By Leslie Wilson

“I think knowing one’s history leads one to act in a more enlightened fashion. I cannot image how knowing one’s history would not urge one to be an activist.”
–John Hope Franklin, March 1994

Typically historians’ most remembered lines define the strength and character of others. However, many of the words written and spoken by John Hope Franklin remind us that he was a leader in the struggle as well as one of its interpreters.

John Hope Franklin, the James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of History and America’s authority on race, died of congestive heart failure at Duke Hospital on the morning of March 25. Although not the father of African-American history, he deserves a place on the podium with George Washington Williams, W.E. B. Du Bois, and Carter G. Woodson. He changed the field as a scholar, teacher, leader and activist. This historian made a difference both inside and outside of the classroom.

Franklin was born in Rentiesville, Oklahoma on January 2, 1915.  Raised in the era of “race” men and women, his first and most significant role models were his parents, Buck Colbert Franklin, an attorney; and Mollie Parker Franklin, a teacher.

One could almost say that Franklin’s fate was predestined, but closer scrutiny suggests that his life’s work was shaped by his environment and family background. Called John Hope and not John by his close friends and associates, the future scholar was named after the famed president of Atlanta University.

Slavery and its legacy played a constant role in young Franklin’s life. His grandfather was enslaved and John Hope was raised in a small but progressive black community in a state where the color line was drawn, sometimes with deadly consequences.

Racism affected Franklin as a child. He suffered acts of discrimination throughout his education. Once, he and his mother were thrown off of a train for refusing to sit in the segregated car. Franklin often recalled the impact that the Tulsa Riot of 1921 had on his father and family. He spoke of the lack of justice given to its African-American victims.

In his later years, Franklin became a strong advocate for reparations for these and other victims of uncompensated racial violence. It was also the politics of race than forced him to leave Oklahoma, where he could not attend college, to attend Fisk University.  At Fisk, Franklin’s full academic promise was recognized and he was supported to pursue graduate studies at Harvard, where he earned a doctorate in 1941.

Walking in the footsteps of W.E.B. Du Bois and Carter G. Woodson armed with his own experiences, Franklin pursued a career in the academy. From 1936 to 1956, he taught in several historically black institutions including Fisk University, St. Augustine’ s College, North Carolina College for Negroes (North Carolina Central University) and Howard University. By focusing on the history of African Americans, Franklin became a pioneer in what was then a new field of study.

In 1947, Franklin’s second book, From Slavery to Freedom, was published. This textbook, a survey of the black experience in America, became the best-known and most widely used book in the field. He said that his challenge 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.”

Virtually single-handedly, Franklin revolutionized black history. Although he was not the only person researching and writing in the field, he became the most respected name in the discipline. Franklin gained the respect of scholars of both races emerging as a new voice in the growing debate on matters of race.

His growing prominence led to his hiring as the chair of the all-white history department at Brooklyn College in 1956. This milestone changed hiring practices at predominately white universities. However, as he broke barriers, he confronted new ones. Franklin experienced housing discrimination and it took months before he could find a realtor, home, and mortgage in New York City.

In 1964, Franklin accepted a position in the history department at the University of Chicago, serving its chair from 1967 to 1970. He became the John Matthews Manly Distinguished Service Professor in 1969 and professor emeritus in 1982.

Franklin accepted a position at Duke in 1982, one of the first African-American recipients of the James B. Duke endowed chairs. When asked why he left Chicago, Franklin joked that “it was too cold.” In truth, he was lured to North Carolina by his loving wife Aurelia and his continuing interest in orchids. He stepped down from Duke’s history department in 1985, then taught at its law school for seven years. An endowed chair in his honor will be established at the Duke Law School.

For Franklin, coming to Duke University was also a political statement. Once again, he was tearing down barriers of a segregated past. His lectures at Duke, and as an invited guest on countless college campuses, spoke to the importance of knowing history. He examined the constitution and its role in maintaining slavery; he investigated the impact of Reconstruction era politics in the development of the economy and the retardation of racial harmony; and he looked at the violence associated with segregation and its legacy throughout the twentieth century. Duke afforded him a platform to continue to press for racial justice and he continued to use it for the rest of his life.

Franklin continually lent his support to causes away from the academy, working with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and contributing vital research and expertise to the  preparation of the Brown v. Board of Education case. He marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

In 1997, President William Jefferson Clinton selected Franklin to chair a national advisory board on race. Its report was a stinging indictment of the nation’s failure to recognize its continuing role in supporting racial disharmony.

In addition to From Slavery to Freedom, now in its eighth edition, Franklin also wrote, co-wrote or edited over a dozen books including The Emancipation Proclamation, The Militant South, The Free Negro in North Carolina, Reconstruction After the Civil War, A Southern Odyssey; Travelers in the Ante-bellum North, Race and History, The Color Line: Legacy for the Twenty-First Century, George Washington Williams, Mirror To America: The Autobiography of John Hope Franklin, and My Life and an Era: The Autobiography of Buck Colbert Franklin.

Such works enabled black history to move into the mainstream and gain greater acknowledgement in American history courses. Franklin’s scholarship enabled him to leave Brooklyn College and go to the University of Chicago, then finally to Duke University.

Throughout his career, Franklin was named to countless boards and given many distinguished awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the John W. Kluge Award for lifetime achievement in the humanities. He served as president of several organizations including the American Studies Association (1967), Southern Historical Association (1970), Organization of American Historians (1975) and American Historical Association (1979). In some cases, he was the first black recipient of an award or the first black elected president of a major historical organization.

Franklin was an inspiration to several generations of aspiring scholars. He transformed African-American history and gave it legitimacy within the academy. Through his scholarship and strong and infectious personality, he disarmed generations of white scholars who wrote and taught that the Negro had no place in American history. He not only gave strength to future students of history, but to generations of people who read his works, or saw him on television. His role as historian and activist taught America that it would have to accept its past to reconcile its future. Without question, he was one of the most influential persons of the twentieth century.

“I want to be out there on the firing line, helping, directing or doing something to try to make this a better world, a better place to live.”

–John Hope Franklin, October 2005

Leslie Wilson is a Professor of American and African-American History at Montclair State University in Montclair, N.J.