Photo, C-Span2, BookTV Originally broadcast, March 22nd 2006

John Hope Franklin (January 2, 1915 ' March 25, 2009 ) was the James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of History at Duke University. He has received dozens of major awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his life-long commitment to Civil Rights.

John Hope Franklin lived through America's most defining twentieth-century transformation, the dismantling of legally-protected racial segregation. A renowned scholar, he has explored that transformation in its myriad aspects, notably in his 3.5 million-copy bestseller, From Slavery to Freedom. And he was, and remains, an active participant. Born in 1915, he, like every other African American, could not but participate: he was evicted from whites-only train cars, confined to segregated schools, threatened-once with lynching-and consistently met with racism's denigration of his humanity. And yet he managed to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard, become the first black historian to assume a full-professorship at a white institution, Brooklyn College, be appointed chair of the University of Chicago's history department and, later, John B. Duke Professor at Duke University. He has reshaped the way African American history is understood and taught and become one of the world's most celebrated historians, garnering over 130 honorary degrees.

 

Mirror to America: The Autobiography of John Hope Franklin
Click to order via Amazon

ISBN: 0374299447
Format: Hardcover, 401pp
Pub. Date: November 2005
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

"Mirror to America: The Autobiography of John Hope Franklin is an astonishing beautiful, deeply intelligent record of an extraordinary life. Required reading lest we forget what is possible in a race-based society." 'Toni Morrison, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature

John Hope Franklin lived through America's most defining twentieth-century transformation, the dismantling of legally-protected racial segregation. A renowned scholar, he has explored that transformation in its myriad aspects, notably in his 3.5 million-copy bestseller, From Slavery to Freedom. And he was, and remains, an active participant. Born in 1915, he, like every other African American, could not but participate: he was evicted from whites-only train cars, confined to segregated schools, threatened-once with lynching-and consistently met with racism's denigration of his humanity. And yet he managed to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard, become the first black historian to assume a full-professorship at a white institution, Brooklyn College, be appointed chair of the University of Chicago's history department and, later, John B. Duke Professor at Duke University. He has reshaped the way African American history is understood and taught and become one of the world's most celebrated historians, garnering over 130 honorary degrees. But Franklin's participation was much more fundamental than that.

From his effort in 1934 to hand President Franklin Roosevelt a petition calling for action in response to the Cordie Cheek lynching, to his 1997 appointment by President Clinton to head the President's Initiative on Race, and continuing to the present, Franklin has influenced with determination and dignity the nation's racial conscience. Whether aiding Thurgood Marshall's preparation for arguing Brown v. Board in 1954, marching to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965, or testifying against Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court in 1987, Franklin has pushed the national conversation on race towards humanity and equality, a life-long effort that earned him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, in 1995. Intimate, at times revelatory, Mirror to America chronicles Franklin's life and this nation's racial transformation in the 20th century, and is a powerful reminder of the extent to which the problem of America remains the problem of color.
 

From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans (2 Vols. in 1)
Click to order via Amazon

John Hope Franklin, Alfred A. Moss Jr.

ISBN: 0375406719
Format: Hardcover, 716pp
Pub. Date: March 2000
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group

The Eight Edition has been thoroughly revised to include expanded material on Africa, the history of African Americans in the Caribbean and Latin America, the current situation of African Americans in the United States, popular culture, and much more. It has also been redesigned with new charts, maps, photographs, paintings, illustrations, and color inserts. Written by distinguished and award-winning authors, retaining the same features that have made it the most popular text on African American History ever, and with fresh and appealing new features, From Slavery to Freedom remains the leading text on the market.

 

In Search of the Promised Land : A Slave Family in the Old South
Click to order via Amazon

by: John Hope Franklin, Loren Schweninger

ISBN: 0195160878
Format: Hardcover, 320pp
Pub. Date: August 2005
Publisher: Oxford University Press

The matriarch of a remarkable African American family, Sally Thomas went from being a slave on a tobacco plantation to a "nearly free" slave who ran her own business and purchased liberty for herself and one of her sons. In Search of the Promised Land offers a vivid portrait of the extended Thomas-Rapier family and of the life of slaves before the Civil War.

Based on family letters as well as an autobiography by one of Thomas's sons, this remarkable piece of detective work follows a singular group as they walk the boundary between slave and free, traveling across the country in search of a "promised land" where African Americans would be treated with respect. Their record of these journeys provides a vivid picture of antebellum America, stretching from New Orleans to St. Louis, from the Overland Trail to the California Gold Rush, and from Civil War battles to steamboat adventures. John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger weave a compelling narrative that illuminates the larger themes of slavery and freedom. To a remarkable degree, this small family experienced the full gamut of slavery, witnessing everything from the breakup of slave families, brutal punishment, and run-aways to miscegenation, insurrection panics, and slave patrols. They also illuminate the hidden lives of "nearly free" slaves, who maintained close relationships with whites, maneuvered within the system, and gained a large measure of autonomy.

The Thomas-Rapiers were keen observers of the human condition. Through the eyes of this exceptional family and the indomitable black woman who held them together, we witness aspects of human bondage otherwise hidden from view.

 

Reconstruction after the Civil War (The Chicago History of American Civilization)
Click to order via Amazon

ISBN: 0226260798
Format: Paperback, 265pp
Pub. Date: March 1995
Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Ever since its original publication in 1961, Reconstruction after the Civil War has been praised for cutting through the controversial scholarship and popular myths of the time to provide an accurate account of the role of former slaves during this period in American history.

Now Franklin has updated his work to acknowledge the enormous body of research and scholarship that followed in the wake of the first edition. New are Franklin's references to important, later texts that enrich the original narrative. In addition, the extensive bibliography has been thoroughly revised.

What has not changed, however, is the foundation Franklin has laid. Still compelling are his arguments concerning the brevity of the North's military occupation of the South, the limited amount of power wielded by former slaves, the influence of moderate southerners, the flaws of the constitutions drawn up by the Radical state governments, and the reasons for the downfall of Reconstruction.

 

Runaway Slaves : Rebels on the Plantation
Click to order via Amazon

ISBN: 0195084497
Format: Hardcover, 455pp
Pub. Date: April 1999
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

In this book, John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger demonstrate that, contrary to popular belief, significant numbers of slaves did in fact frequently rebel against their masters and struggle to attain their freedom. By surveying a wealth of documents, such as planters' records, petitions to county courts and state legislatures, and local newspapers, this book shows how slaves resisted; when, where, and how they escaped; where they fled to; how long they remained in hiding; and how they survived away from the plantation. Of equal importance, it examines the reactions of the white slaveholding class, revealing how they marshaled considerable effort to prevent runaways, meted out severe punishments, and established patrols to hunt down escaped slaves. Reflecting a lifetime of thought by our leading authority in African American history, this book provides the key to truly understanding the relationship between slaveholders and the runaways who challenged the system - illuminating as never before the true nature of the South's "most peculiar institution."

 

George Washington Williams: A Biography
Click to order via Amazon

ISBN: 0822321645
Format: Paperback, 348pp
Pub. Date: September 1998
Publisher: Duke University Press

In George Washington Williams, John Hope Franklin reconstructs the life of the controversial, self-made black intellectual who wrote the first history of African Americans in the United States. Awarded the Clarence L. Holte Literary Prize, this book traces Franklin's forty-year quest for Williams's story, a story largely lost to history until this volume was first published in 1985. The result, part biography and part social history, is a unique consideration of a pioneering historian by his most distinguished successor. Williams, who lived from 1849 to 1891, had a remarkable career as soldier, minister, journalist, lawyer, politician, freelance diplomat, and African traveler, as well as a historian. While Franklin reveals the accomplishments of this neglected figure and emphasizes the racism that curtailed Williams's many talents, he also highlights the personal weaknesses that damaged Williams's relationships and career.

 

The Militant South: 1800-1861
Click to order via Amazon

ISBN: 0252070690
Format: Paperback, 336pp
Pub. Date: March 2002
Publisher: University of Illinois Press

"In The Militant South, 1800-1861, John Hope Franklin identifies the factors and causes of the South's festering propensity for aggression that contributed to the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861." "Franklin asserts that the South was dominated by militant white men who resorted to violence in the face of social, personal, or political conflict. Fueled by their defense of slavery and a desire to keep the North out of their affairs, Southerners developed a bellicosity that intensified as the war drew nearer." Drawing from Southern newspapers, government archives, memoirs, letters, and firsthand accounts, Franklin details the sources and consequences of antebellum aggression in the South. This edition features a new preface in which the author discusses controversial responses to this classic volume, first published in 1956.

 

Color Line: Legacy for the Twenty-First Century
Click to order via Amazon

ISBN: 0826209645
Format: Paperback, 87pp
Pub. Date: February 1994
Publisher: University of Missouri Press

"The problem of the twentieth century will be the problem of the color line - the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men," wrote author and civil rights leader W. E. B. Du Bois in 1903. As the twentieth century comes to a close, one of America's most distinguished historians takes an unflinching look at race relations in America today. Distilling more than two centuries of history, John Hope Franklin reflects on the most tragic and persistent social problem in our nation's history - the color line - as it becomes our legacy for the next century. The Color Line originated as three lectures delivered at the University of Missouri-Columbia in April 1992, just one day after the "not guilty" verdict was returned in the trial of Los Angeles police officers in the beating of Rodney King. The violence that shook Los Angeles and soon erupted in other cities across the country provided a dramatic backdrop for Franklin's message: the color line holds fast - in education, in housing, in health care, and in the legal system. Franklin illuminates some of the key episodes in our nation's history that have brought us to the present day. He traces America's forward and backward steps on the path toward racial equality, from the Carter administration's record number of appointments of African Americans to the bench to the Reagan administration's effort to continue support for educational institutions that persisted in racial discrimination and segregation.

Examining the historical role of race in both the Republican and Democratic parties, Franklin argues that while opponents of affirmative action claim to promote a color-blind legal system, many have adopted race-encoded rhetoric to raise the specter of racial fear and hatred. Franklin also outlines the questionable civil rights record of Clarence Thomas, whose nomination and confirmation as Supreme Court justice provoked considerable controversy among civil rights leaders.

 

Emancipation Proclamation
Click to order via Amazon

ISBN: 0882959077
Format: Paperback, 200pp
Pub. Date: April 1995
Publisher: Davidson, Harlan, Inc.