Dolores Huerta

Huerta's honors track a lifetime of organizing rather than a career of awards seasons. The Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012 put her in the same ranks as the civil rights leaders she had worked beside for decades. The U.S. Department of Labor inducted her into its Hall of Honor for co-founding the National Farm Workers Association in 1962, and two states, California and Oregon, mark her birthday as an official day. She also received the Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award, the Hispanic Heritage Award and the Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship.