Reuters North American News Service, November 5th, 2007
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush
awarded the highest U.S. civilian honor Monday to two
figures in the push for racial equality: former NAACP leader
Benjamin Hooks and "To Kill a Mockingbird" author Harper Lee.
Hooks and Lee received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in
a White House ceremony that also honored Liberian President
Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and Cuban dissident Oscar Elias Biscet.
Other recipients included Nobel Prize-winning economist
Gary Becker; Brian Lamb, co-founder of the C-SPAN public
affairs cable network; former Illinois Republican Rep. Henry
Hyde; and Francis Collins, who led the Human Genome Project,
the U.S.-led effort to map the human genome.
Hooks battled racial segregation throughout a career that
saw him become Tennessee's first black criminal court judge and
serve on the Federal Communications Commission. He also headed
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
for 15 years.
Hooks was often treated with less respect than the
prisoners of war he guarded during World War Two, Bush said.
"He never tired or faltered in demanding that our nation
live up to its founding ideals of liberty and equality," the
president said.
Lee's coming-of-age novel, published during the turmoil of
the civil rights era, drew on her experiences witnessing racial
discrimination in small-town Alabama, where she grew up as a
neighbor and friend of author Truman Capote.
Inspired by a racially charged rape trial in the 1930s, "To
Kill a Mockingbird" has sold over 30 million copies since it
was published in 1960 and is on the reading list in many U.S.
schools.
In 1961 it won Lee the Pulitzer Prize and in 1962 was made
into a movie, which won actor Gregory Peck an Oscar.
Peck's wife, Veronique, looked on from the front row as
Bush draped the ornate medal over Lee's shoulders.
The reclusive Lee, 81, has only published a handful of
essays since the novel and has made few public remarks. She was
taken to the stage in a wheelchair but stood throughout the
35-minute ceremony, smiling broadly.
"'To Kill a Mockingbird' has influenced the character of
our country for the better," Bush said. "It's been a gift to
the entire world."
Bush also praised Johnson-Sirleaf, who was elected as
Liberia's first female president in 2005 after 14 years of
civil war, and offered support to jailed Cuban dissident
Biscet, whose son accepted the medal on his behalf.
