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John Hope Franklin Overcame Obstacles To Attain Highest Levels Of Achievement
Recently John Hope Franklin the American historian and activist died at the age of 94. His life and times are a reminder to all of the complete history of the United States of America.
John Hope Franklin recorded the American experience from the black perspective in order to give the world and its future generations the full story of this incredible nation.
“My specialty is the history of the south. That means I teach the history of blacks and whites.”~ in a 1990 interview, John Hope Franklin , historian
Franklin, himself, was born in a flourishing, separate black area of Tulsa, Oklahoma. His father, Buck Franklin, was a lawyer and his mother, Molly Parker Franklin, was a teacher.
We can not think of anyone better equipped to become the historian of note on the subject of race in America than the young John Hope Franklin who experienced first hand the trauma of hateful acts when his father’s law office was burned down during the shameful riots in Tulsa during 1921. About the same time Franklin and his mother were thrown off a train when she refused to accept accommodation in an overcrowded Negroes only carriage. It was at this time as they walked back home he was challenged by his mother to “prove you’re as good as any of them.”
After graduation from a segregated high school, Franklin went on to attend the historically black Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. After graduation he went on to study at Harvard University to receive both a masters and a doctorate in history. By 1941 he was Dr. John Hope Franklin, and husband to his college sweetheart, whom he married in 1940. Aurelia Whittington, librarian became his wife and his editor. Upon her demise in 1999 they had shared a life together as husband and wife for nearly sixty years.
Franklin returned to Tennessee to teach at Fisk. While researching his first book at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, he was forbidden to to approach white female librarians, or to use the library’s cafeterias or washrooms. The book being researched at the time was “The Free Negro in North Carolina”. Published in 1943 it dispelled many ill-perceived notions about life in the segregated southern U.S.
Four years later the ground breaking “From Slavery To Freedom” was published. In 1947 Franklin’s book was received as innovative not just because it was written by a black scholar, but because as a chronicler of American history he refused to concede to the idea the African slaves in the United States and their descendants a history separate and distinct from the rest of Americans.
More than ten years later, in 1956, Franklin wrote of the sixty year period 1800 to 1861 in which he suggested the heinous institution of slavery increased and promoted, even stimulated a violent mindset among some whites.
It can be said John Hope Franklin through his books and articles helped to formulate many of our ideas about and policies toward race in America.
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
He is the recipient of the nation’s highest civilian honor. In 1995, in a special ceremony, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
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