medal of freedom

Obama: Medal of Freedom recipients are 'agents of change'

Today's recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom are an honor roll of civil rights.

They range from Sidney Poitier, the first black man to win an Oscar; to Billie Jean Moffitt King, a pioneer in equal rights for women and gays as well as a tennis champion; to Ted Kennedy, the veteran senator whose brain cancer prevented him from attending the ceremony in the East Room.Obama also awarded two posthumous Medals of Freedom. One went to Harvey Milk, the gay San Francisco city supervisor whose story inspired an Oscar-nominated film. The other was awarded to Jack Kemp, the football player-turned-Republican-congressman who ran for vice president in 1996.

"The truest test of a person's life is what we do for one another," Obama said in making the award to "these agents of change."The Medal of Freedom for Mary Robinson, the first female president of Ireland, struck the only discordant note. Some members of Congress and Jewish organizations protested the award, saying the former United Nations official allowed anti-Semites to hijack a 2001 conference on racism.

They included people who paved the way for the nation's first African-American president. They included Joseph Lowery, a top aide to Martin Luther King Jr., to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who resisted apartheid in South Africa.The 16 honorees make a good deal of the history behind the liberation and empowerment of blacks, women, Hispanics, gays, Native Americans, the diseased, the physically handicapped, and the poor.

Dancer Chita Rivera achieved Broadway immortality by starring in West Side Story and other productions. Dr. Janet Davison Rowley tracked down the causes of leukemia and other cancers.Professor Muhammad Yunus developed the use of micro-loans to help the poor of Bangladesh and eventually the world get access to credit.Women recipients included Nancy Goodman Brinker, the Dallas businesswoman whose organization in honor of her late sister raised awareness of breast cancer; and Sandra Day O'Connnor, the first woman on the Supreme Court.

Also honored: Dr. Joseph Medicine Crow - High Bird, a war hero and scholar; scientist Stephen Hawking, a pioneer in theoretical physics despite confinement to a wheelchair; and Pedro Jose "Joe" Greer, Jr., whose medical center in Miami treats thousands of homeless patients a year.