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Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient Arnold Aronson
ARNOLD ARONSON
Awarded by
President Bill Clinton
January 15, 1998
Arnold Aronson has labored quietly and selflessly for more than 50 years in the vineyards of our Nation's civil rights movement. As co-founder of the pioneering Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, a driving force behind the passage of the landmark civil rights legislation of the 1950s and 1960s, longtime President of the LCCR Education Fund, and Program Director for the National Jewish Community Relations Council, he has shown us how to work toward equality through cooperation and has helped to unite all Americans across the lines that have sometimes divided us. We all are better because Arnie Aronson has lived among us.
Arnold Aronson came to the civil rights movement as a leader of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council (NJCRAC), a coalition of national and local Jewish agencies. Serving as NJCRAC's program director, he developed policies and programs for Jewish agency involvement with issues of civil rights, civil liberties, immigration reform, church state separation, Soviet-Jewish immigration, and support for Israel. Since that time, Aronson played a major role in Leadership Conference strategy for obtaining enactment of the major federal civil rights laws over the past forty years. Aronson is also a founding father of a number of other civil rights organizations including, the National Urban Coalition, the National Committee Against Discrimination in Housing, and the National Association of Human Rights Workers. Until his death, Mr. Aronson was President of the Leadership Conference Education Fund, which under his leadership, while continuing its traditional activities as a research and clearinghouse for civil rights issues, has focused increasingly on programs to develop positive intergroup attitudes among young children.
C-Span Video
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Medal History
