Obama honors Spielberg, Streisand, and Sondheim with Medal of Freedom

President Obama gives baseball legend Willie Mays his Medal of Freedom.

(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

published 25 November 2015

President Obama presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom to several notable names in entertainment, sports, and politics Tuesday, including filmmaker Steven Spielberg, baseball legend Willie Mays, singer and actress Barbra Streisand, and Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md).

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Obama said the recipients contributed "to America's strength as a nation," and pointed out the different ways they made a difference in the country. Mays, he said, "helped carry forward the banner of civil rights. It's because of giants like Willie that someone like me could even think about running for president." Spielberg creates films that are "marked by a faith in our common humanity," and NASA mathematician Katherine G. Johnson had the task of calculating trajectories for the first U.S. mission in space and the Apollo 11 moon landing. "If you think your job is pressure-packed, hers meant that forgetting to carry the one might send somebody floating off into the solar system," Obama said.

Other honorees include composer Stephen Sondheim; conductor and violinist Itzhak Perlman; singer Gloria Estefan; music producer Emilio Estefan; veterans activist Bonnie Carroll; singer James Taylor; former Indiana Rep. Lee Hamilton; and former EPA head William Ruckelshaus. Baseball great Yogi Berra; Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to Congress; Indian treaty rights advocate Billy Frank Jr.; and civil rights activist Minoru Yasui were all honored posthumously. Yasui took a stand in 1942 by ignoring the military curfew for Japanese Americans and going for a walk in Portland, and Obama said his legacy has "never been more important. It is a call to our national conscience, a reminder of our enduring obligation to be the land of the free and the home of the brave, an America worthy of his sacrifice."

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.