Bill Clinton, NAACP's Maxine Smith honored by Civil Rights Museum

The National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, TN, recently presented its highest honor, the Freedom Award, to former president Bill Clinton and former NAACP executive secretary Maxine Smith for their outstanding contributions to civil and human rights.

Smith, who has been elected to the Memphis Board of Education for six four-year terms, became a volunteer for the Memphis Branch of the NAACP in the 1950s after she was denied admission to Memphis State University because of her race. She worked on the coordinating committee of the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers strike. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was in Memphis in 1968 to support the workers when he was assassinated.

The museum is built on the assassination site.

Smith accepted her award first. She described it as a "thrilling, thrilling moment." But, she cautioned, the "struggle is far from over" and stated that education is a key to the future. "Education will determine the food you eat, the job you hold."

When he accepted the honor Clinton said that opponents of the Civil Rights Movement and the ongoing struggle for racial equality in America share the same views as terrorists.

"Maxine Smith should never have had to do any of this stuff she had to do," he told the audience. "The whole world can be divided between the people who think our differences are more important than those who think our common humanity is more important," he said.

"Those who want to unite and those who want to divide. Those who want to build and those who want to wreck."

Past recipients of the Freedom Award include civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks, former South African President Nelson Mandela, former President Carter and Secretary of State Colin Powell.