The State of Things; John Hope Franklin

this is the state of things i'm frank station john hope franklin studied history as few scholars have is research reshaped our understanding of african american history and in a larger sense transform the way we study the pack with john hope franklin has done more than what about history at the age of ninety he's also lived he was raised in the segregated south salva follow jim crow the rise of african american studies and participated in some of the nation's most important discussions on race he tells his story in a new autobiography and explains why he's both optimistic and deeply concerned about the future of race relations john hope franklin is my guest today just ahead man

yeah from the american tobacco historic district this is the state of things i'm frank stay show when john hope franklin cheered president clinton's initiative on race in the mid nineties he started with what he calls the naivete that always accompanies optimism that he could be either naive or optimistic after documenting a long struggle for civil rights is remarkable and was no doubt the kind of optimism one of intellectual integrity and an open mind almost from the time he was born in oklahoma nineteen fifteen john hope franklin encounter racism as a six year old he was thrown off the train for setting a white male whites only coach that seniors father's law practice was burned to the ground during the infamous tulsa race riots when he was nineteen he was merely lynched in mississippi as a graduate student at harvard he was denied service in a restaurant when he was forty five

tonight home alone and on the same night he received the presidential medal of freedom in nineteen ninety five he was mistaken for a coat check attendant john hope franklin pursued while most remarkable academic careers of the twentieth century valedictorian at booker t washington high school attendance fisk university attended fisk university and her phd at harvard you about to become the four first full time professor at a predominantly white university when he joined the faculty at brooklyn college a nineteen fifty six before moving on to the university of chicago and finally duke university nineteen forty seven he published from slavery to freedom a history of the negro in america but quickly became the definitive history of african americans and sold nearly three and half million copies and he's written eighteen other books his latest an autobiography called mirror to america than this month's journal franklin turns ninety one years old is my guest this afternoon john hope franklin it's a pleasure thank you we welcome your calls as well eight seven seven nine six to nine eight six to if you want to join the

conversation with john hope franklin your accomplishments are well known to our listeners i'm sure and i'm very happy wrote this book because now i know where you got the energy and the perseverance your father a remarkable man who believe strongly in the promise of america yes so he did he was an extraordinarily optimistic portion and you always look on the bright side of things after experiencing what he did i couldn't understand why did but i certainly appreciate the fact that he was a perennial optimist who have faith and men can face in his neighbors face and pull people rather well one most remarkable moments in the book comes very early on when you describe your father's experience in a court room in shreveport louisiana where he dares to stand up to defend the client and is that where you describe the episode for us but it strikes me that afterward when he when he encountered this race is judge and i would like to tell the whole story that he was surprised

the furloughs price and low ardmore oklahoma at the time if clive their live a legal matter in shreveport louisiana and my father and his client traveled to shreveport and were present in the courtroom when the judge of a bailiff called the case so and so did so and so and my father stood and the judge set you back to what we're standing for and my father said well so and representing jones in this matter and the jewish and local ones in the us oppose said oh no no no nato represents anyone in my car now you'd get out and was also dismayed but not terribly

discourage was true he said that he was surprised that what i find it to be almost difficult to believe that a man who's is nineteen eleven you wouldn't have expected that kind of reaction know he wouldn't have the as i said he was a perennial optimist and he thought that having passed the bar and having seven to the practice of war which theoretically it protects the human being and preserve says legal rights of all people was surprised that too he was ejected from a court so unceremoniously i am i always i was always amazing is that it was a youngster teenager i was always amazed that my father had so much faith in people when he tells you that story where i had assumed he came home and told are you heard shortly thereafter it is there any sense

of bitterness and a sense of anger when he's telling the story no there's not of course i was not born when the incident occurred but it was repeated gunfire and the fireman and the answer is like that as well as audiences we're reviewed in the haitian he's told lets people almost those without the slightest trace of bitterness anger and forty two though say well it's always emulated him but i dated nineteen forties control of his his optimism was an idea about his faith in in the progress of the human species that something i didn't have as much a given and i don't and so it felt to those of this terrible for young film let me do not to have not always look on the bright side

well your mother to show a great deal of strength and perseverance there was the time of day you ended up thrown off the train because of her refusal to go to the end of the negro coach this she would not go for some prisoners for the train was moving and she said this through a small i cannot risk injury them but trying to move the market is moving and she sent out these and i'll stop the train she thought he stopped the train to permit us to move to the small neat hat negro coach and have baggage which and we got up and play drew move to the knicks coach and it goes off during that must be a moment when it was that the first moment that you encountered it as that broad age this is this is i didn't do anything but burst into stitches

all out in the woods trying to find our way through the thickets and jungles of jungle it with dirt and irish sub again to grab mama's the us said the bonus offer during his overt and she read comment only that i was wasting my energy and my term limited that she said don't cry about that or use that energy that through a crime and use that to prove to his guns in a lot of drama trying to find yourself at moments like that sort of making up your mind making a plan of one sort or another i found myself remembering her magician for instruction and i found myself they determined not to let the debt not going to get the best of me and i would've been determined to prove that i was just as in one of the trailers gives anyone in that school was given

one anywhere john hope franklin is my guess this hour in the state of things his autobiography mirror to america recently published eight seven seven ein six to nineteen sixty eight is the recall during dinner conversation so you did eventually make it through school you go to fisk university in nineteen thirty one to tell us about about her skin it well this was a very rapidly growing intellectual center for the education of well known african americans that everyone mullah omar father had gone to rock the reviewers that would reach a baptist college in that tone and they met there and but the baptists the revolution going on hard times it wasn't going well and was founded to close they wanted me to go back in that part of the country for my education but they knew that that wasn't roger

williams by the time and my brother had gone a first moon lit this sadness amid the first there was never any question about if i should go to college just like the fact that we were without resources so much of an attack on it was not a question of if we should go to college and was suppression where we where we would go and they would rain they worked their fingers to the bone to load go to almost any length to make certain that we did go to college but he make that decision where there were there big debates about which schools so there wasn't there might've been a debate about where my brother should go away my sister should go by and brother went through first arose the muscles northwest reinstated west within a state simon of all my brother and a gun to festivals they're successful as a cousin to go to popular very powerful and after

that i want to emulate him and i went to drink graham and they thought that was then you went to fisk and it was there were you met they in fact it was a white history professor that may have had a very strong influence on your decision to come to memphis just thought he had every influence on my decision to become a historian and was sent us carrier it wasn't silva greater harvard university undergraduate years to maine and you got a massive <unk> the street from harvard and they publish in the game popular influential and was hired by the president first to come down in the hold of the history department at the student at fisk university and so those young white professor just twelve years old and i was i was having the history at this university when i went there find out what it was about his

classes that turn judy history when our conversation with john hope franklin continues on the state of things were taking your calls at eight seven seven nine six to ninety six to be listening to the state of things from north carolina public radio broadcast service of the university of north carolina oh no it has been and

i this is the state of things broadcasting from american tobacco historic district i'm frank stay show my guest today is john hope franklin in his new autobiography mirror to america it recounts his life as a scholar author husband and father john hope franklin began his academic career with a book titled the free negro in north carolina he would later returned to north carolina as a professor at duke university his whipping out eight seven seven ein sixty nine eight six two is the number to call if you want to join the conversation we talking about your mentor theater crowd career that fisk university what was it about the way he taught history through oppression in high school this was utah by the coach for lovers so it's a program are living and teaching and

christmas tree in and i have a view of history which was spurred him to first it's going to take some courses and conductor and to personalize issue in which there were so much as of the star rank a man take eric a minute program and he began the lecture and said that this is the kind of history have been this into high school and so i picked up and the analysts that he was the man first of animated and sixty euro it was very important to you make things move the mood and soulful passing up and down into class and m and bringing to life those periods in history which i thought were dating and gone forever he brought them back where they really about some royal family in england about some problem some religious conflict in spain the brawl as a love in a way that i had never heard for

another woman with a kings and queens are a vote on they're people were good working class people of the will of all may be making up the society to say and i said this is something i didn't know is true religious and when did you get the first inkling of the story that was being told the history of african americans in this country have been as tall and are told and needed to be my god that i suppose it was a nine sophomore modern your senior year in arizona go into it flow while visitors are as a white man from the lehman had no real firsthand knowledge of african american history and he encouraged me to study it and particularly for my honors ceases when i was a senior paper on free negroes in the antebellum south

and they gave me an optimum are not meant to confront the problem of writing about african americans but also game of experience and i've needed so it would mean so in later on to go into a lot of as a good to notice this historical society and work in primary documents even when i was fifteen sixteen years and that game in experience and an exhilarating challenge that i didn't overcome barriers well the challenge is just getting at the stacks i mean there were actually segregate when you talk about going into the state archives in north carolina segregated stacks yes that was not true and that was what was all the more confusing it was not true in tennessee and i could go in the sec in tennessee did not go into the stacks in north carolina i cannot go and i cannot even go to the archives in louisiana says it was also confusion about where but african american could go and what he could do

and this showed the inconsistency and contradiction and be a decision on the bio i said you know what to do they did one thing and i've got nothing to lose and loving in tennessee and it's certainly convinced me that there was some flimsy excuses being offered eight seven seven nine six to nine eight six to fuel to join the conversation with john hope franklin there was a life my poor no avail good morning i'm pretty typical michael first of all love the show or the network as dr franklin year so that your mind i gather the cover the un people like you that i was inspired to study history and look at history from a point of view rather than just look around excitement and i hear in your voice out when speaking about historical matters my question is to you as a black man in america how they feel about

the so called black history month i took the position that even without that wasn't the outcry was that was founded on black history month in a dress exactly the position then as i do now that african american history is so important it can be confined to a month that did all to be integrated into the oh complete story of the history of this country and until it is done we we don't have the complete history of the united states so that the emphasis on and one month is one that distresses me because it seems to imply that damn well we'll listen for a minute and we use routine so i am i say

that the black issue month on the every month of the year and i tend to decline to speak during the month the fed were because i don't want to think that i have succumbed to the idea that we can dispose of black history one month and then get back to the real history the real history is every month and the real history is the total history not merely a white people but a black people as well and at the time that you recognize these inconsistencies in the hypocrisy as you say and the difficulty of what we're having is about how to manage this this thing called segregation did you at that moment think that scholarship that that historical research was going to be part of the answer or you do it for one moment think oh no i have to go in another direction and the activism some things no i mean i thought that was for important that gives scholarships to address the question wasn't back on activism orioles but a scholarship is a form of activism as a form of correction

awful of the story as it has been told for all these decades and centuries so that will extend that though you didn't you fellas are different way up to revise the story of human tissue that you yourself become an activist and of course the most important work i would say in that regard would be your work from from slavery to freedom which she upended many the notions about reconstruction in race relations so tell us a little bit about what you thought was going to happen and how you thought that book might be received they just started so i don't know that i've been much thinking about how it should be received of his ear to the ground for a minute knoll and appreciate and understand the fact that something else was going on that was difficult to discern

one can predict what the impact this book would have had a good of it when i was asked to write from similar freedom by alpha company sf that the publishers i don't think they i knew that there was anything different except that at the end the war to know that people want to know something about what blacks had done what blacks had been and how it functioned during war and so forth and the publishers were very strong and their belief that this book would at least the overall some interest and attract some attention and perhaps sell some copies which they were imprisoned and they persuaded me to write this book i was not have an interest in and then in addressing this problem thought maybe someday i would but i had no additional in nineteen forty five when they approached and um i don't thank you but no thank you were prior to remake

oppressing and said look this book week we know also we will lose and so obama persuaded me by promising is they would stand behind me and that they would give me manson roles and so forth that was a big hit to drop things without which our was doing and to write this book which i did in nineteen forty six and then he came out the mixture and forty seven so there's a publisher asking an african american scholar wrote about african american history but you resisted this as you say an event in your undergraduate or at what you're working on her doctorate at harvard university where you wanted to write about about edward bellamy of all votes in your your professors suggest you might take another topic no and boehner and florida what made you what drew your interest ever done his utopia social critic utopia novelist us a revision the show is set in the water to do something about the

injustices in society and that to stop this very germane to what i was thinking about and trying to do and so i was attracted to obama and a particular act and that his wife had been that since eighty eight am et ms belman and she opened all the materials to me and let me and those searches oh i was sick mature and seizing the researcher i was just another graduate i'm an adjusted registered and maybe about twenty three or twenty four years old and that's you to be as though i were real pro and i deeply appreciated that she went so far as to say that she was going to be a chance to write about ever of belmont if it was not produced by the prisoner was going to do that who have already contracted there are the dead to succeed in complaining about it and i was not but it did give me a sense of

confidence in myself a sense of confidence in the ability to use history as a force in creating new attitudes toward social have you seen evidence wherever they want revisions in history and the scholarship that actually it had an impact on on social progress yes i have not known as much as i would like to see but their i i i saw it only way in which i was privileged to participate and in the adjudication of cases for example in the case of lima johnson as he recently took a nineteen forty eight i used the experience of the lack of experience of the interest of protecting and promoting this drill a broad scale an intimidating african american so a

program in history there i saw the kind of discrimination that would result in in all people are not merely blacks all people not knowing as much about this transition though and so when thurgood marshall at ask me to serve as an expert witness in that case in nineteen forty eight and lamb unjustly as you're sympathetic i was able to prove that in not having the opportunity to study at the mystic lamb and johnson was deprived of his rights not known as a store but as a human being as an african american who knew the problems rights to participate in the in advancing his own knowledge to say nothing of allowance and he might decide to others he was a rabbi the amal him interested in that in the state of kentucky and you also write about if the complete history has to be told and then the entire story of the african american experience is to be told is also about

factionalism and about divisions and prejudice within the race beginning and read a spill over in the black community that your father moved in to serve in oklahoma and you have a couple of experiences yourself when you get to harvard and you meet with was at the end of la cp members there who didn't want a citizen yes you see what the one i discovered the violin didn't know it is at the pages those obama's it's not as dana white people have a monopoly on that that blacks have their prejudices to my mother and father were mistakenly was that it was thought that they were baptist ago as he did the day both had been a baptist college when they came to read as though they vow that place was dominated by baptists and when they went to a methodist joseph or so that they were here in the bill that was the beginning of lovin for them

those people did not think that they should've definitively your father was a democrat do this and i help us resident helper go into so that though you know there are all of these things and surely i learned about my about the part of a bunch of texas's using his objective is the intellectual strength too dull all sides have to reject the notion that any one group of monopoly on truth or wherever else we're surprised when you went to san agustin college that the president there or edgar goldie you write about this in your book about the stern warning he gave you when you came there with your phd something you felt you should be proud lattin have muppets in my daughter where i completed when i was there and i was the first person on the fight robert alter phd degree and earn the only

way that i was a complete word for pretty tall man and unsung congratulating me he even a braided me gave me a lecture about how i should act and what i should do and what my attitude should be and that's a strange i was a person of some thoughts of some humor and some ice and i didn't think i needed to be lectured along those lines and yet he fell for that good and earn i was i was so disappointed that day that he felt that i did not know about places in the canoe they wear head struggling were so hard and got to build it up and that is a man who tells me that he's got the idea that you have any faith in even have a comfort zone and what i should do and how i should acknowledge that i am and i came and left with some degree of sadness experience eight

seven seven nine six to nine eight six do if you want to join our conversation michael is on the line from raleigh hello michael good afternoon and gentleman sour rock entourage and she'd gone through a couple decades question i think you have both the reverse racism the word is african american i have a trouble in that you know i think that i'm your senate have come from south african good for an african city of american bought an awkward to note why they're about the only in the bulbs the fashion it's like your valve or drumming the words of afro americans down most black

americans throw in order to in order to beat your chest your favorites that your chicken were barred that what i think these week we were american the second you know what happened quickly what really happened a quarter of africa less so many generations removed from our air force truth of foreign tourists near the family than the country the fourth most look upon us mr michael that's a good question let's get a response thank you michael malone we don't know what the emotion is about what a black is those flows from a moment that the designation of some kind of some some statement before you for america and this is this is a census position

but as we were you know in the center says african or as black as african american whatever it's not nobody's town of ramadan so that anyone i don't care what you call me and i'm ok well i don't get when i'm called i know i am i know what i am and to deny that have african ancestry is to them as a truth now i can appreciate that if you want to be an american you could go out in computer chess and insist downtown there that you are you are an american and you might be you buy furniture it's a hyphenated american and sometimes i don't know where you want to go to african american or a black american or whatever the same region down the synthesis something besides bringing america would talk more about this and

the sense of identity where it comes from and how it evolves is my conversation with john hope franklin professor emeritus at duke university and author of mirror to america continues on the state of things they can cause of eight seven seven ein sixty nine eight six to stay with this is by tj thank you

it's funny this is the day the things i'm frank stay show we're talking this hour with historian john hope franklin in addition to a long list of accomplishments he was presented with the nineteen ninety five congressional medal of freedom and we take your calls about seven seven nine six to nine eight six to a trailblazer in many ways including dr

first african american professor at a white university brooklyn college of that well it's the first time since the presidential medal of freedom we take a historian to correct that are just anybody listening carefully and their advice was at this quite i could say i was the first african american professors don't have tenure in the way american poets ago an american coach addresses the first ten percent of wicker chair of her department so global so when i went to howard university i'm at forty seven that was regarded as the as the last stage is the last point of that and after america started to achieve there's nowhere else to go for you you do have it and i was invited to be a

full professor there when i was thirty two years old and there was some malaysian except the last two and that i've hesitated but not too long because i thought maybe i would get this sense again and i better go oh but so are there they all were vastly distinguished professes at howard university people who could eclipse mania scholars and many so called white universes with they couldn't go a living living with there that was the end of it and it was it did make far on the one hand a very fine intellectual climate so are right there and are going to have access to my colleagues my friends but that was not healthy in the sense that they knew that that the curtain would come down before and they couldn't go anywhere and that was not healthy you always want to look up and see that you can gain some things yet and so i

yeah i was persuaded that i wouldn't go from where from howard but i was driven by some desire that i wanted to be as good as anyone else and recognized as good that's my mother's admonition to be within six years all sides scrambling around and publish in going all the meetings and then pushing myself then sometimes where i was more than that that i just i just had to do it i traveled abroad i want to conquer that with international congresses i was helping in german it does re write the textbooks after hitler's fantasy that sort of thing and i did come to the attention of some people who were in a particular position to two to promote my name at brooklyn college and i've read in june to get from

one of them in rome in nineteen fifty five and they needed a chair and they said well why not and they went back in reported that an investor department and the board of higher education in the city of newark that i should be nominated for the position of chairman of the prime minister and professor of history there were fifty two white people in an apartment at the time and i was the only black person there are african american whatever this gentleman nuanced ago mean you talking earlier and so i am i became a professor and chairman of the department eight seven seven nine sixty nine eight six two is the number to call to run a join our conversation and talk with john hope franklin his autobiography mirror to america daniels on the line from greensboro i daniel i very much enjoyed the most i guess as a historian who have gotten the little higher education and throughout

your life and gone to study the history of average american achievement and higher education throughout the history of the country and for you as a young house tonight right now i'm and someone who'd getting rave throughout the work world become a young professional um what the youth the thing that people like myself can do in order to support and a younger generation of african americans that with the coming through in primaries who are very cool today in order to kind of build build a foundation and build the next generation of black achievers americans that's a very big question it's a question which should be doubles mean all the time what do you do other winters the young people who are going to be in following our steps i would say forcible it is not possible for you

to hold up high enough a stand that a scholarship to a station and here and here but i mean that tell him that first of all they must be uncompromising careful scholars of integrity and the rejuvenation of discipline it takes a lot to take such it takes a lot to do what you want to do in this life i work three jobs allows ago there wouldn't want that they have a good idea but i did i work two jobs allows of harvard and july one fellowships which were read my teaching my mind working all one must say i'll be afraid of sacrificing struggling working on an end and setting before himself or herself the highest standards of scholarship that there are and then if one

does that no one can be certain that the power of his intellect and of his own intellect the power of his or her discipline will lend them somewhere beyond where they are stick a look though at this a deeper look at this question of scholarship you certainly came up at a time when scholarship at its heart we understood what scholarship was it was trusted and everybody knew that it led to a conclusion now there are deep questions in there was a review of one of your books that said in an era when many scholars are questioning whether it's possible to identify any foundation as for truth or scholarly objectivity john hope franklin offers a compelling case for continuing to struggle toward these goals what is that case have we come to a point where there are so many conflicting the bodies of scholarship now that everybody's the question and i think we have come to that point and if we have all of that says that the promise that i love the love of seeing and debating the group that we

should take here i am i'm always willing to do to come two to accept the challenge that this is not the way but some other way is the way and i would argue that my way whatever it is when a whale a truce is so it is an acceptable way and one can move with great these as sharon's up the ladder across a field where we were that goes one can do that if anyone has these colonies of of commitment and of study and out of determination and now of lower when that willingness to sacrifice whatever it is and i go i like i can see but there are those who feel that there are there are there divisions within this fuel scholarship that to take one in one direction take some wilson of the direction and understand me as much as those people are

going in directions you oh don't feel committed to going to an interaction i think that what's important is that we should have the discipline and have a commitment and have a desire and have the confidence in ourselves that we can do what needs to be done is the scholarship compromised in any way when it becomes politicized in thinking about people like cornell west michael eric dyson who have been criticized time to time of politicizing the scholarship and then of course there are others from other areas but i'm speaking of an african american says so is the danger that one will be criticized love for politicizing scholarship when they get out as an activist role and activists feel i had i won't say where the dice in our are yellows are politicizing it to a point of being ineffectual

they move really move immigration that i don't choose to move in and not saying that they are rolling the sense that i have stressed to my own procedures and found satisfactory to me but this age is unsatisfactory to give a welcome to be critical of me and they welcomed to go their own way iphone though that if people who are critical of the dice is and the others and love me are people who i'm not committed to doing anything very significant a successful so that the it that takes it takes many more or as the row a boat to safety and to if to victory and i have no problem with the

others as long as they are seeking to reuse the level of intellectual and scholarly endeavour as long as they are willing and a bit anxious to improve the lot of mankind they can go they can do and that we really want to serve in one of the pro active projects you took on was to chair of president clinton's initiative on race it was to be a national discussion about race in america this is we said at the opening of the show you began with a kind of optimism how did that end up for you well it is a wiser man so awful to most widely misunderstood prison term for whatever he upon us to do did not upon us to solve a race problem in the united states and many people didn't think that that's what we were going to do and therefore they felt that they were a faded from the outset we failed to solve a race problem to be sure but as though we were and what we

was about to do we were asked to start and conduct and survive as a wagon spread conversation on race and i think we didn't act not only to rejoin their jo a river the most vividly we created for several hundred institutions organisations which terror on these dialogues these conversations about race and we made recommendations to the president and various other groups of what they should do it too through to move us a few notches on toward the solution of the problems which we face and early i would do like to observe that there are some of these institutions are weak spots and helped to create the ceiling justice despite the fact that there has been no mention of this sort of thing

and the last five years but some of the things we started still going on knowing and i'm proud that they are and that to the extent that they are they are contributing to or the resolutions own problems which we face in their briefs another called michael is on the line and in hendersonville michael that's all areas where question now is no prank or for you to the state of black america today or poorly that they are young black america what we do know our directional or quite got out your sense iodine tablets to some it's in the last chapter my book sokol at the morgue i did answer your question is i don't know but i would say that so far as as creating a up climate

and climate i tried more hospitable to the acceptance of people on the basis of their talents and their abilities that climate has improved over even question sometimes we don't recognize the fact that we don't even know that isn't true but i think it has it has improved and it's simply not improved enough i would say a fervor that if we could put a little more effort into it and if we could at the same time perhaps a more modest live and now is the fact that that discipline and hard work and and conscientious commitment to the improvement of conditions if we are active just simply undertake

those things i think we move toward a resolution to some of these problems were what form does that effort take it takes soon it takes goodwill it takes some others say it takes some some commitment to opt back in energetic and you also offering commitment to go to improving our souls personally i just want to stop you there for a moment because you talked about the improvement that you've seen you write the book at the beginning with the in the nineteen eighties reagan's new beginning and then an increase to tolerance for intolerance in this country and you did so do you think things have improved somewhat since then says those days is it the kind of thing that engine blows this isn't frozen is sure

whether that has improved totally worth more proven then right direction this is an early questions i was a percentage than that we eat we have now on the table a chance to move forward very effectively and that chance must be understood scene by people who are the least committed to making some improvement and if they are committed and i think that there's a chance of fairly good that we can do to john hope franklin thank you very much and john hope franklin's autobiography mirror to america a subject of our program today the state of things you can drop us an email address at a w and c got a largely program's produced by corporate sell megan davies john blind robin copley and dave dewitt

and susan davis this is north carolina public radio broadcast service of the university of north carolina chapel hill and frank station