WASHINGTON D.C., DC — President Joe Biden awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, to 19 people on Friday, May 3.
One of them was North Carolina's own Elizabeth Dole.
Dole is a former US Senator and the first woman to represent North Carolina back in 2002.
The Salisbury native graduated from Duke University with a political science degree in 1958, afterwards earning her law degree from Harvard.
Before becoming a senator, she was a commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission during the Nixon administration, Secretary of Transportation during the Reagan administration and Secretary of Labor in the George H. W. Bush administration.
Dole also served as the president of the American Red Cross from 1991 to 1999.
Elizabeth Dole was married to Bob Dole, a Republican Kansas senator who ran for president three times. Bob Dole died in 2021.
The other recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom are as follows:
- Michael Bloomberg — businessman and three-term New York City mayor
- Gregory Boyle — Jesuit Catholic priest who founded Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles
- James Clyburn — Democratic U.S. House Representative from South Carolina
- Phil Donahue — journalist and daytime television talk show pioneer
- Medgar Evers (posthumous) — fought against segregation in Mississippi, murdered in 1963
- Al Gore — former Democratic Vice President, U.S. Senator and U.S. House Representative
- Clarence B. Jones — civil rights activist and lawyer who helped draft Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech
- John Kerry — Vietnam veteran and former U.S. Secretary of State and Democratic U.S. Senator
- Frank Lautenburg (posthumous) — five-term Democratic U.S. Senator from New Jersey who died in 2013
- Katie Ledecky — seven-time Olympic gold medalist in swimming, most decorated female swimmer of all time
- Opal Lee — educator and activist who helped make Juneteenth a federally recognized holiday
- Ellen Ochoa — first Hispanic woman in space, second female director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center
- Nancy Pelosi — Democratic U.S. House Representative from California, 52nd Speaker of the House
- Jane Rigby — astronomer, chief scientist of world’s most powerful telescope
- Teresa Romero — president of the United Farm Workers, first Latina to be president of a national union in the U.S.
- Judy Shepard — co-founder of the Matthew Shepard Foundation, organization championing LGBTQ rights created in honor of her murdered son
- Jim Thorpe — multi-sport star athlete and first Native American to win an Olympic gold medal who died in 1953
- Michelle Yeoh — longtime actress who recently became first Asian to win the Oscar for Best Actress
