President Dwight D. Eisenhower has agreed to accept the America’s Democratic Legacy award presented annually by the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith to an American in recognition of “distinguished contributions to the enrichment of America’s democratic legacy,” the Summer White House announced today.
President Eisenhower will appear in person to receive the medallion at a dinner in Washington on November 23 tendered by the board of governors of B’nai B’rith to mark the 40th anniversary of the Anti-Defamation League. It will be the President’s first appearance before a national Jewish organization since he took office.
The President was the unanimous choice of the national executive committee of the league for the 1953 nomination. The group’s choice was “not only for the President’s expression of views and actions in the civil rights field since assuming the office of the Presidency, but also for his long and distinguished humanitarian record in the war against Nazism and in the inculcation of democratic practices in the armed services.”
Gen. Eisenhower is the ninth recipient of the award which was established in 1948. It has been presented in past years to former President Harry S. Truman, Sen. Herbert H. Lehman, Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, former Attorney General J. Howard McGrath and others prominent in defense of civil rights and in furthering human relations.
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