Mirror to America, John Hope Franklin
Mirror to America, John Hope Franklin
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Mirror to America
The Autobiography of John Hope Franklin

Author: John Hope Franklin

Narrator: John Hope Franklin

Abridged: 7 hr

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/15/2005


Synopsis

Ninety years of American history as lived by the nation's preeminent African American historian and winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
John Hope Franklin lived through America's most defining twentieth-century transformation, the dismantling of legally-protected racial segregation. A renowned scholar, he has explored that transformation in its myriad aspects, notably in his 3.5 million-copy bestseller, From Slavery to Freedom. And he was, and remains, an active participant.
Born in 1915, he, like every other African American, could not but participate: he was evicted from whites-only train cars, confined to segregated schools, threatened–once with lynching–and consistently met with racism's denigration of his humanity. And yet he managed to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard, become the first black historian to assume a full-professorship at a white institution, Brooklyn College, be appointed chair of the University of Chicago's history department, and, later, John B. Duke Professor at Duke University. He has reshaped the way African American history is understood and taught and become one of the world's most celebrated historians, garnering over 130 honorary degrees. But Franklin's participation was much more fundamental than that.

From his effort in 1934 to hand President Franklin Roosevelt a petition calling for action in response to the Cordie Cheek lynching, to his 1997 appointment by President Clinton to head the President's Initiative on Race, and continuing to the present, Franklin has influenced with determination and dignity the nation's racial conscience. Whether aiding Thurgood Marshall's preparation for arguing Brown v. Board in 1954, marching to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965, or testifying against Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court in 1987, Franklin has pushed the national conversation on race towards humanity and equality, a life-long effort that earned him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, in 1995.
Intimate, at times revelatory, Mirror to America chronicles Franklin's life and this nation's racial transformation in the 20th century, and is a powerful reminder of the extent to which the problem of America remains the problem of color.

About John Hope Franklin

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN is James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of History at Duke University. He has received dozens of major awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his life-long commitment to Civil Rights.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Clif

I used Google Streetview to take a look at present day Rentiesville, Oklahoma, the birthplace of John Hope Franklin in 1915. It's a dusty hamlet of a few streets and scattered houses, population around 100, founded only six years before Franklin was born. One couldn't have a more modest start, parti......more

Mirror to America by John Hope Franklin is an amazing autobiography. Reading this book after reading the biography of Edward Everett Just, who was born in the previous century. Franklin born in 1915 faces so many challenges as he lives in Oklahoma. The riot in Tulsa disrupts his family as his father......more

Goodreads review by Martin

I knew of John Hope Franklin by reputation, although I'd never read anything by him, and, as far as I can tell, this memoir is like the man himself: dignified, clear-eyed, personable, and written with a kind of straight-backed, no-nonsense and pellucid prose that I didn't think possible in this day......more


Quotes

“A pioneer scholar; a splendid humanist and a shining model to generations of students, scholars, and activists.” —David Levering Lewis, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, 1994 on John Hope Franklin

“My fondest dream would be to create a work of scholarship in the field of african american literature as germinal, as salient, as compelling, and as timeless as from slavery to freedom.” —Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Director of the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for African and African American Research, Harvard University


Awards

  • Robert F. Kennedy Book Award - Winner