Content area
Full Text
John Hope Franklin: Historian of the Century.
John Henrik Clarke
"Franklin is black America's senior scholar."
I have been acquainted with Dr. John Hope Franklin for more than 50 years. I have been able to use his book From Slavery to Freedom in all the courses I have taught in African-American history. This has led me to a consideration of his other books. In this field, he is considered to be black America's senior scholar.
John Henrik Clarke is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Africana and Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College in New York City.
Catherine Clinton
"Immense insight and erudition."
From Slavery to Freedom was a landmark book that reflected the great promise and now symbolizes the powerful delivery of John Hope Franklin: that he remains a scholar of immense insight and erudition, that he continues a researcher of indefatigable talent, that he not only has been a teacher who left his mark on his own generation but several future generations of American historians have profited by his example as well. Franklin has been a vital, dynamic voice for incorporation of the black experience into the great pageantry of the American past.
All of these stand as a remarkable testimony to Franklin's abilities, but many of us value his example as a colleague whose qualities recommend him as "a gentleman and a scholar," with no apologies to the fashions of the times which may scorn such appellation. He represents a standard to which younger talents aspire, exhibits an intense fascination with life -- from the grit and grime of the academy to the hothouses where his beloved orchids thrive -- and because of his spirit he has let a hundred ideas bloom in his wake, as his cultivation and creativity provide us with ongoing inspiration. We salute him as we remain in his debt.
Catherine Clinton is a fellow at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute of Harvard University. She has authored a half dozen books on the history of the Civil War period including her most recent work Tara Revisited: Women, War and the Plantation Legend.
David Brion Davis
"Help evaporate racist myths."
After many decades when American slavery was marginalized in most textbooks and other works on American history, John Hope...