
| 2005 | Andy Griffith (actor) |
| 2005 | Paul Harvey (radio personality) |
| 2005 | Sonny Montgomery (veterans' rights activist, former U.S. congressman) |
| 2005 | Richard B. Myers (U.S. Army general) |
| 2005 | Jack Nicklaus (golfer) |
| 2005 | Frank Robinson (baseball player) |
| 2005 | Paul Rusesabagina (Rwandan hotelier) |
| 2006 | Ruth Johnson Colvin (literacy advocate) |
| 2006 | Norman C. Francis (president of Xavier University) |
| 2006 | Paul Johnson (historian and journalist) |
| 2006 | B. B. King (singer and guitarist) |
| 2006 | Joshua Lederberg (scientist) |
| 2006 | David McCullough (author and historian) |
| 2006 | Norman Y. Mineta (public official) |
| 2006 | Buck O'Neil (former professional baseball player) |
| 2006 | William Safire (writer and commentator) |
| 2006 | Natan Sharansky (writer and human rights advocate) |
| 2007 | Gary S. Becker (economist and nobel laureate) |
| 2007 | Oscar Elias Biscet (medical doctor and activist) |
| 2007 | Francis S. Collins (director of NHGRI at NIH) |
| 2007 | Benjamin L. Hooks (attorney and clergyman) |
| 2007 | Henry J. Hyde (representative from Illinois) |
| 2007 | Brian P. Lamb (founder and CEO of C-SPAN) |
| 2007 | Harper Lee (writer) |
| 2007 | Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (president of Liberia) |
| 2008 | Dr. Benjamin Carson (neurosurgeon) |
| 2008 | Dr. Anthony Fauci (immunologist) |
| 2008 | Tom Lantos (former representative from California) |
| 2008 | Peter Pace (four-star general) |
| 2008 | Donna Shalala (Secretary of Health and Human Services) |
| 2008 | Laurence Silberman (judge in U.S. Court of Appeals) |
| 2009 | Tony Blair (former Prime Minister of United Kingdom) |
| 2009 | John Howard (former Prime Minister of Australia) |
| 2009 | Alvaro Uribe (President of Columbia) |
| 2009 | Nancy Goodman Brinker (founder/CEO Susan G. Komen for the Cure) |
| 2009 | Dr. Pedro José Greer, Jr. (physician) |
| 2009 | Stephen Hawking (physicist) |
| 2009 | Representative Jack Kemp (public servant) |
| 2009 | Senator Edward Kennedy (public servant) |
| 2009 | Billie Jean King (tennis player) |
| 2009 | Joseph Medicine Crow (Crow tribal historian) |
| 2009 | Harvey Milk (public servant) |
| 2009 | Justice Sandra Day O'Connor (lawyer) |
| 2009 | Sidney Poitier (actor) |
| 2009 | Chita Rivera (actress) |
| 2009 | Mary Robinson (president of Ireland) |
| 2009 | Dr. Janet Davison Rowley (geneticist) |
| 2009 | Archbishop Desmond Tutu (clergyman) |
| 2009 | Muhammad Yunus (economist) |
| 2011 | President George H. W. Bush (public servant) |
| 2011 | Angela Merkel (German chancellor) |
| 2011 | Representative John Lewis (public servant) |
| 2011 | John H. Adams (environmentalist) |
| 2011 | Maya Angelou (poet) |
| 2011 | Warren Buffett (investor, philanthropist) |
| 2011 | Jasper Johns (artist) |
| 2011 | Gerda Weissmann Klein (holocaust survivor) |
| 2011* | Dr. Tom Little (humanitarian) |
| 2011 | Yo-Yo Ma (cellist) |
| 2011 | Stan Musial (baseball player) |
| 2011 | Bill Russell (basketball player) |
| 2011 | Jean Kennedy Smith (former U.S. ambassador to Ireland) |
| 2011 | John J. Sweeney (union president) |
1. With Distinction.
NOTE: An asterisk following a year denotes a posthumous award.
| Pritzker Architecture Prize | Science and Other Awards | The Spingarn Medal |
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