MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — “Selma” director Ava DuVernay is one of three women to win the National Civil Rights Museum’s Freedom Award this year.

The Commercial Appeal reports the other winners are Joan Trumpauer Mulholland and Ruby Bridges-Hall.

Mulholland participated in the Freedom Rides, lunch-counter sit-ins and other key 1960s events as a student activist. Bridges-Hall began a lifetime of activism in 1960, when she was the 6-year-old student who integrated the New Orleans public school system.

“This year we have an all-women slate of award-winners, and I really think they epitomize the roles that women have played in civil rights, up to and including today,” National Civil Rights Museum President Terri Lee Freeman said.

DuVernay said she was “very surprised and very honored” to be chosen for a Freedom Award.

She said she was looking forward to visiting the “hallowed ground” of the Civil Rights Museum, former site of the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King Jr. was killed on April 4, 1968.

For “Selma,” she said, “I studied King’s life extensively. It was very important to know who he was before that moment, and who he became after that moment, to give his life context. His time in Memphis was very instrumental, very important to crafting that narrative.”

In addition to directing “Selma,” DuVernay is the founder and head of Array, a distribution company dedicated to promoting “independent films by people of color and women filmmakers globally,” according to its website.

DuVernay and Angelina Jolie were the only two female directors of last year’s top 100 highest-grossing films. DeVernay’s 2014 civil rights drama was a nominee for the Academy Award for Best Picture.

The Freedom Awards ceremony takes place in Memphis on Thursday at the Cannon Center for the Performing Arts.