John Hope Franklin: And the Year of Jubilee

Abstract

Debra Newman Ham [*] Leviticus 25:8-10 reads: And thou shalt number seven sabbaths of years unto thee, seven times seven years; and the space of the seven sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty and nine years. Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land. And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family. God intended the fiftieth year to be a very special time for the children of Israel. It was a time for healing, restitution, reparation, rest and atonement. It was a time when justice should shine forth in every segment of the land and every strata of society from the rich to the poor, the merchant to the slave. Congratulations to John Hope Franklin and Alfred Moss during this great year of jubilee for the celebrated text, From Slavery to Freedom. [1] This book has been the instrument of liberation for many who have read it. Was our history lost, stolen, or strayed? [2] We did not know. Too many of us did not realize how much of our possession we had lost before we opened up the pages of this book. In my personal world of ideas only the Bible has been more crucial to my personal development than From Slavery to Freedom. This is why. Growing up in York, Pennsylvania, I knew nothing about African-American history. If I had to be of African descent, I claimed a legacy only from Egypt rather than subsaharan Africa. I learned that slaves were docile beings who sang and danced. I suffered under the shame of their cowardice. Mercifully, a mentor, horrified to find that I was culturally white, took me to a homecoming weekend at Cheyney State [3] while I was in high school. I was instantly enchanted with a world of blackness unlike any I had known before. Cheyney did not offer the program I wanted so I opted for Howard University, a school I had not heard of before although I knew about Vassar, Swarthmore, and many others. As a student at Howard in the late sixties I heard interesting talk about slave revolts, black empowerment, and African beauty. Such talk rendered me jubilant. To my mother's dismay within two semesters I cut off my hair to wear short natural, and asked her to destroy or paint all the images of white folks in our home. With juicy bits of information from campus leaders, great speakers such as Stokely Carmichael and Ron Karenga who visited the campus, and books about Malcolm X and others, I became an instant expert in black history and culture. Like many who learn just a bit about their heritage and become instantaneous authorities, I joined the ranks of the rowdy militants who disrupted classes and disrespected teachers in order to pontificate about my new-found historical knowledge of the race. My main thesis was that no generation before ours had accomplished anything. Period. All of our forebears were handkerchief heads and Uncle Toms who did nothing. In contrast our generation was turning the world around with sit-ins, freedom rides, non-violent demonstrations of all sorts, and riots. While mouthing off in this vein for the umpteenth time in Olive Taylor's United States history class, that elegant sister forthrightly challenged my ignorance saying something like this: Miss Newman, you know nothing about black history. You may not speak in my class again until you read one of the black history surveys in the syllabus. Undaunted, I marched off to Founders Library, checked out a book on the list called From Slavery to Freedom by some author I had never heard of before -- John Hope Franklin. I returned to Truth Hall -- named for some lady I had never heard of before -- and spent the weekend getting to know history through the eyes of John Hope. …