Michelle Obama to be honored with 2021 Freedom Award: 'A global icon for women's rights'

MEMPHIS – Michelle Obama is among the recipients of the 2021 Freedom Award, the National Civil Rights Museum announced Wednesday.

The Oct. 14 awards ceremony will be at the Orpheum in Downtown Memphis and presented as a livestreamed "virtual" event. The ceremony won't be open to the public, but tickets to watch the show online will be available for purchase.

Obama — a lawyer, writer, health and education advocate and former first lady and wife of Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States — joins a stellar list of past honorees. Recipients of the Freedom Award have included Nelson Mandela, Sidney Poitier, Stevie Wonder, the Dalai Lama and at least three people so famous — Bono, Oprah and Usher — they don't need last names.

In 2018, future president Joe Biden was a recipient. (Barack Obama, however, has yet to be named an honoree.)

According to the museum website, the Freedom Award "honors individuals who have made significant contributions in civil rights and who have laid the foundation for present and future leaders in the battle for human rights."

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Michelle Obama, 57, was cited by the museum for being "a global icon for women's rights" and "an advocate for healthy families, service members and their families, higher education, and international adolescent girls’ education."

Since leaving the White House, her advocacy initiatives have included The Girls Opportunity Alliance, a program of the Obama Foundation that works "to empower adolescent girls around the world through education, allowing them to achieve their full potential and transform their families, communities, and countries." 

Museum officials said Wednesday it was uncertain whether Obama or any of the other honorees would attend the Orpheum event or participate in other museum-related activities in Memphis in connection with the Freedom Award. Those who cannot attend, whether due to pandemic caution or some other reason, likely will participate virtually.

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This year's other Freedom Award goes to a collective honoree: The "Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for a Moral Revival," an anti-poverty effort that carries on the economic justice mission of the original 1968 Poor People's Campaign launched by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The revived campaign is headed by William J. Barber II, 58, and Liz Theoharis, 45, who will receive the award on behalf of the effort.

According to the civil rights museum, this new Poor People's Campaign confronts "the interlocking evils of systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation, militarism and the war economy, and the distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism," while championing "the power of poor people to be change agents at the very heart of democracy."

“We’re devoting this Freedom Award to those who have, and are still, creating life-changing blueprints for our society," said Freedom Award producer Faith Morris, the museum's chief marketing and external affairs officer.

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The awards ceremony also will pay tribute to 18-year-old Darnella Frazier whose 2020 eyewitness video of the killing of George Floyd,  which she posted on Facebook, launched what the civil rights museum called "global protests against injustice and brutality."

Earlier this year, Frazier received a special award from the Pulitzer Prize board for "courageously reporting the murder of George Floyd." Said Morris: "It was her viral video that sparked a racial reckoning in the midst of a global pandemic."

Dr. Russell Wigginton, the new president of the National Civil Rights Museum, said recognizing Frazier is a way to emphasize "the importance of our youth" to the ongoing struggle for civil rights movement, and to encourage young people to fight for "the world they want to live in."

Wigginton said recognizing the contributions of Frazier and others who bring public attention to injustice is key to the mission of the museum. He called the museum "the place where truth in history lives."

This year's Freedom Award ceremony occurs as the museum celebrates its 30th anniversary. The museum opened to the public on Sept. 28, 1991. The Freedom Award was launched the same year, to be what the museum calls "a symbol of the ongoing fight for human rights both in America and worldwide."

Since then, the awards ceremony has become the signature event of the museum built around the Lorraine Motel, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. The museum's website describes the ceremony as "one of the nation's most prestigious events."

The 2020 Freedom Awards were canceled, due to the pandemic. Organizers had hoped this year's show would represent a return to celebratory red-carpet normal, but the resurgence of COVID infections caused museum officials to restructure the event. Looking on the bright side, Morris said the livestreaming aspect of the show makes it a "worldwide" event, since anybody can "attend" virtually for the cost of a ticket, just as some entertainers during the pandemic sold tickets to "virtual" live concerts.

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