Ford Freedom Award

Each year, Ford Motor Company Fund and Community Services in cooperation with the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History give the Ford Freedom Award posthumously to honorees who have dedicated their life to improving the African American community and the world at large through their chosen fields.

A Ford Freedom Award honoree and scholar is selected annually. The scholar is chosen for furthering the honoree’s achievements for a new generation.

The 2011 Ford Freedom Award Program honoree is Judge Constance Baker Motley, who was a crusader for civil rights and the first African American appointed to the federal judiciary. As a dedicated jurist, she had a major impact on ending racial discrimination by participating in nearly every important civil rights case brought to trial between 1945 and 1965.

The 2011 Ford Freedom Award Scholar is Judge Damon J. Keith, who was born in Detroit and has served since 1977 as a judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit Court. When Harvard University bestowed an honorary degree on Judge Keith in 2008, the citation read that he is an “Avatar of independence, champion of equal justice under law, a just and humane jurist who has shared and shaped the action and passion of his time.”