One of America’s greatest historians, John Hope Franklin transformed the study of African American history, and engaged in a brand of scholarly activism that helped change the United States during the 20th century.
Franklin is best known for his landmark 1947 work, “From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans,” which redefined the study of the Black experience in America.
Born in 1915 in Oklahoma and named after an educator, Franklin graduated from Fisk University in 1936 and then Harvard University in 1941. He taught all over the world – including at North Carolina Central University (then called the North Carolina College for Negroes) – before coming to Duke in 1983. By then, his legacy was already assured.
In the fall of 1953, Franklin worked with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund that developed the arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education – the case that outlawed segregation in public schools. Franklin’s work, as he put it, showed how “Southerners defied, ignored and worked against every conception of equality laid down in the 14th Amendment and subsequent legislation.”
Franklin’s achievements, awards and service to civic, educational and historical organizations are countless. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Bill Clinton in 1995. He led the Fulbright Board of Foreign Scholars. He was historical consultant on Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-nominated film Amistad. At Duke, his influence continues through the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute.
Franklin and Aurelia, his wife of 59 years, grew orchids as a hobby and maintained a 17 x 24-foot greenhouse that contained over one hundred orchid specimens and hybrids in the backyard of his red-brick Williamsburg Colonial home in Durham. One such orchid – a long-stemmed cream-white flower with a crimson-red lip – was named the Phalaenopsis John Hope Franklin in his honor.
