John Hope Franklin

Damilola Familoni. History 245 Honors

John Hope Franklin

In January 2, 1915 John Hope Franklin was born in Rentiesville, Oklahoma to Buck Colbert Franklin and Mollie Lee Franklin only 50 years after slavery had been abolished. John Hope is the fourth child of Buck and Mollie Franklin. They lived in Rentiesville which was an all black town, despite the fact that Franklin's parents were ardent integrationalists. The Franklin family is happy there, but life is made difficult by religious politics. Buck Franklin finally makes a decision to move the family to Tulsa. He establishes a thriving law practice there and by 1925 he sends for the rest of his family to join him. In 1921 riots erupted in Tulsa, Oklahoma. A lot of people were killed when whites, enraged by the success of black businessmen, burn the black section of Tulsa to the ground. Franklin's father was unhurt but in the process he loses everything so the move was caught short and the Franklin family had to stay in rentiesville for four more years. in1922, while traveling from Rentiesville to a nearby town, Mollie and her children accidentally board an all-white compartment on a train. Mollie Franklin protests when the conductor tells her she will have to move her young children while the train is moving. The train is stopped and the Franklins are sent off. John Hope recalls this moment as a defining point at which he dedicated himself to ending segregation. John Hope Franklin is the James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of History, and for seven years was Professor of Legal History in the Law School at Duke University. He is a native of Oklahoma and a graduate of Fisk University which he enrolled in at the age of 16 in the fall of 1931, Franklin has said that, the fact that his brother attended Fisk was one of the reasons he chose the university. It is at Fisk that Franklin met Aurelia Whittington, a North Carolina native and his future wife. He received the A.M. and Ph.D. degrees in history from Harvard University which was his second choice of college. He had wanted to attend university of Oklahoma but he could not because it was an all white university.

In 1939, Franklin began researching his dissertation on free African-Americans in North Carolina. When he arrived at the North Carolina state archives he discovered that there were no segregated facilities set up. They prepared a room for Franklin alone but were unable to find a page willing to serve him. Franklin was given a key to the stacks and was forced to get his own material until the other researchers objected. It is in this year that Franklin became a professor of history at Saint Augustine's college. John Hope Franklin and Aurelia Whittington are married in Goldsboro, North Carolina on the 11th of August, 1940. In 1941 in the wake of Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Navy advertises for emergency enlistment. Inspired, John Hope attempted to enlist, only to be told that because he is black he will not be given duties that a white enlistee with his qualifications would be given. Piqued, Franklin decides never to serve in the Armed Forces and spends the rest of World War II avoiding service. Franklin's brother Buck serves until the end of the war, but never sees combat. It is also in 1941 that Franklin receives his PhD from Harvard. Franklin joins the North Carolina College for Negroes in 1943, later renamed North Carolina Central University, as a professor of history. Towards the end of World War II, publishers at Knopf approach Franklin with a proposal to publish a book about African-American history. While Franklin was leery at first, he eventually accedes and, in 1945, begins work on "From Slavery to Freedom". After 13 months of work, "From Slavery to Freedom" is published. The book is well received but Franklin's life is made difficult. His brother Buck started suffering from emotional breakdowns and dies at an early age. John Hope points to his brother's experiences in the segregated Armed Services as a contributing factor in his early death. It is also in 1947 that John Hope becomes a professor at the prestigious, all-black Howard University. Howard, located in segregated Washington, D.C., is, at that time, the pinnacle of many African-Americans' teaching careers.

John Whittington Franklin, the only child of Aurelia and John Hope Franklin, is born. Franklin works with Thurgood Marshall on Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. This case, decided by the Supreme Court in 1954 and the long, painful process of integration in America is started. He later becomes the first black historian given a full-time post at a white institution when he joins Brooklyn College as the chairman of the history department. In 1995 Franklin is awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Clinton. The Medal of Freedom is the highest honor an American civilian can receive from the president. President Clinton appoints Franklin to lead the Advisory Board to the President's Initiative on Race. The board is charged with appraising the condition of race relations in our country and where we should strive to be. After more than a year of interviews, testimonies and town-hall meetings, the board releases its findings. But the board's suggestions are overshadowed by the scandal rocking the White House and the release of the Starr report. Franklin maintains that the board accomplished important objectives and opened a new dialogue on race, but critics have charged that the board did not do enough to consider the concerns of Latinos, Asians and Native Americans. On January 27 1999, Aurelia Whittington Franklin dies after a long struggle with Alzheimer's disease. He has taught at a number of institutions, including Fisk University, St. Augustine's College, North Carolina Central University, and Howard University. He joined the faculty of the University of Chicago, serving as Chairman of the Department of History from 1967 to 1970. At Chicago, he was the John Matthews Manly Distinguished Service Professor from 1969 to 1982, when he became Professor Emeritus.

In a dialogue between Dr john Hope Franklin and archbishop tutu, Franklin acknowledge that one of the problems in the united states, today, is the refusal, on the part of our young people to remember or to want to recognize the experience of the past as being relevant, germane and important to the present and to the future. He went further to say that the young simply do not want anything that's painful. "They want to live in a painless society, where everything is present, and everything is joyful" (taking an initiave). He believes that the unfortunate thing about wanting to live in a painless society, is that insisting on that, they are also insisting on a world of unreality, a world that does not exist, or did not exist. Franklin