"John Hope Franklin is the most prominent African-American historian in the United States and the first to serve as president of the Organization of American Historians."

"Franklin was born in Rentiesville, Oklahoma. His father, a prominent local attorney, was one of the first African Americans to be admitted to the Oklahoma bar. Franklin graduated from Fisk University in 1935 and continued his study of history in graduate school at Harvard University, where he earned his M.A. degree in 1936 and his Ph.D. in 1941."

"In addition to working to complete his doctoral thesis, from 1939 to 1943 he was professor of history at St. Augustine's College in Raleigh, North Carolina. His doctoral thesis, The Free Negro in North Carolina, 1790-1860, was published in 1943."

"From 1947 until 1956 Franklin taught at Howard University. In 1947 he published his first book of general interest, From Slavery to Freedom, which examined African-American progress in the United States with an optimistic viewpoint. Although it became a college textbook, Franklin's reputation as an important American historian was not firmly established until the publication of The Militant South, 1800-1861 in 1956. This work was a more pessimistic interpretation that traced the self-destructive impulse in southern leaders that led to the Civil War and the violence that followed."

"In addition to his history research and teaching duties, during this period Franklin also acted as an adviser to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). It was in this capacity that he helped to prepare the legal brief that the NAACP submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court on segregation in public schools, which the court outlawed in its historic 1954 decision."

Source: SIRS Decades: "John Hope Franklin," American Social Leaders, © 2001 ABCCLIO Interactive