03/01/2025
"Dr. John Hope Franklin, American historian and educator was born in Rentiesville, OK, on January 2, 1915 (died March 25, 2009). He was the former president of Phi Beta Kappa, the Organization of American Historians, the American Historical Association, and the Southern Historical Association. In 1995, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation''''s highest civilian honor.Dr. John Hope Franklin was a historian specializing in Southern and African American history. He wrote “From Slavery to Freedom”, the seminal work on African American history, which was first published in 1947 and to date, more than three million copies have been sold.
Noted for his scholarly reappraisal of the American Civil War era and the importance of the black struggle in shaping modern American identity, Dr. John Hope Franklin helped fashion the legal brief that led to the historic Supreme Court decision outlawing public school segregation, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954).
Dr. Franklin has had a distinguished career as a historian and educator. He attended Fisk University and then Harvard University, receiving his doctorate in 1941. He served as a professor at Fisk University, Saint Augustine''''s College (Raleigh, North Carolina), North Carolina Central University (Durham), and Howard University (Washington, D.C.). Subsequently, he chaired the Department of History at Brooklyn College and has been John Matthews Manly Distinguished Service Professor of History at the University of Chicago, James B. Duke Professor of History at Duke University, Fulbright Professor in Australia, and Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions at Cambridge University, England.
"My challenge," Franklin said, "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 his autobiography, Franklin has described a series of formative incidents in which he
confronted racism while seeking to volunteer his services at the beginning of the Second World War. He responded to the navy''''s search for qualified clerical workers, but after he presented his extensive qualifications, the navy recruiter told him that he was the wrong color for the position. He was similarly unsuccessful in finding a position with a War Department historical project. When he went to have a blood test, as required for the draft, the doctor initially refused to allow him into his office. Afterward, Franklin took steps to avoid the draft, on the basis that the country did not respect him or have an interest in his well-being, because of his color.
His many awards include the Jefferson Medal of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (1984), the Clarence Holte Literary Prize (1985), the Jefferson Medal of the American Philosophical Society, the National Endowment for Humanities Charles Frankel Award in (1993), and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1995).
Bro. Franklin was a proud and duly initiated member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.. His father was an attorney who documented and represented victims of the Tulsa, Oklahoma “Black Wall Street” Race Riots. At every stop along the way, Dr. John Hope Franklin defied stereotypes and blatant restrictions his life faced and went onto become one of America’s most prolific African American historians… "
Source: Black History
