John Hope Franklin: What He Went Through
[Mary Frances Berry is a professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania. She served as chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from 1993 to 2004. Her most recent book is My Face Is Black Is True: Callie House and the Struggle for Ex-Slave Reparations (Alfred A. Knopf, 2005).]
I first met the distinguished historian John Hope Franklin in the 1960s when I was a graduate student at the University of Michigan. Over the years I have benefited from his counsel and friendship as I have made my way as a scholar and an activist. So I eagerly read his new memoir, Mirror to America: The Autobiography of John Hope Franklin, published this week by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. As the title suggests, Franklin is writing not just about his life, but about the enduring impact of racism on our society.
The book is a tale of an African-American professor in the academy over almost a century. Its necessarily impatient tone reflects Franklin's deep awareness that, at age 90, he is still constantly jerked back to the racial reality he confronted in the 1930s when he entered the profession: that "no matter which side of the bed I chose to wake up on, I would still be a black man in a racially divisive America."
The facts of Franklin's life and career include his birth in 1915 in the all-black town of Rentiesville, Okla., and his childhood in Tulsa, where the fallout from the 1921 race riots still resonated. His father and mother were educatedBuck Franklin was a lawyer, Mollie Franklin a teacherbut they were not well off, even compared to others in Tulsa's working-class black community. Franklin, an example of the Talented Tenth W.E.B. Du Bois had urged to pursue higher education as a path to leadership, worked his way through Fisk University and graduate school at Harvard University, then accepted professorships at the only colleges open to him, black colleges. Only after the civil-rights movement began was he offered an appointment, in 1956, as the first black department chairman at a predominantly white institution, Brooklyn College. From there, in the wake of a new emphasis on racial inclusion, he went on to an endowed chair at the University of Chicago and then at Duke University, and to awards and accolades in abundance as one of America's premier historians.
Although higher education and the nation necessarily long ago abandoned de jure segregation, reality in the academy today can sometimes be markedly similar to what Franklin endured. In 2005 still almost half of all black faculty members teach at historically black colleges and universities. In 1975 the number of black faculty members in predominantly white institutions reached what was then an all-time high of 4.4 percent. It still lingers around 5 percent. In fact the only growth at all in the participation of people of color has been among Asian-Americans, from 2.2 percent in 1975 to 6.2 percent today. Like black faculty members, Latinos have lagged: They were only 1.4 percent of the faculties in predominantly white institutions in 1975 and are around 3 percent today. The number of Native-American faculty members remains too minuscule to track.
As an undergraduate at Fisk, Franklin came under the influence of a white professor, Theodore S. Currier, who interested him in history, took out a loan to help him attend Harvard, and was perhaps the most important mentor in his life. Black colleges routinely had white faculty members long before any African-Americans were permitted to teach at most white institutions. (The faculties at most black colleges and universities remain more racially and ethnically diverse than those at predominantly white institutions.)
Franklin's experiences as a graduate student at Harvard were not much different from those of African-American graduate students at elite universities today. Some departments continue to be unable to recruit any African-American students at all, let alone a critical mass, and receive no criticism from deans and presidents about ignoring affirmative action. Those African-Americans who are admitted, no matter how well prepared, often describe their departments as unaccommodating and uncomfortable, just as Franklin found Harvard in the 1930s. Although he was an outstanding student, he was denied teaching assistantships that would bring him in contact with white undergraduates. He was supposed to be "reassured" by a professor who said he would pass him on his oral examinations because he, the teacher, was "from good abolitionist stock."...
Although he achieved great success, Franklin's "shock and awe" at the persistence of racism has continued to be reinforced throughout his career. In 1991 the distinguished historian C. Vann Woodward, a friend for more than 40 years, described Franklin's 1982 appointment as the James B. Duke professor of history at Duke as an effort to strengthen black studies. Franklin was grievously wounded. He had not taught African-American history for more than 25 years; his field was the history of the South....
Read entire article at Mary Frances Berry in the Chronicle of Higher Education
I first met the distinguished historian John Hope Franklin in the 1960s when I was a graduate student at the University of Michigan. Over the years I have benefited from his counsel and friendship as I have made my way as a scholar and an activist. So I eagerly read his new memoir, Mirror to America: The Autobiography of John Hope Franklin, published this week by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. As the title suggests, Franklin is writing not just about his life, but about the enduring impact of racism on our society.
The book is a tale of an African-American professor in the academy over almost a century. Its necessarily impatient tone reflects Franklin's deep awareness that, at age 90, he is still constantly jerked back to the racial reality he confronted in the 1930s when he entered the profession: that "no matter which side of the bed I chose to wake up on, I would still be a black man in a racially divisive America."
The facts of Franklin's life and career include his birth in 1915 in the all-black town of Rentiesville, Okla., and his childhood in Tulsa, where the fallout from the 1921 race riots still resonated. His father and mother were educatedBuck Franklin was a lawyer, Mollie Franklin a teacherbut they were not well off, even compared to others in Tulsa's working-class black community. Franklin, an example of the Talented Tenth W.E.B. Du Bois had urged to pursue higher education as a path to leadership, worked his way through Fisk University and graduate school at Harvard University, then accepted professorships at the only colleges open to him, black colleges. Only after the civil-rights movement began was he offered an appointment, in 1956, as the first black department chairman at a predominantly white institution, Brooklyn College. From there, in the wake of a new emphasis on racial inclusion, he went on to an endowed chair at the University of Chicago and then at Duke University, and to awards and accolades in abundance as one of America's premier historians.
Although higher education and the nation necessarily long ago abandoned de jure segregation, reality in the academy today can sometimes be markedly similar to what Franklin endured. In 2005 still almost half of all black faculty members teach at historically black colleges and universities. In 1975 the number of black faculty members in predominantly white institutions reached what was then an all-time high of 4.4 percent. It still lingers around 5 percent. In fact the only growth at all in the participation of people of color has been among Asian-Americans, from 2.2 percent in 1975 to 6.2 percent today. Like black faculty members, Latinos have lagged: They were only 1.4 percent of the faculties in predominantly white institutions in 1975 and are around 3 percent today. The number of Native-American faculty members remains too minuscule to track.
As an undergraduate at Fisk, Franklin came under the influence of a white professor, Theodore S. Currier, who interested him in history, took out a loan to help him attend Harvard, and was perhaps the most important mentor in his life. Black colleges routinely had white faculty members long before any African-Americans were permitted to teach at most white institutions. (The faculties at most black colleges and universities remain more racially and ethnically diverse than those at predominantly white institutions.)
Franklin's experiences as a graduate student at Harvard were not much different from those of African-American graduate students at elite universities today. Some departments continue to be unable to recruit any African-American students at all, let alone a critical mass, and receive no criticism from deans and presidents about ignoring affirmative action. Those African-Americans who are admitted, no matter how well prepared, often describe their departments as unaccommodating and uncomfortable, just as Franklin found Harvard in the 1930s. Although he was an outstanding student, he was denied teaching assistantships that would bring him in contact with white undergraduates. He was supposed to be "reassured" by a professor who said he would pass him on his oral examinations because he, the teacher, was "from good abolitionist stock."...
Although he achieved great success, Franklin's "shock and awe" at the persistence of racism has continued to be reinforced throughout his career. In 1991 the distinguished historian C. Vann Woodward, a friend for more than 40 years, described Franklin's 1982 appointment as the James B. Duke professor of history at Duke as an effort to strengthen black studies. Franklin was grievously wounded. He had not taught African-American history for more than 25 years; his field was the history of the South....