Franklin, John Hope

Related Category: Historians, U.S.: Biographies

1915–, the dean of African-American historians, b. Rentiesville, Okla., grad. Fisk Univ. (A.B., 1935), Harvard Univ. (M.A., 1936; Ph.D., 1941). Franklin served on the faculties of his alma mater (1936–37), St. Augustine's College (1939–43), North Carolina College (1943–47), Howard Univ. (1947–56), Brooklyn College (1956–64), and the Univ. of Chicago (1964–82) before assuming (1982) the James B. Duke Professorship of History at Duke Univ. He became professor emeritus in 1985, but taught at Duke's law school from 1985 to 1992. Franklin was also president of Phi Beta Kappa (1973–76), the American Historical Association (1978–79), and several other scholarly organizations.

His many publications have focused on the history of the American South and on the African-American contribution to the development of the United States. His best-known book, the pioneering and now classic From Slavery to Freedom (1947; 8th ed. 2000), revolutionized the understanding of African-American history and changed the way the subject is taught throughout the United States. Among Franklin's other works are The Militant South: 1800–1860 (1956), Reconstruction after the Civil War (1961), Color and Race (1968), Racial Equality in America (1976), Race and History (1989), The Color Line (1993), and In Search of the Promised Land (with L. Schweninger, 2005). He has also edited a number of books, including a 1997 autobiography of his father, an Oklahoma lawyer. Franklin was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1995 and was appointed President Clinton's adviser on race two years later. His papers form the nucleus of Duke's John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African-American Documentation.

See his autobiography, Mirror to America (2005).