John Hope Franklin, African American History Scholar (1915 – 2009)
John Hope Franklin may not be a name recognized immediately, but his lengthy career of scholarship, teaching, and advocacy for civil rights earned him numerous distinctions and honors throughout his life.
His biography is studded with landmark events- he assisted Thurgood Marshall in the historically significant case Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, he marched with Dr. Martin Luther King in 1965 from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, and President Clinton awarded him the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Medal of Freedom, in 1995 (a distinction shared with other prominent African Americans such as Marian Anderson, Hank Aaron, and Rosa Parks).
Franklin earned his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1941 and went on to break through racial barriers at some of the leading academic institutions in the country – he was the first black department chair at the predominately white Brooklyn College, the first black professor to hold an endowed chair at Duke, and the first black chair of the University of Chicago’s history department.
Franklin’s book From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African-Americans, first published in 1947, was considered one of the definitive historical surveys of the American black experience. His exploration of black history in over a dozen books led to the Library of Congress awarding him the John W. Kluge Prize for the study of Humanities in 2006.
Works available at the library:
Color and race. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1968.
Location: Main Coll 323.1 F832c 1968
The free negro in North Carolina, 1790-1860. New York: Russell & Russell [1969, c1943].
Location: Main Coll 325.26 F832fr 1969
From slavery to freedom: A history of African Americans. Boston: McGraw-Hill, c2000.
Location: Main Coll 973.0496 F832f c2000
In search of the promised land: A black family and the old south. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Location: Main Coll 929.2 T462xf 2006
The negro in twentieth century America; A reader on the struggle for civil rights. New York: Vintage Books, 1967.
Location: Main Coll 325.26 F832n 1967
Race and history: Selected essays 1938-1988. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, c1989.
Location: Main Coll 973.0496 F832r c1989
Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the plantation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Location: Main Coll 975.00496 F832
Official site of the Presidential Medal of Freedom listing African American recipients:
http://www.medaloffreedom.com/AfricanAmericanRecipients.htm
Source: Yarrow, A.L. (2009, March 25). John Hope Franklin, Scholar of African-American History, Is Dead at 94. New York Times. Retrieved March 28, 2009, from http://www.nytimes.com.
