Holocaust survivor and longtime civil and human rights activist John M. Rosenberg to receive ABA Medal

February 20, 2026

Holocaust survivor and longtime civil and human rights activist John M. Rosenberg to receive ABA Medal

CHICAGO, Feb. 20, 2026 - The American Bar Association is proud to announce that it will award John M. Rosenberg, executive director emeritus of the Appalachian Research and Defense Fund (AppalReD), the 2026 ABA Medal. Rosenberg will accept the award at the ABA Annual Conference in Chicago in August.

The ABA Medal is bestowed upon a lawyer for exceptionally distinguished service to the cause of American jurisprudence.

"I'm really honored to receive this award," Rosenberg said. "I would like to think that I'm representing the other public interest lawyers in this country, especially those who provide civil services to the poor and the public defenders, and the members of the private bar who volunteer to help with these important cases."

"From escaping the Nazis and the Holocaust to serving in the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and prosecuting the Ku Klux Klan to founding AppalReD Legal Aid in Kentucky, John Rosenberg has dedicated his life to fairness and equity. His commitment to access to justice and the rule of law has helped lay the foundation to make justice a reality for all," said ABA President Michelle A. Behnke.

Throughout his career, Rosenberg has distinguished himself by helping people who were considered underserved and vulnerable, especially in the Eastern Kentucky community where he has lived for more than five decades as well as throughout the nation. His pursuit of justice in all forms has been relentless.

From early in his career, fighting against the inequities of voter suppression laws in the South, to later challenging issues of poverty, environment, housing and education amongst other areas, protecting the rights of people has been at the forefront of Rosenberg's life of serving others.

Born in Magdeburg, Germany, Rosenberg in 1938 at the age of seven, along with his parents, were pulled from their home by Nazis. They were kept in an internment camp for a year in Rotterdam, Holland, before securing passage to the United States in 1940. The family lived in South Carolina and North Carolina where Rosenberg became an Eagle Scout and went on to attend Duke University where he joined the Air Force Reserve Officers' Training Corps program and upon graduation served for three years as a navigator and instructor navigator in the U.S. Air Force. He was the first in his family to go to college. He went on to study law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and graduated amid the Civil Rights Movement.

He immediately went to work as a lawyer in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and litigated discrimination cases for about eight years largely in the South where he worked on high-profile civil rights cases, including the case where three voter registration workers - James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner - were killed in Neshoba County, Mississippi. He also successfully tried the first voting rights case in the South after passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Rosenberg met his wife, Jean, in the Civil Rights Division, where they worked together.

In 1970, a trip to Eastern Kentucky opened an opportunity for Rosenberg to work to address symptomatic issues of poverty and assist low-income residents with their legal needs. Rosenberg led AppalReD Legal Aid as director and emeritus director for more than 28 years.

Throughout his career, Rosenberg has earned numerous awards. In 2023, The University of Kentucky conferred an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters highlighting his distinguished career in helping the people of Kentucky and for training UK law students to work in vulnerable communities. Rosenberg is also the recipient of the ABA Difference Makers Award (2013) and the Grassroots Advocacy Award (2015). In 2004, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from American Lawyer magazine. In 1991, he received the ABA Litigation Section's John Minor Wisdom Public Service Award, a particularly meaningful recognition as he regularly practiced before Judge Wisdom in the 1960s.

Past recipients of the ABA Medal include Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative; Dennis Archer, former ABA president; Hillary Rodham Clinton, former U.S. senator, First Lady and U.S. secretary of state; and Bill Gates Sr., lawyer and philanthropist.

Lawyers who have served on the U.S. Supreme Court, including Chief Justices Warren E. Burger and Charles Evans Hughes, and Associate Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Lewis F. Powell Jr., Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sandra Day O'Connor, Thurgood Marshall, William J. Brennan, Anthony M. Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Tom Clark and Felix Frankfurter, also are past ABA Medal recipients.