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
Science Awards
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