The Four Freedoms Award is an annual award presented to "those men and women whose achievements have demonstrated a commitment to those principles which US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt proclaimed in his Four Freedoms speech to the United States Congress on January 6, 1941, as essential to democracy: "freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear". The annual award is handed out in alternate years in New York City by the Roosevelt Institute to Americans and in Middelburg, Netherlands, by the Roosevelt Stichting to non-Americans.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, painted by Francis Owen Salisbury, 1947
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
One of the medals
Dutch politician Max van der Stoel receives the Freedom of Speech award, 16 October 1982
The Four Freedoms were goals articulated by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt on Monday, January 6, 1941. In an address known as the Four Freedoms speech, he proposed four fundamental freedoms that people "everywhere in the world" ought to enjoy:Freedom of speech and expression
Freedom of worship
Freedom from want
Freedom from fear
Engraving of the Four Freedoms at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Freedom of Speech (Saturday, February 20, 1943) – from the Four Freedoms series by Norman Rockwell
Freedom of Worship (Saturday, February 27, 1943) – from the Four Freedoms series by Norman Rockwell
Freedom from Want (Saturday, March 6, 1943) – from the Four Freedoms series by Norman Rockwell
