Race in America: Looking Back, Looking Forward
1847th Stated Meeting - Cambridge
John Hope Franklin (Duke University)
With an introduction by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (Harvard University)
May 9, 2001
The Academy concluded its series of five communications on
inequality in America with a talk by one of this country's most eminent
historians, John Hope Franklin. Drawing on his extensive research on the
history of race in America, he reflected on the trials and achievements of
African-Americans in the past and the challenges they face in the future.
Mr. Franklin's numerous publications include The Emancipation
Proclamation, The Militant South, The Free Negro in North Carolina,
Reconstruction After the Civil War, and A Southern Odyssey: Travelers in
the Antebellum North. His classic work, From Slavery to Freedom: A
History of African-Americans, was originally published in 1947 and is
now in its eighth edition (2000). The book spans the period from ancestral
Africa to the present, with each new edition offering an updated examination of
the struggle toward racial equality, the accompanying setbacks, and unfolding
social change. In 1990, a collection of essays covering his teaching and
writing career of fifty years was published as Race and History: Selected
Essays, 1938-1988.
The recipient of many honors, Mr. Franklin has been awarded the
Jefferson Medal of the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education,
the NAACP's Springarn Medal, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest
civilian honor. In addition he has received honorary degrees from more than one
hundred colleges and universities. Throughout his career, he has served on many
national commissions and delegations, most recently as the chair of the
advisory board for President Clinton's Initiative on Race. He is the past
president of the American Studies Association, the Southern Historical
Association, the United Chapters of Phi Beta Kappa, the Organization of
American Historians, and the American Historical Association. In 1995, the John
Hope Franklin Research Center was founded at Duke to collect, preserve, and
promote books, manuscripts and other documents relating to the history of
Africa and people of African descent.
Mr. Franklin was introduced by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who, in
addition to serving as director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for
Afro-American Research, is also the W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities
and chair of Afro-American Studies at Harvard. He is the author of critical
studies that have had a broad impact on African-American oral and literary
traditions, including The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary
Criticism and Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the "Racial"
Self.
For more information please call Phyllis Bendell at (617) 576-5047 or
email pbendell@amacad.org.
News
Recent Events
Events
|