Washington, D.C. ? Harper Lee, author of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” was among those who on Monday received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award.

“Each of them, by effort and by character, has earned the respect of the American people, and holds a unique place in the story of our time,” President Bush said at an East Room ceremony.

Also honored were Gary Becker, winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize for economics; Oscar Elias Biscet, a political prisoner in Cuba; Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute; civil rights pioneer Benjamin Hooks, the NAACP’s former executive director; former Rep. Henry Hyde of Illinois; Brian Lamb, president and chief executive officer of C-Span; and Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.