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Steve Ford, William T. Coleman and Susan Ford Bales | View event photos on Flickr

William T. Coleman, Jr. has been selected as the recipient of the 2011 Gerald R. Ford Medal for Distinguished Public Service. The medal was presented on May 3, 2011, in Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol by the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation at an evening in celebration of the U.S. Capitol Statue Dedication of President Gerald R. Ford and the awarding of the medal.

“This is the fifth year that the medal will be presented in memory, as well as in recognition, of the leadership attributes of Dad. It is fitting that the medal should be awarded to William Coleman, an extraordinary individual whose long career in public service has placed patriotism before partisanship and who has demonstrated so many of the ideals championed by Dad” said Steve Ford, Chairman of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation. “Our nation has benefited from Bill’s decades of distinguished public service and unwavering commitment to the highest ideals of integrity,” said Ford.

The medal is given annually to an individual who has served the public good in the private or public sector. The award was established by the Board of Trustees of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation in 2003. Previous recipients have been Alan Greenspan, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Betty Ford, the Men and Women of the United States Armed Forces, Lee Hamilton, James Baker, Carla A. Hills, Henry Kissinger, and John Paul Stevens.

Foundation Board Chairman Emeritus, Martin J. Allen, Jr. noted that “the criteria for the recipient are based on characteristics that President Ford demonstrated in his public service. They include courage, strength of character, integrity, diligence and determination in the face of adversity, all of which have been characteristic of Bill Coleman’s remarkable public service.”

William T. Coleman, Jr.’s career of distinguished public service spans sixty years. He graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania and attended Harvard Law School, where he was a member of the Harvard Law Review and the first African- American to serve on the Law Review’s board of editors. He interrupted his law studies during World War II to serve in the U.S. Army Air Corps. Returning to Harvard Law School, he graduated magna cum laude in 1946.

Mr. Coleman clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, becoming the first African-American to serve as a Supreme Court law clerk. He then entered private law practice, but remained very active in public service and ill:Q bono legal activities.

His years of work with Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund became a cornerstone of the civil rights movement and led directly to the landmark Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Mr. Coleman thereafter served as senior counsel to the Warren Commission’s investigation of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In 1969, he was a member of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations General Assembly. In 1975, he was appointed as President Ford’s Secretary of Transportation and served with distinction in that position for the remainder of President Ford’s presidency.

Mr. Coleman has served several other presidents in a number of important assignments, including the Presidential Commission on Airline and Airport Security after the crash of TWA Flight 800 and the United States Court of Military Commission Review in 2004. In 1995, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Bill Clinton.

The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation fosters increased awareness of the life, career, values and legacy of America’s 38th President. It does so through activities designed to promote the high ideals of integrity, honesty, and candor that defined President Ford’s extraordinary career of public service. The Foundation promotes the ideals, values, commitment to public service and historical legacy of President Gerald R. Ford and further promotes greater civic engagement and recognition of integrity wherever it exits in the public arena. It supports permanent and changing exhibits designed to promote historical literacy; conferences; educational outreach and other programs, both scholarly and popular, including at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum.

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