John Hope Franklin was an American historian, professor, scholar, writer, and social activist. Franklin’s work on the history of Black and African American people in North Carolina established much of what is known and used in historical research of the state today. Franklin was also immersed in the national Civil Rights Movement and provided expert testimony in many important legal actions of the time, including Brown v. Board of Education. Franklin was also involved in a variety of civic and professional organizations during his lifetime.
Franklin was born in Rentiesville, Oklahoma on January 2, 1915. His parents, Buck Colbert Franklin and Mollie Parker Franklin, named him after John Hope, the first African American president of Atlanta University, with whom his parents studied. His parents had four children: Mozella, Buck Colbert Jr., Anne, and John, the youngest. Buck Franklin Sr. was a civil rights attorney who was setting up a law practice and home for the family in Tulsa when the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 of 1921 occurred. The family’s home and his legal practice were destroyed, and despite Franklin Sr.’s efforts, the family was not compensated for their losses. After four years of Franklin Sr.’s legal work representing victims of the Tulsa Race Massacre, the family was able to settle together in Tulsa in 1925. The family’s home and his legal practice were destroyed, and despite Franklin Sr.’s efforts, the family was not compensated for their losses. After four years of Franklin Sr.’s legal work representing victims of the Tulsa Race Massacre, the family was able to settle together in Tulsa in 1925.
John Hope Franklin graduated from Booker T. Washington High School, a segregated school in Tulsa. He went on to study at Fisk University and graduated Magna Cum Laude. With the financial support of his advisor at Fisk University, Ted Currier, Franklin attended Harvard University and graduated with a Master’s Degree (1936) and a Doctorate Degree (1941) in History.
On June 11, 1940, Franklin married Aurelia Whittington in Aurelia’s hometown of Goldsboro, North Carolina.
Franklin’s doctoral dissertation focused on the experiences of African American people in North Carolina. Franklin conducted his research at the North Carolina State Archives in Raleigh, NC where he was required to use a segregated space adjacent to the “whites only” section of the reading room. According to Franklin, he worked with Charles Crittenden, head of the North Carolina Department of Archives and History, for special accommodations to use the facilities as they were segregated. For a period, Franklin was required to locate the materials he needed in the archive himself. It was during his dissertational research that Franklin was appointed as a professor at Saint Augustine’s University . He taught there from 1939 until 1943.
Franklin published his first book, The Free Negro in North Carolina, 1790-1860, in 1943. This work helped establish Black and African American studies as an organized historical discipline. Later that same year, Franklin became a Professor of History at North Carolina College for Negroes (now known as North Carolina Central University).
Franklin moved to Washington D.C. in 1947 where he served as a Professor of History at Howard University. He held this position until 1956. While at Howard, Franklin published one of his most comprehensive works, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans (1947).
Because of his expertise in African American history, Franklin was sought as an expert for legal actions involving race in the United States. In 1949, Thurgood Marshall contacted Franklin for assistance on a case he was leading with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Legal Defense Fund (NAACP LDF). The NAACP LDF filed suit against the University of Kentucky (UK) for racial discrimination against a Black student, Lyman Johnson. The legal suit claimed that Kentucky State College for Negroes did not offer a graduate program in History that was comparable to UK’s program. Because of this discrepancy, the NAACP LDF asserted that UK had violated the “separate but equal” doctrine in refusing to admit Johnson. The NAACAP lawyers wanted Franklin to serve as an expert witness, as Franklin had insight into both history and graduate history programs. While preparing to serve as a witness in Johnson v. Board of Trustees of University of Kentucky, Franklin reviewed official school records and had conversations with faculty that proved the NAACP’s allegations of racial inequity. The U.S. District Court found that the program available to African American students was inferior to the program available to white students at the University of Kentucky, and ruled that the University of Kentucky must admit Johnson as a student. Johnson’s admission to the university desegregated the institution. Almost fifty years later, in 1998, UK issued Franklin an honorary doctorate, citing his work on the Johnson case.
Franklin also assisted the NAACP LDF team with the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case. Thurgood Marshall wrote to Franklin personally and thanked him with a $150 check for “helping [Marshall’s legal team] to prepare the reply brief” for the cases.
From 1956 until 1964, Franklin served as Chair of the Department of History at Brooklyn College. During this time, Franklin also traveled to many different institutions to teach. They included Harvard University, the University of Wisconsin, Cornell University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Hawaii, as well as Cambridge University in England.
While serving as a visiting professor at the University of Hawaii, Franklin became interested in orchids and began caring for orchids as a hobby. Many of his homes – including those in Brooklyn, Durham, and Chicago -- included greenhouses where he cared for orchids and other plants. In 1976, John T. Wilson, president of the University of Chicago, named an orchid hybrid after Franklin. It is known as the Phalaenopsis John Hope Franklin. Another orchid was named after Aurelia Franklin when she died in 1999.
Franklin was appointed to the Fullbright Board of Foreign Scholars in 1962 and served until 1969, serving as the board’s chair for three years.
In 1964, Franklin was appointed Professor of History at the University of Chicago and in 1969 was named the John Matthews Manly Distinguished Service Professor. He remained at the University of Chicago until 1982 and served as the chair of the Department of History from 1967 until 1970. It was also during his time at the University of Chicago that Franklin participated in the 1965 Selma to Montgomery March, marching alongside other historians and academics.
Franklin also served as president for many different civic and professional institutions during the 1970s. These included Phi Beta Kappa Academic Honor Society (elected 1953, serving president 1973-76), the Organization of American Historians (1975), the American Historical Association (1979), and the Southern Historical Association.
In 1976, Franklin was selected to deliver the Jefferson Lectures for the National Endowment for the Humanities, “the highest honor the federal government confers for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities.” Franklin delivered his lectures in Washington, D.C., Chicago, and San Francisco. Shortly after, President Jimmy Carter appointed Franklin to the United States delegation of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) general conference held in Belgrade, Serbia in 1980.
In 1980, Franklin and his family returned to North Carolina where he was appointed as a Professor of History at Duke University. At Duke, he served with distinction as the James B. Duke Professor, a title given to faculty with a record of extraordinary achievement. Franklin also served as a Professor of Legal History at Duke University Law School from 1985 to 1992. After retirement, he served as a Professor Emeritus until 2009.
In 1984, Franklin was inducted into the Afro-American Hall of Fame. A year later, Franklin helped establish and serve on the board of the Durham Literacy Center, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to provide instruction and tutoring to adults in the community.
Franklin received many honors and awards in his life for research and dedication to African American history and culture. He received over 100 honorary degrees, including his first from Morgan State College in 1960 and his last from Wesleyan University in 2006. On September 29, 1995, President Clinton awarded Franklin the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Franklin was appointed to the Advisory Board of the President's Initiative on Race, serving from 1997-1998. Franklin has also been placed into the NC Literary Hall of Fame, the Oklahoma Hall of Fame, and the Tulsa Hall of Fame. Awards Franklin received during his life include: the Bruce Catton Prize for Lifetime Achievement (1994), the Chicago History Museum "Making History Award" (1995), the Fisk Alumni Association W.E.B. Dubois Award (1995), the Spingarn Medal by the NAACP (1995, their highest honor), the Arrell Gibson Lifetime Achievement Award (1996), and the Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award (1997).
In 1996, the state of North Carolina named Franklin Historian of the Century. His home state of Oklahoma declared March 12, 1999, John Hope Franklin Day.
In 2005, Franklin published his final book, a memoir titled Mirror to America: The Autobiography of John Hope Franklin.
On March 25, 2009, Franklin died at Duke University Medical Center at the age of ninety-four. President Barack Obama issued a statement honoring Franklin’s life saying, "Because of the life John Hope Franklin lived, the public service he rendered, and the scholarship that was the mark of his distinguished career, we all have a richer understanding of who we are as Americans and our journey as a people.” North Carolina Governor Beverly Perdue echoed these sentiments in her statement on Franklin’s life. “He was a tremendous leader, historian, and friend to North Carolina and the nation…his work to advance understanding of African-American contributions was unmatched by any other….”
John Hope Franklin and his wife, Aurelia, had one child. Their son, John Whittington Franklin, was born on August 24, 1952. Later in life, John Hope Franklin and his son co-edited My Life and an Era: The Autobiography of Buck Colbert Franklin, published in 1997.
John Hope Franklin is memorialized by many monuments, buildings, historical markers, and awards. Duke University alone has three institutions named for John Hope Franklin: the John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture, the John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary and International Studies, and the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute.
Organizations including the American Studies Association, the Southern Historical Association, Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies, the Phi Beta Kappa Society, and Rutgers School of Graduate Studies have awards and honors named for Franklin.
The John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park in Tulsa, OK was completed in 2010. The park is owned by the City of Tulsa and managed by the John Hope Franklin Center for Reconciliation.
A portion of Interstate 85 from Cole Mill Road to the U.S. 70 Bypass in NC was named the Dr. John H. Franklin Highway in 2017.
In 2022, the Museum of Durham History erected a John Hope Franklin Historical Marker. The marker is located in a garden overlooking Durham Central Park on Roney Street.
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