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MAGIC JOHNSON RECEIVES CIVIL RIGHTS AWARD: NBA star named Tuesday among Freedom Award honorees.

(July 26, 2007)

*Magic Johnson is among the list of people named Tuesday to receive the National Civil Rights Museum's annual Freedom Awards.

      The museum, located at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, will hand out the awards Oct. 23. The honorees are John Hope Franklin and Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf.

      Johnson, according to the museum, is being honored for his work since leaving the NBA on promoting economic development, improved health care and educational opportunities in low-income urban neighborhoods and other "underserved communities."

      Franklin, 92, a chronicler of civil rights history, was part of a legal team from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People that helped develop the Brown v. Board of Education case. The case led to the U.S. Supreme Court decision outlawing racial segregation in public schools.

      Johnson-Sirleaf, 67, was inaugurated in January as president of Liberia.
Known as the "iron lady," she is her country's first elected female president.

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Magic Johnson