Sacramento’s own legendary actor LeVar Burton was recognized by the White House last week.
President Joe Biden presented Burton with the 2023 National Endowment of Humanities Medal for his impact on the arts, literacy advocacy and storytelling.
“The National Humanities Medal recipients have enriched our world through writing that moves and inspires us; scholarship that enlarges our understanding of the past; and through their dedication to educating, informing, and giving voice to communities and histories often overlooked,” said NEH Chair Shelly Lowe in a press release.
Burton said in a post on X that his “ancestors are dancing” and his heart was full after he received the medal.
“Without the arts and humanities, we don’t know who we are or where we’ve been,” Burton said in a video posted by the White House. “They give context to where we’re going. All of our hopes. All of our dreams. All of our ambitions. They are all contained in these disciplines. Without them. We’re lost.”
Burton’s impact as an actor and storyteller spans generations. He’s most known for his role in the 1977 miniseries “Roots,” where, at the age of 19, he played a fictional slave named Kunta Kinte.
In 1986, he played helmsman Geordi La Forge in “Star Trek: The Next Generation” for seven years. He was also the executive producer for the children's series “Reading Rainbow,” which ran for 23 years.
Though he was born in Germany, Burton moved to Sacramento when he was 2 years old. He lived in several neighborhoods before his family settled in South Sacramento.
“We lived pretty much close to the bone. My mother was a social worker, [she] put us, all three of us kids, my two sisters and myself, through Catholic schools,” he told CapRadio in 2019. “It wasn’t cheap, but she knew that education was the leveler of the playing field.”
In 2019, Sacramento renamed one of its parks in Meadowview from Richfield Park to LeVar Burton Park to honor the actor’s legacy.
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