Bill Clinton says John Hope Franklin was an 'angry, happy man'
The late historian John Hope Franklin was "an angry, happy man" whose work as the head of a commission on race helped pull the country together, former President Bill Clinton said Thursday.
Clinton was one of a dozen speakers at a service at Duke Chapel to honor Franklin and his wife, Aurelia, who would have celebrated their 69th wedding anniversary Thursday.
The former president elicited laughter from the crowd when he related a story about Franklin handling a woman's racial insensitivity in 1995, the night before the historian was to receive the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.
A white woman approached Franklin at a gathering he was holding at a club in Washington, D.C., ordering him to get her coat from the check room. Franklin wrote in his autobiography, "Mirror to America," that he advised the woman to approach a club employee, all of whom wore uniforms.
"Now, we're laughing," Clinton said. "But the man was 80 years old. He was perhaps the most distinguished living American historian. He did write this in a funny way. And he wrote it in a way that you knew he didn't think it was funny. He was a genius at being a passionate rationalist. An angry, happy man. A happy, angry man."...
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Clinton was one of a dozen speakers at a service at Duke Chapel to honor Franklin and his wife, Aurelia, who would have celebrated their 69th wedding anniversary Thursday.
The former president elicited laughter from the crowd when he related a story about Franklin handling a woman's racial insensitivity in 1995, the night before the historian was to receive the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.
A white woman approached Franklin at a gathering he was holding at a club in Washington, D.C., ordering him to get her coat from the check room. Franklin wrote in his autobiography, "Mirror to America," that he advised the woman to approach a club employee, all of whom wore uniforms.
"Now, we're laughing," Clinton said. "But the man was 80 years old. He was perhaps the most distinguished living American historian. He did write this in a funny way. And he wrote it in a way that you knew he didn't think it was funny. He was a genius at being a passionate rationalist. An angry, happy man. A happy, angry man."...