John Hope Franklin

For other people named John Franklin, see John Franklin (disambiguation).
John Hope Franklin
Born (1915-01-02)January 2, 1915
Rentiesville, Oklahoma, U.S.
Died March 25, 2009(2009-03-25) (aged 94)
Duke University Medical Center
Durham, North Carolina, U.S.
Alma mater Fisk University (B.A., 1935);
Harvard University (M.A., 1936; Ph.D., 1941)
Occupation Scholar, historian, author, professor
Spouse(s) Aurelia Whittington Franklin (m. 1940; d. 1999)
Honors

John Hope Franklin (January 2, 1915 – March 25, 2009) was an American historian of the United States and former president of Phi Beta Kappa, the Organization of American Historians, the American Historical Association, and the Southern Historical Association. Franklin is best known for his work From Slavery to Freedom, first published in 1947, and continually updated. More than three million copies have been sold. In 1995, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.

Early life and education

Franklin was born in Rentiesville, Oklahoma in 1915 to attorney Buck (Charles) Colbert Franklin (1879-1957) and his wife Mollie (Parker) Franklin.[1] He was named after John Hope, a prominent educator who was the first African-American president of Atlanta University.[2]

Franklin's father Buck Colbert Franklin was a civil rights lawyer, aka "Amazing Buck Franklin." He was of African-American and Choctaw ancestry and born in the Chickasaw Nation in western Indian 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 Chickasaw Freedman when emancipated after the American Civil War. Milley was born free before the war and was of one-fourth Choctaw and three-fourths African-American ancestry. Buck Franklin became a lawyer.

Buck Franklin is best known for defending African-American survivors of the 1921 Tulsa race riot, 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.[3] Franklin and his colleagues also became experts at oil law, representing "blacks and Native Americans in Oklahoma against white lawyers representing oil barons."[4] 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.[4]

John Hope Franklin graduated from Booker T. Washington High School (then segregated) in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He graduated in 1935 from Fisk University, a historically black university in Nashville, Tennessee, then earned a master's in 1936 and a doctorate in history in 1941 from Harvard University.[5]

Career

"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 confronted racism while seeking to volunteer his services at the beginning of the Second 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 the draft, 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.[6]

In the early 1950s, Franklin served on the NAACP Legal Defense Fund team led by Thurgood Marshall, and helped develop the sociological case for Brown v. Board of Education. This case, challenging de jure segregated education in the South, was taken to the United States Supreme Court. It ruled in 1954 that the legal segregation of black and white children in public schools was unconstitutional, leading to integration of schools.[7]

Professor and researcher

Franklin's teaching career[8] began at Fisk University. During WWII, he taught at St. Augustine's College from 1939 to 1943 and the North Carolina College for Negroes, currently North Carolina Central University from 1943 to 1947.

From 1947 to 1956, he taught at Howard University. In 1956, Franklin was selected to chair the history department at Brooklyn College, the first person of color to head a major history department. Franklin served there until 1964, when he was recruited by the University of Chicago. He spent 1962 as a visiting professor at the University of Cambridge, holding the Professorship of American History and Institutions.

David Levering Lewis, who has twice won the Pulitzer Prize for history, 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."[9]

In researching his prize-winning biography of W. 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's communism, 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."[9]

From 1964 through 1968, Franklin was a professor of history at the University of Chicago, and chair of the department from 1967 to 1970. He was named to the endowed position of John Matthews Manly Distinguished Service Professor, which he held from 1969 to 1982. He was appointed to the Fulbright Board of Foreign Scholarships, 1962–69, and was its chair from 1966 to 1969.

In 1976, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected Franklin for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities.[10] Franklin's three-part lecture became the basis for his book Racial Equality in America.[11]

Franklin was appointed to the U.S. Delegation to the UNESCO General Conference, Belgrade (1980).

In 1983, Franklin was appointed as the James B. Duke Professor of History at Duke 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.[12]

Franklin was also Professor of Legal History at the Duke University Law School from 1985 to 1992.

Racial Equality in America

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.

Later life and death

In 2005, at the age of 90, Franklin published and lectured [13] on his new autobiography, Mirror to America: The Autobiography of John Hope Franklin. In 2006, Mirror to America received the Robert 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."[14]

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 in Where do We Go from Here?[15] In 2008, Franklin endorsed presidential candidate Barack Obama.[16]

Franklin died at Duke University Medical Center on the morning of March 25, 2009.[17]

Honors

In 1991, Franklin's students honored him with a festschrift The Facts of Reconstruction: Essays in Honor of John Hope Franklin (edited by Eric Anderson & Alfred A. Moss, Jr. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, c1991).

Franklin served as president of the American Historical Association (1979), the American Studies Association (1967), the Southern Historical Association (1970), and the Organization of American Historians (1975). He was a member of the board of trustees at Fisk University, the Chicago Public Library, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association.

Frankin was elected as a foundation member of Fisk's new chapter of Phi Beta Kappa in 1953, when Fisk became the first historically black college to have a chapter of the honor society.[18] In 1973-76, he served as President of the United Chapters of Phi Beta Kappa.[8]

Additionally, Franklin was appointed to serve on national commissions, including the National Council on the Humanities, the President's Advisory Commission on Ambassadorial Appointments, and One America: The President's Initiative on Race.

Franklin was a member of Alpha 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 exclusive Cosmos Club in Washington, D.C.[19]

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.[20] The archive is one of three academic units named after Franklin at Duke. The others are the John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary and International Studies, which opened in February 2001 and the Franklin Humanities Institute. Franklin had previously rejected Duke's offer to name a center for African-American Studies after him, saying that he was a historian of America and the world, too.[7]

In 1978, he was inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame.[21]

In 1994, the Society of American Historians (founded by Allan Nevins and other historians to encourage literary distinction in the writing of history) awarded Franklin its Bruce Catton Prize for Lifetime Achievement.[22]

In 1995, he was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP.[23]

In 1995, President Clinton awarded Franklin the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.[5]

In 1995, he received the Chicago History Museum "Making History Award" for Distinction in Historical Scholarship.

In 1997, Franklin was selected to receive the Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award, a career literary 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 with racial segregation, as well as his father's experiences as a lawyer in the aftermath of the 1921 Tulsa race riot.[24][25][26]

In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante included Franklin on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.[27]

Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry presented the Governor's Arts Award to Dr. Franklin in 2004.[21]

On May 20, 2006, Franklin was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters at Lafayette College's 171st Commencement Exercises.

On November 15, 2006, John Hope Franklin was announced as the third recipient of the John W. Kluge Prize for lifetime achievement in the study of humanity. He shared the prize with Yu Ying-shih.[28][29]

The City of Tulsa renamed Reconciliation Park as John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park in his honor.

Marriage and family

Franklin married Aurelia Whittington on June 11, 1940. Whittington was a librarian. Their only child, John Whittington Franklin, was born August 24, 1952. Their marriage lasted 59 years, until January 27, 1999, when Whittington succumbed to a long illness.[6]

Partial bibliography

  • The Free Negro in North Carolina, 1790–1860, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1943, 1995.
  • The Diary of James T. Ayers, Civil War Recruiter ed., with introd., by John Franklin. Springfield; State of Illinois, 1947.
  • From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans, 1st ed. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1947. Last update with Alfred Moss, 8th ed. McGraw-Hill Education, 2000, ISBN 0-07-112058-0
  • The Militant South, 1800-1861. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1956; 1st Illinois pbk. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002.
  • Reconstruction: after the Civil War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961.
  • The Emancipation Proclamation. 1st ed. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1963; 2nd ed. Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration, 1993.
  • Land of the Free; A History of the United States, by John W. Caughey, John Hope Franklin and Ernest R. May. Educational advisers: Richard M. Clowes and Alfred T. Clark, Jr. Rev. New York: Benziger Bros., 1966.
  • The Negro in Twentieth Century America: A Reader on the Struggle for Civil Rights, by John Hope Franklin & Isidore Starr. New York: Vintage Books, 1967.
  • Color and Race. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1968.
  • The Historian and Public Policy, Chicago: University of Chicago, Center for Policy Study, c1974.
  • Racial Equality in America, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, c1976.
  • A Southern Odyssey: Travelers in the Antebellum North, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, c1976.
  • Black Leaders of the Twentieth Century, edited by John Hope Franklin and August Meier. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, c1982.
  • George Washington Williams: a Biography, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985; Reprint, Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998.
  • Race and History: Selected Essays 1938-1988, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, c1989.
  • The Facts of Reconstruction: Essays in Honor of John Hope Franklin, edited by Eric Anderson & Alfred A. Moss, Jr. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, c1991.
  • The Color Line: Legacy for the Twenty-first Century, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, c1993.
  • Racial Equality in America, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1993.
  • My Life and an Era: the Autobiography of Buck Colbert Franklin, edited by John Hope Franklin and John Whittington Franklin. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, c1997, 2000.
  • Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation, John Hope Franklin, Loren Schweninger. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
  • Mirror to America. The Autobiography of John Hope Franklin. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005, ISBN 0-374-29944-7

References

Specific references:

  1. ↑ "Obituary: John Hope Franklin", Charlotte Observer,
  2. ↑ "John Hope (1868-1936)", New Georgia Encyclopedia online
  3. ↑ John Hope Franklin, John Whittington Franklin, editors, My Life and an Era: The Autobiography of Buck Colbert Franklin, Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1997
  4. 1 2 J. Clay Smith, Jr. "Review: 'My Life and an Era: The Autobiography of Buck Colbert Franklin' by John Hope Franklin; John Whittington Franklin; Buck Colbert Franklin", Law and History Review, Vol. 17, No. 1, Spring 1999, accessed 26 November 2014 (subscription required)
  5. 1 2 Hannah Atkins, "Franklin, John Hope (1915-2009)," Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture. Accessed May 1, 2015.
  6. 1 2 Mirror to America: The Autobiography of John Hope Franklin. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 2005. ISBN 0-374-29944-7. Excerpts available at Google Books.
  7. 1 2 Davidson, Cathy N. (2009-04-01). "A colleague's respect". Independent Weekly. Retrieved 2009-04-03.
  8. 1 2 "Obituary of John Hope Franklin," John Hope Franklin Center, Duke University (retrieved May 23, 2014).
  9. 1 2 "The soul of David Levering Lewis: award-winning scholar contemporizes black intellectual tradition", Black Issues in Higher Education via findarticles.com
  10. ↑ Jefferson Lecturers at NEH Website (retrieved January 22, 2009).
  11. ↑ John Hope Franklin, Racial Equality in America (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1993), ISBN 0-8262-0912-2 .
  12. ↑ Lewis Kendall, "Durham Literacy Center changing homes, lives", NewsObserver, July 30, 2012.
  13. ↑ Franklin, John Hope (November 1, 2005). Mirror to America: The Autobiography of John Hope Franklin. Library of Congress, John W. Kluge Center. Retrieved on September 3, 2009
  14. ↑ "RFK Book Awards." Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights. Retrieved 2015-10-17. In the past the Center's website described the purpose of the award with a different formulation that referred more specifically to Kennedy's legacy; see the registration information disseminated in 2015: .
  15. ↑ Franklin, John Hope (March 6, 2007). John Hope Franklin: Where Do We Go from Here? Library of Congress, John W. Kluge Center. Retrieved on September 3, 2009.
  16. ↑ "John Hope Franklin backs Obama", The News & Observer, 16 Apr 2008. Available online. Archived.
  17. ↑ Stancill, Jane (2009-03-25). "Duke historian John Hope Franklin dies". News & Observer. Archived from the original on March 27, 2009. Retrieved 2009-03-25.
  18. ↑ Rodney T. Cohen, Fisk University (Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia Publishing, 2001), ISBN 0-7385-0677-X, p.57, excerpt available online at Google Books.
  19. ↑ Debbie Elliott, "Civil Rights Activist, Historian Franklin Dies At 94", NPR, March 26, 2009.
  20. ↑ John Hope Franklin Center for African and African American History and Culture
  21. 1 2 Oklahoma Hall of Fame:John Hope Franklin."
  22. ↑ http://www.sah.columbia.edu/prizes/catton.html
  23. ↑ NAACP Spingarn Medal
  24. ↑ Michael Overall, "City's 'Favorite Son'", Tulsa World, December 6, 1997.
  25. ↑ Michael Overall, "Franklin Tells of Life in Early Tulsa", Tulsa World, December 7, 1997.
  26. ↑ Danna Sue Walker, "Black History First Learned, Then Taught", Tulsa World, December 8, 1997.
  27. ↑ Asante, Molefi Kete (2002). 100 Greatest African Americans: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Amherst, New York. Prometheus Books. ISBN 1-57392-963-8.
  28. ↑ "Kluge Prize Winner 2006 - John Hope Franklin" at Library of Congress website.
  29. ↑ Dinitia Smith, "Two History Scholars Are to Split $1 Million Award," New York Times, November 15, 2006.

General references:

External links

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