{"id":14708,"date":"2014-12-25T10:07:39","date_gmt":"2014-12-25T15:07:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.frankwbaker.com\/mlc\/?page_id=14708"},"modified":"2023-12-07T10:07:22","modified_gmt":"2023-12-07T15:07:22","slug":"harper-lee-medal-of-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.frankwbaker.com\/mlc\/harper-lee-medal-of-freedom\/","title":{"rendered":"Harper Lee Receives Medal of Freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"wrap\">\n<div id=\"contentwrap\">\n<div id=\"content\">\n<div id=\"idfeaturepic\" class=\"featurePic-wide\"><span style=\"font-family: Verdana; font-size: small;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.frankwbaker.com\/georgebush_wideweb__470x328,0.jpg\" alt=\"Highlighted struggle for equality \u2026 George Bush confers the\" width=\"293\" height=\"206\" align=\"middle\" \/><br \/>\n<\/span>Highlighted struggle for equality \u2026 George Bush confers the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Harper Lee.<br \/>\n<small>Photo: AFP<\/small><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"wrap0\">\n<div id=\"contentwrap0\">\n<div id=\"content0\">\n<div>\n<div id=\"bylineDetails\">November 7, 2007<\/p>\n<p>Read White House ceremony <a href=\"http:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/news\/releases\/2007\/11\/20071105-1.html\">prepared remarks<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>WASHINGTON: George Bush awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to eight people on Monday, including Harper Lee, 81, the author of To Kill a Mockingbird.<\/p>\n<p>The US President praised Lee&#8217;s 1961 book as a &#8220;gift to the entire world&#8221;. The citation accompanying the medal said: &#8220;At a critical moment in our history, To Kill a Mockingbird helped focus the nation on the turbulent struggle for equality.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Among those at the ceremony was Veronique Peck, the widow of the actor Gregory Peck, who portrayed Atticus Finch in the film adaptation of Lee&#8217;s book.<\/p>\n<p>The recipients were Brian Lamb from the political cable network C-SPAN; the former congressman Henry Hyde; the economist and Nobel laureate Gary Becker; the imprisoned Cuban dissident Oscar Elias Biscet; the Liberian President, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf; the scientist Francis Collins; and a former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, Benjamin Hooks.<\/p>\n<p>Cox Newspapers<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Highlighted struggle for equality &hellip; George Bush confers the Presidential&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[202],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-14708","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-to-kill-a-mockingbird-popular"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.frankwbaker.com\/mlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.frankwbaker.com\/mlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.frankwbaker.com\/mlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.frankwbaker.com\/mlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.frankwbaker.com\/mlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14708"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.frankwbaker.com\/mlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36572,"href":"https:\/\/www.frankwbaker.com\/mlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14708\/revisions\/36572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.frankwbaker.com\/mlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.frankwbaker.com\/mlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.frankwbaker.com\/mlc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}