Abstract
John Hope Franklin lived through America's defining twentieth century transformation, the dismantling of legally protected racial segregation. A renowned scholar, he has explored that formation in its myriad aspects, notably in his 3.5 million bestseller, Slavery to Freedom. And he experienced it first hand. Born in 1915, he was evicted from whites-only train cars confined to segregated schools, threatened - once with lynching - and consistently faced with racism's denigration of his humanity. And yet he managed to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard; become first black historian to assume a full professorship at a white institution; reshape the way African American history is understood and taught; and personally challenge the racism he chronicled. From his effort in 1934 to force President Franklin Roosevelt to respond to the Cordie Cheek lynching, to his 1997 appointment to head President Clinton's Initiative on Race, Franklin, with determination and dignity, has influenced the America's racial conscience. Franklin's life long fight for civil rights earned him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honour. Intimate, at times revelatory, Mirror to chronicles Franklin's life, this America's racial transformation, and the extent to which the problem of America remains the problem of colour.
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