National Underground Railroad Freedom Center announces 2025 International Freedom Conductor Awards

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.

Lonnie G. Bunch III Named 2022 Empire State Archives and History Award Laureate

The Empire State Archives and History Award acknowledges the outstanding contributions by a national figure to advance the understanding and uses of history in society.

This year the The New York State Archives Partnership Trust has chosen Lonnie G. Bunch III, the founding director for the National Museum of African American History and Culture as it's 2022 honoree.

Lonnie G. Bunch III is the 14th Secretary of the Smithsonian. He assumed his position June 16, 2019. As Secretary, he oversees 21 museums, including two new museums in development—the National Museum of the American Latino and the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum, 21 libraries, the National Zoo, numerous research centers, and several education units and centers.

Previously, Bunch was the director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. When he started as director in July 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 6 million visitors since it opened in September 2016 and 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.

Occupying a prominent location next to the Washington Monument, the nearly 400,000-square-foot National Museum of African American History and Culture is the nation’s largest and most comprehensive cultural destination devoted exclusively to exploring, documenting and showcasing the African American story and its impact on American and world history.

Before his appointment as director of the museum, Bunch served as the president of the Chicago Historical Society (2001–2005). There, he led a successful capital campaign to transform the Historical Society in celebration of its 150th anniversary, managed an institutional reorganization, initiated an unprecedented outreach initiative to diverse communities and launched a much-lauded exhibition and program on teenage life titled “Teen Chicago.”

A widely published author, Bunch has written on topics ranging from the black military experience, the American presidency and African American history in California, diversity in museum management and the impact of funding and politics on American museums. His most recent book, A Fool’s Errand: Creating the National Museum of African American History and Culture in the Age of Bush, Obama, and Trump, chronicles the making of the museum that would become one of the most popular destinations in Washington.

Bunch served as the curator of history and program manager for the California African American Museum in Los Angeles from 1983 to 1989. While there, he organized several award-winning exhibitions, including “The Black Olympians, 1904–1950” and “Black Angelenos: The Afro-American in Los Angeles, 1850–1950.” He also produced several historical documentaries for public television.

Born in Belleville, New Jersey, Bunch has held numerous teaching positions at universities across the country, including American University in Washington, D.C., the University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth and George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

In service to the historical and cultural community, Bunch has served on the advisory boards of the American Association of Museums and the American Association for State and Local History. In 2005, Bunch was named one of the 100 most influential museum professionals of the 20th century by the American Alliance of Museums (formerly known as the American Association of Museums).

Among his many awards, he was appointed by President George W. Bush to the Committee for the Preservation of the White House in 2002 and reappointed by President Barack Obama in 2010. In 2019, he was awarded the Freedom Medal, one of the Four Freedom Awards from the Roosevelt Institute, for his contribution to American culture as a historian and storyteller; the W.E.B. Du Bois Medal from the Hutchins Center at Harvard University; and the National Equal Justice Award from the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund.

In 2020, he was given the Dan David Prize from Tel Aviv University. In 2021, the Society of American Historians awarded Bunch the Tony Horwitz Prize honoring distinguished work in American history of wide appeal and enduring public significance. In 2020, he was given the Dan David Prize from Tel Aviv University. In 2021, Bunch received France’s highest award, The Legion of Honor.

Bunch received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from the American University in Washington, D.C.

Smithsonian Regents Name Lonnie Bunch 14th Smithsonian Secretary

The Smithsonian Institution’s Board of Regents elected Lonnie G. Bunch III, director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, as the 14th Secretary of the Smithsonian, effective June 16.

Bunch is the founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened in September 2016. He oversees the nation’s largest and most comprehensive cultural destination devoted exclusively to exploring, documenting and showcasing the African American story and its impact on American and world history.

Bunch’s election is unprecedented for the Smithsonian: He will be the first African American to lead the Smithsonian, and the first historian elected Secretary. In addition, he will be the first museum director to ascend to Secretary in 74 years.