50 years of exploring the past: the unfinished history of John Hope Franklin

Ebony, Feb, 1990 by Charles Whitaker

50 Years of Exploring the Past: The Unfinished History of John Hope Franklin

GUIDING two visitors through the custom-built greenhouse situated just outside the front door of his Durham, N.C., home, celebrated historian John Hope Franklin gently admonishes his guests to proceed with caution. "A misstep out here could do a great deal of damage," he warns.

What he is too polite to say is that anyone who topples one of his beloved orchid plants risks provoking a rare display of his ire; for Franklin is nearly as devoted to his orchids as he is to the study of history, the subject for which he has gained international acclaim. In fact, an unwitting observer who might happen upon him expertly tending the more than 1,000 potted orchid plants and clippings sprouting in his greenhouse, might mistake Franklin for a botanist instead of the "dean of Black historians," as he is often called.

But even if orchid growing is his love, history is still John Hope Franklin's abiding passion. Today, at age 75, with more than a half century of teaching and writing about history behind him, he remains as resolutely committed to the study as he was at the start of his career.

Though he is alleged to be in semi-retirement in Durham, where he has lived for nearly 10 years, he continues to lecture, teach and write at a pace that would exhaust many scholars 20 years younger. With his full head of silver hair and his trim 175 pounds etched proportionately on his 6-foot frame, Franklin actually looks 20 years younger as he strolls the campus of Duke University, where he teaches a course in constitutional history at the law school (he also is professor emeritus of history at Duke).

He has just finished his 11th book, a collection of 50 years of essays and articles, and is busy at work on books Nos. 12 (a treatise on runaway slaves) and 13 (the autobiography of his father, which he is editing). He has lectures scheduled through the end of the year, and is bogged down with commitments to aid a variety of historical societies and causes.

Retirement indeed.

Yet Franklin says he keeps up the hectic routine for one simple reason: He loves the work. "The total experience of dealing with historical subjects excites me," he says. "I love to teach. I love to write. And I love to lecture to the public on historical subjects. These things--individually and together--are exciting to me. They make my existence worthwhile."

Not that Franklin needs validation. His books and articles have earned the respect of his peers as well as a mass audience. His most noted work, From Slavery to Freedom; A History of Negro Americans, first published in 1947, has sold more than 2 million copies and is translated into French, German, Portugese and Japanese.

A proselytizing scholar, Franklin believes that "the history of Black people in America is American history." And he maintains that it should be integrated into the curriculum of every student, "not separated so that it isn't accorded the respect that it deserves from other scholars."

He winces at the categorization of himself as a historian who only writes about Blacks. "It's stereotyping," he says. "I'm Black, so people assume that I only write about Blacks. But two of my most notable efforts [The Militant South, 1800-1860 and A Southern Odyssey: Travelers in the Antebellum North] were about White people. But people will look at my books and say, 'He's made great contributions to Black history.'" While Franklin views his books as making great contributions to American history as a whole, "because the kind of history I write is not filiopietistic."

Franklin first discovered the joy of the study of history more than 55 years ago when he was a student at Fisk University in Nashville. He had entered college with the intention of becoming an attorney like his father, who also was the postmaster of Franklin's all-Black hometown, Rentiesville, Okla. But from the moment he took his first course in American history, he was hooked.

After earning a master's degree and doctorate at Harvard, he embarked on the writing and teaching career that would lead him to the faculties of some of the world's most prestigious universities, including Cambridge University in England and the University of Chicago, where he spent 16 years before his first "retirement" in 1980 (he is professor emeritus of history at Chicago also).

Yet he never had designs on fame. "I never really thought about any of this happening to me when I started out," he says. "I just started teaching, and thought that would be that."

One of the many people who thought differently was his wife of nearly 50 years, Aurelia. It is, perhaps, unfair to call history Franklin's first love. That honor is reserved for his wife whom he met while they were both students at Fisk. Almost from the start, she saw great things in store for the tall, studious young man who would become her husband. "There was just something special about him," she recalls. "He was just so warm and considerate. All his classmates thought so well of him."