| 1 | Name: | Dr. John Hope Franklin | |
| Institution: | Duke University & University of Chicago | ||
| Year Elected: | 1973 | ||
| Class: | 3. Social Sciences | ||
| Subdivision: | 303. History Since 1715 | ||
| Residency: | Resident | ||
| Living? : | Deceased | ||
| Birth Date: | 1915 | ||
| Death Date: | March 25, 2009 | ||
John Hope Franklin was 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 was a native of Oklahoma and a graduate of Fisk University. Dr. Franklin received his A.M. and Ph.D. degrees in history from Harvard University and taught at a number of institutions, including Fisk University, St. Augustine's College, North Carolina Central University and Howard University. In 1956 he went to Brooklyn College as Chairman of the Department of History, and in 1964 he joined the faculty of the University of Chicago, serving as Chairman of the Department of History from 1967-70. At Chicago, he was the John Matthews Manly Distinguished Service Professor from 1969-82, when he became Professor Emeritus. With fellow APS member Ying-Shih Yu, Dr.Franklin shared the 2006 John W. Kluge Prize for the Study of Humanity. Professor Franklin's numerous publications include The Emancipation Proclamation, The Militant South, The Free Negro in North Carolina, Reconstruction After the Civil War and A Southern Odyssey: Travelers in the Ante-bellum North. Perhaps his best known book is From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African-Americans (1947), now in its ninth edition. His Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities for 1976 was published in 1985 and received the Clarence L. Holte Literary Prize for that year. In 1990, a collection of essays covering a teaching and writing career of fifty years was published under the title Race and History: Selected Essays, 1938-1988, and in 1993 he published The Color Line: Legacy for the Twenty-first Century. His most recent work is Mirror to America: The Autobiography of John Hope Franklin (2005). Professor Franklin was also active in numerous professional and educational organizations and for many years served on the editorial board of the Journal of Negro History. He is often spoken of as the outstanding African-American historian in the United States. A man of exceptional objectivity and fairness, he has said that the challenge of his work has been 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 2006 Dr. Franklin was presented with the American Philosophical Society's Benjamin Franklin Medal for Distinguished Public Service. The citation read "in recognition of his achievement as the first American black scholar to break triumphantly through the color barrier when he was appointed Chair of the Brooklyn College History Department in 1956, and in recognition of his pioneering role in rescuing African-American history from oblivion through seventy years of powerful scholarship and teaching, the American Philosophical Society salutes John Hope Franklin. His life-long commitment to civil rights for all Americans, and his life-long determination to combat racism in all of its ugly forms, has liberated us all." John Hope Franklin died in 2009 at the age of 94. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1973. | |||