Memphis, TN (PRWEB) August 10, 2011

In celebration of the 20th Anniversary of the National Civil Rights Museum, the 2011 prestigious Freedom Awards will be given to select individuals for their tireless contributions for civil and human rights, education, the arts, sports community, justice and for their dedication to creating opportunity for the disenfranchised.

The Freedom Awards is the most widely acclaimed global civil rights event. It is a fabric of the mission of the National Civil Rights Museum, the home of the historic Lorraine Motel, site of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The award ceremony is Saturday November 12, 2011 at the Cannon Center for Performing Arts in Memphis, TN.

Former Freedom Award recipients include Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, Oprah Winfrey, Stevie Wonder, President William Clinton, Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King, Earvin Magic Johnson, Colin Powell, Dorothy Height, Jackie Robinson (posthumously), Ruby Dee/Ossie Davis (posthumously), Sidney Poitier, Eva Longoria, Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, Mikhail Gorbachav, and Myrlie Evers-Williams.

Award sponsors are FEDEX, Hyde Family Foundation, NIKE, International Paper, ExxonMobil and the First Tennessee Foundation.

The following Freedom Awards categories will be recognized:

Education:

Marva Collins, Pioneer Award creating the Westside Preparatory School, Chicago, in 1975 with $ 5,000 of her teachers pension fund. Her school took in students who were labeled as borderline learning disabled and problem children. At the end of first school year each student scored at least 5 grades higher. Her curriculum and method is based on classical literature, abstract concepts and lofty thoughts.

Sports Community:

Bill Russell, Pioneer Award for his participation in the Civil Rights Movement, recipient of the NBAs first Civil Rights Award and was the first African American to coach a major sport at the professional level in the US. Member of the NBA Hall of Fame who fought racism off and on the courts, Russell holds the record for the most championships won by an athlete in a North American sports league.

Playing in the wake of pioneers like Earl Lloyd, Chuck Cooper, and Sweetwater Clifton, Russell was the first African American player to achieve superstar status in the NBA.

For his accomplishments in the Civil Rights Movement on and off the court, Russell was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama in 2011.

Alonzo Mourning, Legacy Award for his charities which aid the development of children and families living in at risk situations. He is founder of the Overtown Youth Center in Miami, Florida for the enrichment of children. Former NBA standout, he launched Zos Fund for Life to raise funds for glomerulosclerosis, which he was diagnosed with during his NBA career. He founded Athletes for Hope, a charitable organization, which helps professional athletes get involved in charitable causes and inspires millions of non-athletes to volunteer and support the community.

Humanitarian:

Dr. Bill Frist, Pioneer Award for his work with African hospitals and schools with the group Samaritans Purse. As a former US Senator from Tennessee, he made annual visits to Africa for medical assistance and counsel and was instrumental in getting the U.S. to define the actions in Darfur as genocide. Chair of Hope Through Healing Hands, a nonprofit that works for child survival/maternal health, clean water, extreme poverty, and global disease such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. He serves on the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, First Lady Michelle Obama’s Partnership for a Healthier America and the Let’s Move Campaign, Kaiser Family Foundation, Millennium Challenge Corporation and Africare and is the recipient of the 2010 Refugees International Humanitarian Award.

The Arts:

Cicely Tyson, Pioneer Award for her stand against universal stereotypes in film and for her activism in using the world stage to raise the consciousness of our common humanity. She is considered a driving force in creating the National Museum of African American History and Culture and is a World Ambassador for UNICEF. The Cicely Tyson School of Performing and Fine Arts, a magnet school in East Orange, New Jersey, was renamed in her honor. She plays an active part in supporting the school, which serves one of New Jersey’s most underprivileged African-American communities.

Activism:

Danny Glover, Pioneer Award for his support of various humanitarian and civil rights causes including the United Farm Workers. In the 1960s as a student at San Francisco State University, Glover was a member of the Black Students Union which, along with the American Federation of Teachers, collaborated in a five-month student-led strike to establish a Department of Black Studies. The strike was the longest student walkout in U.S. history. It helped create the first Department of Black Studies and the first School of Ethnic Studies in the U.S.

Susan L. Taylor, Legacy Award former editor-in-chief and editorial director for Essence Magazine for 27 years, was the first and only African American woman to be recognized by the Magazine Publishers of America with the Henry Johnson Fisher Award and the first to be inducted into the American Society of Magazine Editors Hall of Fame. She founded the National Cares Mentoring Movement, in 2006, to recruit one million able adults to help secure children who are in peril and losing ground. Susan is a cofounder of Future PAC, the first national political action committee to provide a network of support and sources of funding for progressive African American women seeking federal and state-level political offices.

Legal Justice:

NAACP, Pioneer Award. The NAACP is the countrys first and foremost civil and human rights organization. Since being founded in founded in 1909, the NAACP has continued to live it to its mission: to achieve racial justice, equality, and an inclusive society. One of the NAACP’s greatest legal victories was in 1954, when Thurgood Marshall and a team of NAACP attorneys won Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. In this landmark decision, the Supreme Court held that segregation in public education violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Southern Poverty Law Center, Legacy Award Internationally known for its tolerance education programs, legal victories against white supremacists and its tracking of hate groups, militias and extremist organizations. The Southern Poverty Law Center is dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry, and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of our society. Using litigation, education and other forms of advocacy, they employ a three-pronged strategy to battle racial and social injustice: