John Hope Franklin | |
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| Born | (1915-01-02)January 2, 1915 Rentiesville,Oklahoma, United States |
| Died | March 25, 2009(2009-03-25) (aged 94) |
| Alma mater |
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| Occupation(s) | Scholar, historian, author, professor |
| Spouse | Aurelia Whittington Franklin (m. 1940; d. 1999) |
| Children | John Whittington Franklin |
| Honors |
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John Hope Franklin (January 2, 1915 – March 25, 2009) was an American historian who focused on thehistory of the United States. He is best known for his workFrom Slavery to Freedom, first published in 1947 and continually updated. More than three million copies have been sold.
Born inOklahoma, Franklin attendedFisk University and thenHarvard University, receiving his doctorate in 1941. He was a professor atHoward University, and in 1956 was named to head the history department atBrooklyn College, part of the City University of New York. Recruited to theUniversity of Chicago in 1964, he eventually led the history department and was appointed to a named chair. He then moved toDuke University in 1983, as an appointee to a named chair in history.
He was a president ofPhi Beta Kappa, theOrganization of American Historians, theAmerican Historical Association, theAmerican Studies Association, and theSouthern Historical Association. In 1995, he was awarded thePresidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.
Franklin was born inRentiesville, Oklahoma, in 1915 to attorneyBuck (Charles) Colbert Franklin and his wife Mollie (Parker) Franklin.[1] He was named afterJohn Hope, a prominent educator who was the first African-American president ofAtlanta University.[2]
Franklin graduated fromBooker T. Washington High School (then segregated) inTulsa, Oklahoma. He graduated in 1935 fromFisk University, ahistorically black university inNashville, Tennessee, then earned a master's degree in 1936 and adoctorate in history in 1941 fromHarvard University.[3]
Buck Colbert Franklin was a civil rights lawyer, also known as "Amazing Buck Franklin," of African-American and Choctaw ancestry, born in theChickasaw Nation in westernIndian Territory (formerly Pickens County). He was the seventh of ten children born to David and Milley Franklin. David was a former slave, who became a ChickasawFreedman when emancipated after theAmerican Civil War. Milley was born free before the war and was of one-fourth Choctaw and three-fourths African-American ancestry.
Buck Franklin is best known for defending African-American survivors of the 1921Tulsa race massacre, in which whites had attacked many blacks and buildings, and burned and destroyed the Greenwood District. This was known at the time as the "Black Wall Street," and was the wealthiest Black community in the United States, a center of black commerce and culture.[4] In 2015, Buck Franklin's previously unknown written eyewitness account of the 1921 Greenwood attack, a 10-page typewritten manuscript, was discovered and subsequently obtained by theSmithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture.[5] Franklin and his colleagues also became experts at oil law, representing "blacks and Native Americans in Oklahoma against white lawyers representing oil barons."[6] His career demonstrated a strong professional black life in the West, at a time when such accomplishments would have been more difficult to achieve in the Deep South.[6]
"My challenge," Franklin said, "was to weave into the fabric of American history enough of the presence of blacks so that the story of the United States could be told adequately and fairly."
In his autobiography, Franklin has described a series of formative incidents in which he confrontedracism while seeking to volunteer his services at the beginning of theSecond World War. He responded to the navy's search for qualified clerical workers, but after he presented his extensive qualifications, the navy recruiter told him that he was the wrong color for the position. He was similarly unsuccessful in finding a position with a War Department historical project. When he went to have a blood test, as required for thedraft, the doctor initially refused to allow him into his office. Afterward, Franklin took steps to avoid the draft, on the basis that the country did not respect him or have an interest in his well-being, because of his color.[7]
In the early 1950s, Franklin served on theNAACP Legal Defense Fund team led byThurgood Marshall, and helped develop the sociological case forBrown v. Board of Education. This case, challengingde jure segregated education in the South, was taken to theUnited States Supreme Court. It ruled in 1954 that the legalsegregation of black and white children inpublic schools was unconstitutional, leading to integration of schools.[8]
Franklin's teaching career[9] began at Fisk University. During World War II, he taught atSt. Augustine's College from 1939 to 1943 and the North Carolina College for Negroes, currentlyNorth Carolina Central University from 1943 to 1947.
From 1947 to 1956, he taught atHoward University. In 1956, Franklin was selected to chair the history department atBrooklyn College, the first person of color to head a major history department. Franklin served there until 1964, when he was recruited by theUniversity of Chicago. He spent 1962 as a visiting professor at theUniversity of Cambridge, holding theProfessorship of American History and Institutions.
David Levering Lewis said that while he was deciding to become a historian, he learned that Franklin, his mentor, had been named departmental chairman at Brooklyn College.
Now that certainly is a distinction. It had never happened before that a person of color had chaired a major history department. That meant a lot to me. If I had doubt about (the) viability of a career in history, that example certainly helped put to rest such concerns.[10]
In researching his prize-winning biography ofW. E. B. Du Bois, Lewis said he became aware of Franklin's
courage during that period in the 1950s when Du Bois became an un-person, when many progressives were tarred and feathered with the brush of subversion. John Hope Franklin was a rock; he was loyal to his friends. In the case of W. E. B. Du Bois, Franklin spoke out in his defense, not (about) Du Bois'scommunism, but of the right of an intellectual to express ideas that were not popular. I find that admirable. It was a high risk to take and we may be heading again into a period when the free concourse of ideas in the academy will have a price put upon it. In the final years of an active teaching career, I will have John Hope Franklin's example of high scholarship, great courage and civic activism.[10]
From 1964 through 1968, Franklin was a professor of history at theUniversity of Chicago, and chair of the department from 1967 to 1970. There he served as a member of the committee that produced theKalven report.[11] In 1965, he marched withDr. Martin Luther King on theSelma to Montgomery marches. He was named to the endowed position ofJohn Matthews Manly Distinguished Service Professor, which he held from 1969 to 1982. He was appointed to the Fulbright Board of Foreign Scholarships, 1962–1969, and was its chair from 1966 to 1969.[12]
In 1976, theNational Endowment for the Humanities selected Franklin for theJefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in thehumanities.[13] Franklin's three-part lecture became the basis for his bookRacial Equality in America.[14]
Franklin was appointed to the U.S. Delegation to theUNESCO General Conference,Belgrade (1980).
In 1983, Franklin was appointed as theJames B. Duke Professor of History atDuke University. In 1985, he took emeritus status from this position. During this same year, he helped to establish the Durham Literacy Center and served on its Board until his death in 2009.[15]
Franklin was also Professor of Legal History at theDuke University Law School from 1985 to 1992.
Racial Equality in America is the published lecture series that Franklin presented in 1976 for the Jefferson Lecture sponsored by the National Endowment for Humanities. The book is composed of three lectures, given in three different cities, in which Franklin chronicled the history of race in the United States from revolutionary times to 1976. These lectures explore the differences between some of the beliefs related to race with the reality documented in various historical and government texts, as well as data gathered from census, property, and literary sources. The first lecture is titled "The Dream Deferred" and discusses the period from the Revolution to 1820. The second lecture is titled "The Old Order Changeth Not" and discusses the rest of the 19th century. The third lecture is titled "Equality Indivisible" and discusses the 20th century.
In 2005, at the age of 90, Franklin published and lectured[16] on his new autobiography,Mirror to America: The Autobiography of John Hope Franklin. In 2006,Mirror to America received theRobert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights Book Award, which is given annually to honor authors "whose writing, in illuminating past or present injustice, acts as a beacon towards a more just society."[17]
In 2006, he also received the John W. Kluge Prize and as the recipient lectured on the successes and failures of race relations in America inWhere do We Go from Here?[18] In 2008, Franklin endorsed presidential candidateBarack Obama.[19]
Franklin died atDuke University Medical Center on the morning of March 25, 2009.[20]
In 1991, Franklin's students honored him with afestschriftThe Facts of Reconstruction: Essays in Honor of John Hope Franklin (edited by Eric Anderson & Alfred A. Moss Jr. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1991).
Franklin served as president of theAmerican Historical Association (1979), theAmerican Studies Association (1967), the Southern Historical Association (1970), and theOrganization of American Historians (1975). He was a member of the board of trustees atFisk University, theChicago Public Library, and theChicago Symphony Orchestra Association.
Franklin was elected as a foundation member of Fisk's new chapter ofPhi Beta Kappa in 1953, when Fisk became the firsthistorically black college to have a chapter of the honor society.[21] In 1973–1976, he served as President of the United Chapters ofPhi Beta Kappa.[9]
Additionally, Franklin was appointed to serve on national commissions, including theNational Council on the Humanities, thePresident's Advisory Commission on Ambassadorial Appointments, andOne America Initiative.
Franklin was a member ofAlpha Phi Alpha fraternity. He was an early beneficiary of the fraternity's Foundation Publishers, which provides financial support and fellowship for writers addressing African-American issues.
In 1962, honored as an outstanding historian, Franklin became the first black member of the exclusiveCosmos Club in Washington, D.C.[22]
In 1964, Franklin was elected to theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences[23]
The John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture resides at Duke University's David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library and contains his personal and professional papers.[24] The archive is one of three academic units named after Franklin at Duke. The others are theJohn Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary and International Studies, which opened in February 2001 and theFranklin Humanities Institute. Franklin had previously rejected Duke's offer to name a center forAfrican-American Studies after him, saying that he was a historian of America and the world, too.[8]
In 1973, Franklin was elected to theAmerican Philosophical Society.[25]
In 1975, he was awarded theSt. Louis Literary Award from theSaint Louis University Library Associates.[26][27]
In 1975, Franklin was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws (LL.D.) degree fromWhittier College.[28]
In 1978, he was inducted into theOklahoma Hall of Fame.[29]
In 1994, the Society of American Historians – founded byAllan Nevins and other historians to encourage literary distinction in the writing of history – awarded Franklin its Bruce Catton Prize for Lifetime Achievement.[30]
In 1995, he was awarded theSpingarn Medal from theNAACP.[31]
In 1995, President Clinton awarded Franklin the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.[3] The President's remarks upon presentation of the medal cited Franklin's lifelong work as a teacher and a student of history, seeking to bring about better understanding regarding relations between whites and blacks in modern times.[32]
In 1995, he received theChicago History Museum "Making History Award" for Distinction in Historical Scholarship.
In 1996, Franklin received the Golden Plate Award of theAmerican Academy of Achievement.[33]
In 1997, Franklin was selected to receive thePeggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award, a careerliterary award given annually by the Tulsa Library Trust. Franklin was the first (and so far only) native Oklahoman to receive the award. During his visit to Tulsa to accept the award, Franklin made several appearances to speak about his childhood experiences withracial segregation, as well as his father's experiences as a lawyer in the aftermath of the 1921Tulsa race riot.[34][35][36]
In 1998, Franklin received The Lincoln Forum'sRichard Nelson Current Award of Achievement.[37]
In 2002, scholarMolefi Kete Asante included Franklin on his list of100 Greatest African Americans.[38]
Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry presented the Governor's Arts Award to Dr. Franklin in 2004.[29]
In 2005, Franklin received the North Caroliniana Society Award for "long and distinguished service in the encouragement, production, enhancement, promotion, and preservation of North Caroliniana."
On May 20, 2006, Franklin was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters atLafayette College's 171st Commencement Exercises.
On November 15, 2006, Franklin was announced as the third recipient of theJohn W. Kluge Prize for lifetime achievement in the study of humanity. He shared the prize withYu Ying-shih.[39][40]
On October 27, 2010, the City ofTulsa, Oklahoma renamed Reconciliation Park, established to commemorate the victims of theTulsa Race Riot of 1921, as John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park in his honor. It includes a 27-foot bronze entitledTower of Reconciliation by African-American sculptorEd Dwight, expressing the long history of Africans in Oklahoma.[41]
On November 2, 2019, Franklin was recognized as a Main Honoree by the Sesquicentennial Honors Commission at the Durham 150 Closing Ceremony inDurham, North Carolina on November 2, 2019. The posthumous recognition was bestowed upon 29 individuals "whose dedication, accomplishments and passion have helped shape Durham in important ways.[42]
Franklin married Aurelia Whittington on June 11, 1940. She was a librarian. Their only child, John Whittington Franklin, was born August 24, 1952. Their marriage lasted 59 years, until January 27, 1999, when Aurelia succumbed to a long illness.[7]
The Franklins were avidorchid collectors and cultivators, and each had types of orchids named after them:Phalaenopsis John Hope Franklin andPhalaenopsis Aurelia Franklin.[43]
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