"STANDING ON THE SHOULDERS OF A GIANT": PERSONAL REFLECTIONS ON A GREAT AMERICAN

Abstract

Unlike many others, I did not know Dr. John Hope Franklin as his student or as a university colleague. I did not use any of his books in my undergraduate work, since U.S. history was not my major field of study. At the doctoral level in the early 1970s, I majored in African This was a decade before Dr. Franklin published his 1985 biography of George Washington Williams, who brought worldwide attention to the plight of the Congolese in the late 19th century by condemning their brutal and inhuman treatment under the rule of King Leopold II of Belgium. Williams charged that slavery could still be found in Africa, even after its abolition throughout the world through the cooperation of the various European powers; and that workers were being exploited and denied access to the wealth they produced. This is a book that I certainly would have read in any course on European colonial rule in Africa, and used in my dissertation and published book on the European partition of Africa between 1880 and 1920. (1) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Dr. Franklin admitted in his autobiography that he came across Williams's two-volume book, History of the Negro Race, published in 1883, at the North Carolina College (NCC, today North Carolina Central University) library as he was writing From Slavery to Freedom and so began [his] forty-year involvement with George Washington Williams. After publication of his book on Williams, I told him, John, you published that book ten years after I could have used it in my dissertation; and he responded, Well, you can use it in your next book. Two of my doctoral minor fields were in United States history before and after 1865. By that time, Dr. Franklin had written his definitive textbook and four monographs. Obviously, I did not read his textbook at the doctoral level, and I do not recall reading any of the monographs written before 1970, but I became well aware of who he was after entering the historical profession. When I began my collegiate teaching career at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, one course that I taught was Afro-American history. I inherited the textbook from the previous instructor who had ordered it for this class; that book was Dr. Franklin and Dr. Alfred Moss's From Slavery to Freedom, 4th edition (1974). After I began working at North Carolina Central University (NCCU), my initial classes included The Black Experience before and after 1865, and I still occasionally teach these courses. I continued to use Drs. Franklin and Moss's textbook, which has gone through five editions; and I will use the 9th edition, coauthored with Dr. Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, my classmate at Howard University, if I teach either of those courses again. After completing his B.A. degree at Fisk University and M.A. degree at Harvard University, Dr. Franklin's first teaching position was at Fisk, where he taught during the 1936-1937 academic year. When he finished his doctoral course work and written examinations at Harvard, he moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, to research and write his dissertation. While there, he taught at Saint Augustine's College from 1939 until he quit in 1943 after he asked the white president Rev. Edgar H. Gould to request a deferment for him and Rev. Gould refused, telling Dr. Franklin in a very condescending manner, that a stint in the armed services would be good for him. (2) In 1942 Dr. Franklin contacted NCC founder Dr. James E. Shepard about the possibility of teaching at NCC and about his selective service status, since Dr. Franklin had a low draft number and by then had been reclassified 1-A by his draft board. In the 1940s Dr. Shepard was the only African American to serve on the draft appeal board in North Carolina. In this role he was in a position to excuse Dr. Franklin from service during World War II. Dr. Franklin, who believed passionately in nonviolence, would later write in his autobiography that African Americans were fighting not only tyranny abroad, but racism at home and that the United States was devoted to protecting the freedoms and rights of Europeans, but had no respect for me. …