Obama Awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom—PICTURES

Obama awards the Medal of Freedom to former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Albright (right) served as Bill Clinton's secretary of State from 1997 to 2001. (Petr David Josek, Pool/AP)

Obama awards the medal to former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Stevens served on the high court from 1975 until his retirement in 2010. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Obama places the medal around the neck of singer Bob Dylan. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Dylan, composer of such classics as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "Like a Rolling Stone," has been one of the most prominent musicians in the country for decades. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, File)

John Glenn receives the medal from the president. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Glenn (left), a former U.S. senator (D-Ohio) was the first American to orbit the Earth. (AP Photo/Michael Brown)

Former University of Tennessee women's basketball coach Pat Summitt is awarded the medal. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Summitt, the head coach emeritus of the University of Tennessee's women's basketball program, made more Final Four appearances than any other coach. (AP Photo/Al Behrman, File)

Obama awards the Medal of Freedom to John Doar. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Doar (left) served in the Justice Department as assistant attorney general for civil rights. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, File)

Obama places the medal around the neck of American labor leader and civil rights activist Dolores Clara Fernandez Huerta. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Huerta cofounded, along with Cesar Chavez, the United Farm Workers union. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)

Obama presents the Medal of Freedom to former Polish Foreign Minister Adam Daniel Rotfeld, who is accepting for Jan Karski. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Karski, a former diplomat for Poland, was honored in 2000 for his role in helping rescue Jews and other refugees during the Holocaust. (AP Photo/Suzanne Plunkett)

Writer Toni Morrison receives the medal. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Morrison, who has won the Nobel and Pulitzer prizes, says that as she gets older, the world becomes more interesting and more distressing. (AP Photo/Alfred A. Knopf)

Obama awards the Medal of Freedom to William Foege. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Foege (left) was the director of the Centers for Disease Control and worked on the campaign that eradicated smallpox. (AP Photo/John Duricka)

Obama awards the Medal of Freedom to Richard Platt, who is accepting for Juliette Gordon Low, founder of the Girl Scouts. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

This 1924 photo shows Juliette Gordon Low and a group of Girl Scouts standing in the yard in Savannah, Ga., where the first Girl Scouts meeting took place in 1912. (AP Photo/The Times of Northwest Indiana)

Gordon Hirabayashi (center), was imprisoned in Tucson, Ariz., during World War II. He was a staunch opponent of the policy of holding Japanese-Americans in internment camps during the war. He died earlier this year. (AP photo/The Arizona Daily Star, Sergey Shayevich)

Shimon Peres is the current president of Israel and a former prime minister. Peres was not present at the ceremony. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)