CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) — U.S. Rep. John Lewis has been named this year’s recipient of the Gleitsman Citizen Activist Award for his decades-long work on human rights and civil liberties.
The award and $125,000 prize are given biennially by the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School.
Lewis will receive his award at a public ceremony on Tuesday.
The Georgia Democrat has been a leading civil rights activist for almost 60 years. He was a speaker at the March on Washington, a trusted advisor to Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and a central architect of 1964’s Freedom Summer, a volunteer campaign to register black voters in Mississippi.
In 2011, President Barack Obama presented Lewis with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, this country’s highest civilian honor.
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