Brooklyn College Celebrates John Hope Franklin and Announces Award and Conference in His Name

Brooklyn College sponsored a celebration on Wednesday, May 27, that marked the career of the esteemed historian John Hope Franklin, who served from 1956 to 1964 as chairperson of the Brooklyn College History Department, becoming the first African American to lead the history department at a major U.S. college.

The event was held in the library’s Woody Tanger Auditorium before a large and enthusiastic crowd of faculty, staff, administrators, former students of Franklin, and other alumni.

Professor David G. Troyansky, the current chairperson of the History Department, announced the establishment of a special award that will be presented to a Brooklyn College student who writes what is judged the best paper on African American history and life or another area of U.S. history on which Franklin wrote. He also announced plans for a memorial conference to be held at the College in the fall.

"When I was an undergraduate and graduate student in the 1970s and early 1980s," said Troyansky, who acted as host for the event, "I was aware of Franklin as a major figure in the American historical profession. For me he was one of those great historians one read even if one’s specialty lay far from his fields of U.S. history, Southern history, and African American history. . . . It was only in coming to the College in 2005 and meeting him during that academic year that I came to appreciate his significance for this institution."

Franklin, who died in March 25, 2009 at age ninety-four, was born in Rentiesville, Oklahoma, and grew up in Tulsa. He earned a bachelor’s degree in 1935 from historically black Fisk University and went on to receive an M.A. in 1936 and a Ph.D. in History in 1941 from Harvard University. His long teaching career stretched over seventy years, and during that time he received more than 130 honorary degrees.

Professor Gertrud Lenzer, director of the Children’s Studies Program and Center, said, "My memorial remarks this afternoon, however, will concentrate on Professor Franklin’s enduring loyalty to this institution: Brooklyn College and The City University of New York.  In Mirror to America: The Autobiography of John Hope Franklin, published in 2005, John Hope Franklin provides an account of his appointment as Chair of the Department of History at Brooklyn College in 1956.  He discusses in great detail the signal importance of this appointment not only for him but to many  African American scholars who like him had until then been denied full access to the American academic world."

Besides Brooklyn College, Franklin also taught at Howard University, Harvard, the University of Chicago, and Duke University. At the time of his death, he was the James B. Duke Professor of History Emeritus and Professor of Legal History in the Law School.

In addition to Troyansky, a number of other scheduled speakers reminisced about their recollections of the honoree. Professor George P. Cunningham, chairperson of the Brooklyn College Department of Africana Studies, thanked Franklin for his groundbreaking 1947 book, From Slavery to Freedom, and the role it played in laying the foundations for African American Studies.  In honor of Franklin and Theodore S. Currier, a teacher the two men shared, Cunningham announced a gift to the Brooklyn College library of a collection of 19th and 20th century African American historians.

Brian Purnell, assistant professor of African American studies at Fordham University and author of the upcoming book A Movement Grows in Brooklyn: Civil Rights and Black Power in Brooklyn, New York, 1940–1970, spoke on From Slavery to Freedom, calling the late historian "the dean of black history."

Christoph M. Kimmich, the retiring president of the College and a fellow historian, recalled attending an event in Germany in 1963 where Franklin had been invited to speak. Kimmich said he felt a "surge of pride" at hearing the scholar speak and at the rousing reception he received.

A number of Franklin’s former students also rose to praise him, including two members of the Brooklyn College Class of 1959—Angelo Volpe, former president of Tennessee Tech College, and Ruth Siegel Jordan, who stated how good it felt to return to the campus and to meet former classmates and reminisce about Franklin. "It was well worth the trip up from D.C.," she said.

The celebration was supported by the following organizations: the Office of the President; the Office of the Vice-President for Institutional Advancement; the Office of Affirmative Action, Compliance, and Diversity; the Department of History; the Department of Africana Studies; the Department of Sociology; the Women’s Studies Program; the Children's Studies Program and Center; the Shirley Chisholm Center; and the Brooklyn College Library.