The president will award the medal posthumously to Daniel K. Inouye, the Democratic senator from Hawaii and the first Japanese-American to serve in Congress; Sally Ride, the first American woman to travel in space; and Bayard Rustin, the gay civil rights activist who helped organize the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

More than 500 people have received the award since President John F. Kennedy created it 50 years ago by executive order.