John Hope Franklin - Biography, Public Service, Books by John Hope Franklin (Partial List), Reference

Historian, born in Rentiesville, Oklahoma, USA. He studied at Fisk University and did his graduate work at Harvard, taught at colleges in North Carolina, and joined the faculty of Howard University (1947). That same year he published his pathbreaking study, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of American Negroes. He became chairman of the history department of Brooklyn College (1956–64), professor at the University of Chicago (1964–82), and professor at Duke University (1982–5). He was the first African-American to become president of the American Historical Association, and as the history of African-Americans finally gained its place among the serious fields of inquiry, he became recognized both as the nestor of the discipline and as a valued voice in the chorus of all American historians. Among his other publications are Reconstruction after the Civil War (1961), The Emancipation Proclamation (1963), and Racial Equality in America (1976).

John Hope Franklin (born January 2, 1915) is a United States historian and past president of the American Historical Association.

Biography

Franklin was born in Rentiesville, Oklahoma and named after John Hope. He graduated from Fisk University in 1935 and earned a doctorate in history in 1941 from Harvard University.

"My challenge," Franklin says, "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 the early 1950s, Franklin served on the NAACP Legal Defense team led by Thurgood Marshall that helped develop the case that led to the 1954 United States Supreme Court decision ending the legal segregation of black and white children in public schools.

Franklin's teaching career began at Fisk University and continued during World War II at St. Augustine's College and North Carolina College. From 1964 through 1982, he served in the history department at the University of Chicago, and as its chair from 1967-70, and as the John Matthews Manly Distinguished Service Professor, 1969-82. Franklin was also Professor of Legal History at the Duke University Law School from 1985-92:

He was appointed to the Fulbright Board of Foreign Scholarships, 1962-69, and was its chair from 1966-69.

The John Hope Franklin Collection for African and African-American Documentation resides at the Duke University Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library and contains his personal and professional papers.

Pulitizer Prize winning historian David Levering Lewis said that while he was deciding to become an historian, news came that Franklin, his mentor, had been named departmental chairman at Brooklyn College. 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; Du Bois, Franklin spoke out in his defense, not (about) Du Bois' communism, but of the right of an intellectual to express ideas that were not popular. 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."

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, it was announced that Franklin was the third recipient of the John W.

Public Service

Franklin has served as president of the American History Association (1979), the American Studies Association (1967), the Southern Historical Association (1970), the United Chapters of Phi Beta Kappa (1973-76), and the Organization of American Historians (1975).

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

Franklin is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, the first intercollegiate Greek-letter fraternity established for African Americans.

Books by John Hope Franklin (Partial List)

The free Negro in North Carolina, 1790-1860, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1943, 1995. Ayers, Civil War recruiter ed., with introd., by John Franklin. Caughey, John Hope Franklin and Ernest R. The Negro in Twentieth Century America: A Reader on the Struggle for Civil Rights, by John Hope Franklin & The Historian and Public Policy, by John Hope Franklin. Racial Equality in America, by John Hope Franklin. A Southern Odyssey: Travelers in the Antebellum North. by John Hope Franklin. Black Leaders of the Twentieth Century, edited by John Hope Franklin and August Meier. Race and History: Selected Essays 1938-1988, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, c1989. The Color Line: Legacy for the Twenty-first Century, John Hope Franklin. Racial Equality in America, by John Hope Franklin. My Life and an Era: the Autobiography of Buck Colbert Franklin, edited by John Hope Franklin and John Whittington Franklin. Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation, John Hope Franklin, Loren Schweninger. Giroux, 2005, ISBN 0-374-29944-7

Reference

Paul Finkelman, "John Hope Franklin," in Robert Allen Rutland, ed.