Education and Scholarship

John Hope Franklin, Scholar of African-American History, Is Dead at 94

The foundation celebrates the life of John Hope Franklin, noted scholar and historian whose seminal work and thinking helped advance the civil rights movement. With foundation support, Franklin published a book on slavery in America. The foundation also helped to establish a senior fellowship at the National Humanities Center in honor of Franklin's six decades of scholarship and activism.

Published in The New York Times: March 25, 2009
By Andrew L. Yarrow

John Hope Franklin, a prolific scholar of African-American history who profoundly influenced thinking about slavery and Reconstruction while helping to further the civil rights struggle, died Wednesday in Durham, N.C. He was 94.

A spokeswoman for Duke University, where Dr. Franklin taught, said he died of congestive heart failure at the university’s hospital.

During a career of scholarship, teaching and advocacy that spanned more than 70 years, Dr. Franklin was deeply involved in the painful debates that helped reshape America’s racial identity, working with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., W. E. B. Du Bois, Thurgood Marshall and other major civil rights figures of the 20th century.

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