John Hope Franklin (January 2, 1915 - March 25, 2009) is a US historian and former president of Phi Beta Kappa, the American Historical Society, the American History Association, and the Southern History Association. Franklin is renowned for his work From Slavery to Freedom, first published in 1947, and constantly 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.
Video John Hope Franklin
Early life and education
Franklin was born in Rentiesville, Oklahoma in 1915 to Buck's lawyer (Charles) Colbert Franklin (1879-1957) and his wife Mollie (Parker) Franklin. He was named after John Hope, a prominent educator who was the first African-American president at Atlanta University.
Franklin's father Buck Colbert Franklin is a civil rights lawyer, aka "Amazing Buck Franklin." He is of African-American and Choctaw descent and was born in the Chickasaw Country in the Western Indian Territory (formerly Pickens County). She is the seventh of ten children born to David and Milley Franklin. David is a former slave, who became Chickasaw Freedman when freed after the American Civil War. Milley was born free before the war and is a quarter of Choctaw's descent and three-quarters of African-American descent. Buck Franklin became a lawyer.
Buck Franklin is famous for defending African-Americans who survived the race riots in 1921 in Tulsa, where white people attacked many blacks and buildings, and burned and destroyed the Greenwood District. It was known at the time as "Black Wall Street", and is the richest black community in the United States, the black trade and cultural center. Franklin and his colleagues also became experts in the field of oil law, representing "blacks and Native Americans in Oklahoma against white lawyers representing the oil kings." His career showed a strong professional black life in the West, at a time when such attainment would be more difficult to achieve in the Deep South.
John Hope Franklin graduated from Booker T. Washington High School (later separated) in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He graduated in 1935 from Fisk University, a historic black school in Nashville, Tennessee, then obtained a master's degree in 1936 and a doctorate in history in 1941 from Harvard University.
Maps John Hope Franklin
Careers
"My challenge," Franklin said, "is to weave into the fabric of American history enough with the presence of blacks so that the story of the United States can be said fairly and fairly."
In his autobiography, Franklin has described a series of formative incidents in which he was confronted with racism while attempting to volunteer his services at the start of the Second World War. He responded to the naval quest for qualified administrative workers, but after he presented his broad qualifications, the navy recruiter told him that he was the wrong color for the position. He was equally unsuccessful in finding a position with the War Department history project. When he goes to do a blood test, as needed for the design, the doctor initially refuses to allow him into his office. After that, Franklin took steps to avoid the draft, on the grounds that the country did not respect it or have an interest in its welfare, because of its color.
In the early 1950s, Franklin served on the NAACP Legal Defense Fund team led by Thurgood Marshall, and helped develop a sociological case for Brown v. Board of Education . The case, challenging separate education in the South, was brought to the United States Supreme Court. He decided in 1954 that the legal separation of black and white children in public schools was unconstitutional, leading to school integration.
Professor and researcher
Franklin's teaching career began at Fisk University. During World War II, he taught at St. Augustine's College from 1939 to 1943 and North Carolina College for Negro, currently North Carolina Central University from 1943 to 1947.
From 1947 to 1956, he taught at Howard University. In 1956, Franklin was elected to lead the department of history at Brooklyn College, the first person to have the 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 Cambridge University, holding the title of Professor of History and the American Institution.
David Levering Lewis, who has twice won the Pulitzer Prize for history, said that when he decided to become a historian, he learned that Franklin, his mentor, had been appointed chair of the department at Brooklyn College.
Now that is definitely a difference. Never before has a colored person led a major history department. That means a lot to me. If I have any doubts about (a) career feasibility in history, that example certainly helps stop such anxiety.
In researching the winning biographies of W. E. B. Du Bois, Lewis said he became aware of Franklin
courage during that period in the 1950s when Du Bois became an un-person, when many progressives were aroused and hairy with subversive brushes. John Hope Franklin is a rock; he is loyal to his friends. In the case of W. E. B. Du Bois, Franklin speaks in his defense, not (about) Du Bois communism, but the right of an intellectual to express unpopular ideas. I found it awesome. This is a high risk to take and we may head back to the period when the free ideas at the academy will have the price charged to it. In the last years of an active teaching career, I will have John Hope Franklin's example of high scholarships, great courage and civil activism.
From 1964 to 1968, Franklin was professor of history at the University of Chicago, and chair of the department from 1967 to 1970. He was appointed to a position awarded by John Matthews Manly Distinguished Service Professor, held from 1969 to 1982. He was appointed to Fulbright Board of Foreign Scholarships, 1962-69, and seats from 1966 to 1969.
In 1976, the National Endowment for the Humanities chose Franklin for Jefferson Lecture, the highest honor of the US federal government for achievement in the humanities. Franklin's three-part lecture became the basis for his book Race Equality in America.
Franklin was appointed to the US Delegation to the UNESCO General Conference, Belgrade (1980).
In 1983, Franklin was appointed James H. Duke's Professor of History at Duke University. In 1985, he took the emeritus status from this position. During the same year, he helped found the Durham Literacy Center and served on the Board until his death in 2009.
Franklin was also Professor of Legal History at Duke University Law School from 1985 to 1992.
Race Equality in America
Race Equality in America is a series of lectures published by Franklin in 1976 for Jefferson Lecture sponsored by the National Endowment for Humanities. The book is comprised of three lectures, given in three different cities, where Franklin recorded the history of races in the United States from the revolution through to 1976. These lectures explore the differences between racial-related beliefs and the reality documented in various historical texts and government, as well as data collected from the census, property, and literary sources. The first lecture entitled "The Dream Deferred" and discussed the period from the Revolution until 1820. The second lecture entitled "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.
Next life and death
In 2005, at the age of 90, Franklin published and gave lectures 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 the Human Rights Book Award, awarded annually to honor the author "whose writing, in light of past or present injustice, acts as a flare towards a more equitable society. "
In 2006, he also received the John W. Kluge Prize and as a recipient of a lecture on the success and failure of racial relations in America at Where Do We Go from Here? In 2008, Franklin supported President Barack Obama's candidate.
Franklin died at Duke University Medical Center on the morning of March 25, 2009.
Awards
In 1991, Franklin's students honored him with a festschrift. Reconstruction Facts: 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), American Studies Association (1967), Southern Historical Association (1970), and American Historical Organization (1975). He is a member of the supervisory board at Fisk University, the Chicago Public Library, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association.
Franklin was selected as a foundation member of Fisk's new chapter of Phi Beta Kappa in 1953, when Fisk became the first black university to have historically had a chapter of honor society. In 1973-1976, he served as President of the United Nations of Phi Beta Kappa.
In addition, Franklin was appointed to serve in national commissions, including the National Council for Humanity, Presidential Advisory Commission for the Appointment of Ambassadors, and One America: The President's Initiative on Race.
Franklin is a member of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. He is an early beneficiary of the Brotherhood Foundation Publishers, who provide financial support and fellowship for writers dealing with 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.
John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture is in David M. Rubenstein's book Rare Duke University & amp; Library Manuscripts and contains personal and professional papers. The archive is one of three academic units named Franklin at Duke. The other is the John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary and International Studies, which opened in February 2001 and the Franklin Humanities Institute. Franklin had previously refused Duke's offer to name an African-American Study center after him, saying that he was an American historian and a world, as well.
In 1975, he was awarded the St. Literary Prize. Louis from St. University Library Association Louis.
In 1978, he was appointed to the Oklahoma Hall of Fame.
In 1994, the Society of American Historians (founded by Allan Nevins and other historians to encourage literary differences in historical writing) awarded the Franklin Catton Prize for Lifetime Achievement.
In 1995, he was awarded the Spingarn Medal of the NAACP.
In 1995, President Clinton gave the Franklin Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. The President's statement on the medal presentation cited Franklin's lifelong work as a teacher and a history student, striving to provide a better understanding of the relationship between whites and blacks in modern times.
In 1995, he received the Chicago History Museum "Making a History Award" for Differences in Historical Scholarship.
In 1997, Franklin was elected 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) original Oklahoman to receive the award. During his visit to Tulsa to receive the award, Franklin made several appearances to talk about his childhood experiences with racial segregation, and his father's experience as a lawyer after the Tulsa riots.
In 2002, the scholar Molefi Kete Asante incorporated Franklin into the list of 100 Greatest African Americans.
Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry presented the Governor's Gospel Award to Dr. Franklin in 2004.
In 2005, Franklin received the Northern Caroliniana Society Award for "a long and distinguished service in encouragement, production, upgrades, promotion and conservation of North Caroliniana."
On May 20, 2006, Franklin was awarded the honorary Doctor of Humane Letters in 179's Beginning Exercises from Lafayette College.
On November 15, 2006, John Hope Franklin was announced as the third recipient of John W. Kluge Prize for lifetime achievement in humanitarian studies. She shares gifts with Yu Ying-shih.
On October 27, 2010, Tulsa was renamed the Reconciliation Park, set up in memory of victims of the Tulsa Race of 1921, as the John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park in his honor. This includes a 27-foot bronze titled Reconciliation Tower by sculptor Ed Dwight, revealing a long African history in Oklahoma.
Marriage and family
Franklin married Aurelia Whittington on June 11, 1940. He 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 died of long illness.
Partial bibliography
References
Specific reference:
General Reference:
External links
- Appearance in C-SPAN
- In Depth an interview with Franklin, October 1, 2006
- Oral History Interview with John Hope Franklin from Oral Histories of the American South
- Obituary: John Hope Franklin by The Washington Post
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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