John Hope Franklin
Our dear family friend John Hope Franklin died this week, at the admirable age of 94. He was an esteemed professor of black history, who earned credentials long before it seemed possible a man of his race could gain an education at all; born in 1915, he held MA and PhD degrees from Harvard University. Yet often when researching in the south, this scholar, in the 1940s through 1960s, could not stop at restaurants or even gas stations traveling between states.
John Hope was named after a Georgia educator of the same name born in the Civil War’s wake — the product of a white farmer and black mother who, although he could pass for white, opted for the black identity at a very difficult time in US racial history. He was the son of a Louisiana black attorney who moved to Oklahoma after being refused to practice law. His father was the son of a slave, his mother, a schoolteacher.
John Hope was remarkable in every way. For the books, he was the first black chair of a major history department, of the Oarganization of American Historians, the American Historical Society, and the Southern Historical Society. Yet his personal life was also a standout. He was devoted to Aurelia, his wife of 59 years — caring for her personally as she declined due to Alzheimers after they had shared so much. He was also widely photographed caring for his orchids, a passion my mother told me he developed during a residency in Hawaii and then brought back to North Carolina. The portrait here shows his devotion to both his beloved Aurelia and his flowers.
I grew up in the segregated south, and so much time has passed that I’m surprised few people understand the significance of Dr. Franklin’s career. It’s a great testament to how much our society is changed, that racial issues, though still volatile, have neutralized so much. I hope that for the rest of my life, our current political and nationalistic differences will go through a similar transition, and that there will be a “John Hope” for our generation.
History, we can confidently assert, is useful in the sense that art and music, poetry and flowers, religion and philosophy are useful. Without it — as with these — life would be poorer and meaner; without it we should be denied some of those intellectual and moral experiences which give meaning and richness to life. Surely it is no accident that the study of history has been the solace of many of the noblest minds of every generation.
Henry Steele Commager