Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and director Steven Spielberg are among six people who have received Harvard University's highest honour in the field of African and African-American studies.
Harvard honoured its W E B Du Bois medal winners at a ceremony yesterday.
Sotomayor, the first Latina to serve on the high court, said she was deeply honoured.
The Hutchins Center for African and African-American Research, which presents the medals, credited Sotomayor for speaking of her upbringing to inspire children trying to succeed in the face of adversity.
The center cited Spielberg's filmmaking and his establishment of a foundation to record oral histories of survivors of the Holocaust and other genocides.
Presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett, playwright Tony Kushner, Georgia civil rights activist and US Rep John Lewis, and National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern also received awards.
