Blacks at Harvard: A Documentary History of African-American Experience At Harvard and Radcliffe

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN

JOHN HOPE FRANKLI N John Hope Franklin was born on 2 January 1915 in the tiny black Oklahoma town of Rentiesville, where his father was its postmaster an d only lawyer. Both parent s wer e college-educate d an d kep t plent y o f book s a t home . After the family moved to Tulsa, Franklin attended the all-black Booker T. Washington Hig h School , where h e wa s activ e i n debating , singing , an d trumpet-playing, and finished a s class valedictorian in 1931. A scholarship plus odd jobs enabled him to attend Fisk University, where he found tim e to continue debating and singing in addition to serving as student-government president. Majorin g in history, he received his B.A. magna cum laude in 1935. He pursued graduate work at Harvard, was a student of the famous historians Samuel Eliot Morison and Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr., and received his M.A i n 1936 and Ph.D. in 1941. Starting i n 193 9 h e taugh t histor y fo r fou r year s a t St . Augustine' s College in North Carolina, moving to North Carolina College in Durham for another four years before accepting a professorship at Howard University in 1947. I n 194 9 h e becam e th e firs t Negr o t o rea d a pape r befor e th e Southern Historical Association, a body he would rise to head two decades later. H e held visiting professorships a t Harvard (1950) , the University of Wisconsin (1952-53), and Cornell (1953), and in 1956 was persuaded to chair a feud-ridden departmen t o f 52 white historians at Brooklyn College—th e first black to head any college department in the state. I n 1964 he went to the University of Chicago and retired in 1982 , when he accepted an invitation to a history chair at Duke University, shifting to its law school in 1985, where he has since remained. Among his many books are The Free Negro in North Carolina, 1790-1860 (1943); From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans(1947), which quickly became the standard mainstream survey and reached its 6th edition in 1987 ; The Militant South, 1800-1861 (1956) , the firs t wor k b y a blac k scholar to appear in the Harvard Historical Series since Du Bois' slave-trade volume 60 years earlier; The Emancipation Proclamation (1963), celebrating its topic's centennial; A Southern Odyssey: Travelers in the Antebellum North (1967), which won the Jules Landry Award; and George Washington Williams: A Biography (1985), which garnered the Clarence L. Holte Prize. Frankli n John Hope Franklin ca. 1960 John Hope Franklin 289 also served for three years as national president of the United Chapters of Phi Beta Kappa. Th e recipient of a host of honors at home and abroad, he was named to the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 1978 and holds honorary degrees (at last count) from 9 0 colleges and universities, including an LL.D. from Harvard in 1981. H e is by common consent the foremost black historian of the past half-century . Franklin's 198 8 Charle s Home r Haskin s Lecture , whic h w e excerp t below, is one in a series sponsored annuall y by the America n Counci l of Learned Societies , and name d fo r th e Council' s firs t chairman , who was, appropriately, an internationally renowned professor o f history at Harvard (1902-31), dean o f it s Graduat e Schoo l (1908-24) , and on e o f Franklin' s predecessors as president of the American Historical Association. Frankli n included th e Haskin s lectur e i n hi s collectio n Race and History: Selected Essays 1938-1988 (1989). A Lif e o f Learnin g Since I was merely passing throug h [Fis k University] en rout e t o la w school, I ha d littl e interes t i n a n undergraduat e concentration . I thought o f English, but the chairman of that department, fro m who m J too k freshman English , discouraged m e on the ground tha t I would never be able to command the English language. (Incidentally , he was a distinguished authorit y in American literature and specialized in the traditions...