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"It is sad that a lot of people don’t even know that they have feelings about race. There are people who would be hurt if you told them they were racist or had racist attitudes, and yet some of them do. So often when I’m out anywhere, just tending to my own business, people who don’t know who I am will presume that I’m somebody that I’m not. I am regarded, for example, by so many people as a servant." John Hope Franklin, Humanities Interview, Spring 1997
Chronology:
- 1915 — Born January 2 in Rentiesville, Oklahoma; son of Buck Colbert (an attorney; also the first Negro judge to sit in chancery in Oklahoma district court) and Mollie (Parker) Franklin
- 1925 — Moves with family to Tulsa
- 1931 — Graduates from Tulsa’s Booker T. Washington High School as valedictorian and enters Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn.
- 1935 — Graduates from Fisk University Magna Cum Laude and enters Harvard University Graduate School
- 1936 — Receives master’s degree from Harvard University
- 1936-37 — History instructor at Fisk University
- 1938-43 — History instructor at St. Augustine’s College in Raleigh, NC.
- 1940 — Marries Aurelia E. Whittington
- 1941 — Receives doctorate from Harvard University
- 1943 — "The Free Negro in North Carolina, 1790-1860"
- 1943-47 — History instructor at North Carolina College (now North Carolina Central University)
- 1947 — "From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans"
- 1947-56 — History professor at Howard University in Washington D.C.
- 1950-51 — Guggenheim fellowship
- 1952 — His and Aurelia’s son, John Whittington Franklin, is born
- 1954 — As a member of the NAACP Legal and Educational Defense Team, conducts research for the case that became Brown vs. The Board of Education
- 1956 — "The Militant South"
- 1956-64 — History professor and department chairman at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York
- 1962 — "Reconstruction After the Civil War"
- 1962-63 — Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions at Cambridge University
- 1963 — "The Emancipation Proclamation"
- 1964-82 — History professor at the University of Chicago
- 1965 — Participates in the historic Freedom March from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., headed by Martin Luther King Jr.; "Land of the Free: A History of the United States" (with John W. Caughey and Ernest R. May)
- 1967 — President of the American Studies Association
- 1967-70 — Chairman of the history department at the University of Chicago – first black department head at the university
- 1969-82 — John Matthews Manly Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago
- 1970 — President of the Southern Historical Association; "Illustrated History of Black Americans" (with the editors of Time-Life Books)
- 1971 — "Land of the Free: A History of the United States"
- 1973-74 — Guggenheim fellowship
- 1973-76 — President of the United Chapters of Phi Beta Kappa
- 1975 — Jules F. Landry Award for "A Southern Odyssey: Travelers in the Antebellum North"
- 1976 — "Racial Equality in America"; "A Southern Odyssey: Travelers in the Antebellum North"
- 1978 — Inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame
- 1979 — President of the American Historical Association
- 1982-85 — James B. Duke Professor of History at Duke University in Durham, NC
- 1984 — Jefferson Medal, awarded by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education
- 1985 — "George Washington Williams: A Biography"
- 1985-present — James B. Duke Professor of History Emeritus at Duke University
- 1986 — Clarence L. Holte Literary Award for "George Washington Williams: A Biography"
- 1988 — Inducted into the Tulsa Hall of Fame
- 1989 — Cleanth Brooks Medal of Fellowship of Southern Writers; "Race and History: Selected Essays 1938-88"
- 1990 — Encyclopedia Britannica Gold Medal for the Dissemination of Knowledge
- 1993 — Charles Frankel Prize for contributions to the humanities; "The Color Line: Legacy for the Twenty-first Century"
- 1994 — Cosmos Club Award; Trumpet Award from Turner Broadcasting Corporation
- 1995 — Presidential Medal of Freedom; the first W.E.B. Du Bois Award from the Fisk University Alumni Association; Organization of American Historians’ Award for Outstanding Achievement; Alpha Phi Alpha Award of Merit; NAACP’s Spingarn Medal
- 1996 — Arrell Gibson Lifetime Achievement Award from the Oklahoma Center for the Book at the Oklahoma Department of Libraries; inducted into the Oklahoma Historians Hall of Fame
- 1997 — Appointed by President Clinton as chair of the Advisory Board of the President’s Initiative on Race; "My Life and an Era: The Autobiography of Buck Colbert Franklin," edited by John Hope Franklin and his son, John Whittington; Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award