Biden honors EJI's Bryan Stevenson with National Humanities Medal
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Equal Justice Initiative executive director and Montgomery resident Bryan Stevenson visited the White House on Tuesday night to receive a national honor alongside 22 other scholars, artists and advocates.
President Joe Biden presented Stevenson with the National Humanities Medal for his work exonerating the wrongfully convicted, founding the Legacy Museum and establishing the National Memorial for Peace and Justice.
“I am extremely grateful to the National Humanities Endowment and the president for this recognition," Stevenson said in a statement to the Montgomery Advertiser. "It acknowledges not just me but everyone at EJI and this community who has supported our efforts to foster a deeper awareness of our past in pursuit of a healthier and more just future.”
During the ceremony in the East Room of the White House, Biden referred to Stevenson as “one of the most important civil rights leaders.” The president also said Stevenson provided “a compelling foundation” for him to sign the Emmett Till Antilynching Act into law — which classified lynching as a federal hate crime just under a year ago.
“Bryan does it all — challenges us to get proximity to the suffering and abandoned, and the poor and the condemned, so that as we search for the humanity in others, we find it within ourselves first,” Biden said during the ceremony on Tuesday.
The National Humanities Medal was established in 1997 to honor people who have expanded the nation's understanding of the humanities through their work and led citizens to engage more with history, literature, languages, philosophy and other humanities subjects.
Others who have been awarded the medal include Elton John, Joan Didion, Toni Morrison and Steven Spielberg.
Tuesday’s event honored the 2021 honorees, as the ceremony was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Biden awarded the National Medal of Arts during the same ceremony, whose honorees included Mindy Kaling, Gladys Knight, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Bruce Springsteen and Vera Wang.
“Thank you for cultivating the arts as an essential source of our prosperity, our happiness in American life, as George Washington described,” Biden said to all of the honorees. “Thank you for strengthening the covenant that is our democracy.”
Hadley Hitson covers the rural South for the Montgomery Advertiser and Report for America. She can be reached at hhitson@gannett.com. To support her work, subscribe to the Advertiser or donate to Report for America.
This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Biden awards National Humanities Medal to Montgomery's Bryan Stevenson
