John Hope Franklin: Chronicler of African American history

Communist Party USA

  John Hope Franklin, the author of academic and popular works of African American history over six decades, lived to be 94. More than any other U.S. scholar, he advanced the study and teaching of African American history in U.S. universities in the second half of the twentieth century. Franklin was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1915 in a remarkable area known as “Black Wall Street”: a neighborhood of successful business and professional African Americans, with the highest per capital income of African Americans in the U.S. at the time. His father, Buck, was a prominent civil rights attorney of African American and Native American background, and a defender of African American and Native American rights. Franklin was six years old when the Tulsa race massacre occurred. On May 31 and Jun 1, 1921, white mobs, including some who were “deputized” by police and local officials, burned and looted hundreds…

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John Hope Franklin: Chronicler of African American history