FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 2, 2025
MEDIA CONTACT: Cody Hefner (513) 608-5777, chefner@nurfc.org
Freedom Center announces 2025 International Freedom Conductor Awards
Program will bestow Freedom Center's highest honor on May 24 at the Aronoff Center, presented by Procter & Gamble
CINCINNATI – This spring, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center will bestow its highest honor to modern-day freedom heroes and equity advocates during their International Freedom Conductor Awards program, presented by Procter & Gamble. The program coincides with the Freedom Center’s 30th anniversary and will be a celebration of three decades of social justice education, advocacy and heroes who are leading the fight for justice today.
The Freedom Center’s International Freedom Conductor Awards will be presented during the honors program May 24 at the Aronoff Center. The program will feature live music performances and reflections from award honorees. Limited seats will be available, but the honors program will be taped live and rebroadcast nationally.
The International Freedom Conductor Award is the Freedom Center’s highest honor, awarded to recognize the contributions of contemporary individuals who, by their actions and personal examples, reflect the spirit and courageous actions of conductors on the historic Underground Railroad, the nation’s original social justice movement. Award recipients reflect positive impact on contemporary freedom issues and inspire others to act.
“Freedom calls to each of us. For generations, individuals have answered the call, risking their lives to light the way for the oppressed and the unfree. But as freedom conductors persist, so, too, do old systems and hardened hearts rise to challenge them,” said Woodrow Keown, Jr., president and COO of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. “Our International Freedom Conductors remind us that we are all worthy of being torchbearers and we must all answer the call to lead through the darkness, moving ever closer to the brilliant light of freedom.”
The 2025 International Freedom Conductor Award will be presented to:
Opal Lee, the Grandmother of Juneteenth
Opal Lee campaigned for decades to make Juneteenth a federal holiday – the date news reached Galveston, Texas that the Civil War was over and enslaved African Americans were now free on June 19, 1865. Each year, she walked 2.5 miles, representing the 2.5 years it took for news of the Emancipation Proclamation to reach Texas. At the age of 89, she conducted a symbolic five-month walk from Fort Worth to Washington, DC. Largely through her efforts, Juneteenth was recognized as a federal holiday in 2021. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Joe Biden in 2024 and was a Nobel Peace Prize nominee in 2022. She is just the second African American to have her portrait hung in the Texas State Senate.
Lonnie G. Bunch III – First African American Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution
Lonnie G. Bunch III is the 14th Secretary of the Smithsonian, a position that oversees 21 museums, 21 libraries, the National Zoo, numerous research centers and several education units and centers. Previously, Bunch was the founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. When he started as director in 2005, he had one staff member, no collections, no funding and no site for a museum. Driven by optimism, determination and a commitment to build “a place that would make America better,” Bunch transformed a vision into a bold reality. The museum has welcomed more than 11 million visitors since it opened in September 2016 and has compiled a collection of 40,000 objects that are housed in the first “green building” on the National Mall. In 2019, the creation of the museum became the first Smithsonian effort to be the topic of a Harvard Business Review case study.
Toni Morrison*, Pulitzer Prize- and Nobel Prize-winning author of Beloved
Toni Morrison was one of the most celebrated authors in the world. In addition to writing plays and children’s books, her novels earned her countless prestigious awards including the Pulitzer Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama. As the first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, Morrison’s work has inspired a generation of writers to follow in her footsteps. Her award-winning novel Beloved is inspired by the true story of Margaret Garner who, after escaping enslavement in Northern Kentucky, crossed the Ohio River in Cincinnati with her young children. Pursued by slave catchers, Garner killed one of her children before capture, an act of love to spare her child from enslavement, a fate worse than death.
Isabel Wilkerson – Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and best-selling author
Isabel Wilkerson, the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Humanities Medal, has become a leading figure in narrative nonfiction, an interpreter of the human condition and an impassioned voice for demonstrating how history can help us understand ourselves, our country and our current era of upheaval. Through her writing, Wilkerson brings the invisible and the marginalized into the light and into our hearts. Through her lectures, she explores with authority the need to reconcile America’s karmic inheritance and the origins of both our divisions and our shared commonality. Her debut work, The Warmth of Other Suns, won multiple awards including the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Lynton History Prize from Harvard and Columbia universities.
*Awarded posthumously.
The 2025 honorees will join a legacy of International Freedom Conductors that includes:
- Rosa Parks, 1998
- Archbishop Desmond Tutu, 2000
- Dorothy Height and the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights, 2003
- President George H.W. Bush, 2007
- President Bill Clinton, 2007
- His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama, 2010
- Fred Shuttlesworth, 2013
- Nicholas Kristof, 2013
- Lech Walesa, 2014
- Nelson Mandela, 2014
- Nathaniel R. Jones, 2016
- Amal Clooney, 2021
- George Clooney, 2021
- Congressman John Lewis, 2021
- Bryan Stevenson, 2021
Tickets for the 2025 International Freedom Conductor Awards will go on sale April 11. For more information visit freedomcenter.org/ifca25.
