John Hope Franklin

George Washington was a African-American soldier, clergyman, journalist, columnist, lawyer, legislator, historian, first-series, black historian, wrote a two-volumist to the Negro race. World traveler, the first critic of Leopold's policies in the Congo, 15 years before the Organization of the Congo Reform Association and those, he blasted him all over. And died at 41 years of age. What were his years? 1849, 1891. Oh, 18th, 19th century, rather. Oh, yeah, right in the middle of it. Well, he was a man of many parts as Thomas

Jefferson then. And one of the great lovers of the 19th century, he was. Like Jefferson was his day. He's died in the arms of his English girlfriend in Blackpool, England. George Washington Williams. I've just put a tombstone. Not just. I put a tombstone. I found his grave. No one knew where it was. Where is he buried? Blackpool. I just can't be one day. Well, I'll read it out in London. I said, you know, they didn't ship anybody back in those days. He must be in Blackpool. Who went up to the Blackpool? Boked around, found it. It wasn't difficult. You know, the British records are perfect. People go to Blackpool, the lower middle class for entertainment. He went there for something quite other. He went there for his health. His girlfriend knew he was in very bad shape. She decided to take him to Blackpool for his, for the Sierra. And of course, the Sierra Guardian. At age of 41. At age of 41. He would have been, he would have been, he died

on the 2nd of August, 1891. He would have been 42 on the 16th of October. Sounds like he had a lung involvement or something. Oh, he's wise. His lung was gone. His left lung. But there, that hangs a long tail, because when he was 19, he was shot through the left lung. At Fort Arbuckle, out in the Indian territory where he was in the United States regular army. And he got a medical discharge. Then he learned about Howard University. He wrote General Howard. Howard had just been founded the year before. He wrote General Howard. Got it. Got admission. Got admitted. But he got, he went there and he didn't like it because it wasn't really what he wanted to do. He wanted to be a minister. And so he went to, went to Newton's Theological Seminary in Massachusetts. Practically illiteracy. Couldn't write his name straight. And he, but he appeared before the faculty and pleaded for his admission.

Well, at that time they were, even then they were requiring college, college degree to be admitted to the theological school. So he was not admitted, but they had a program called the English program, a kind of remedial program. They put him in that. In two years he'd become not only illiterate, but absolutely felicitous in his language and everything else. So they admitted him to the theological school and he went through and graduated. And from there all of these other parts came. I didn't know Howard. Howard University was a general. With his name for General Oliver Otis Howard, who was the first commission of the Friedman's Bureau. It was started as something of a Friedman's Bureau school. And named in his honor. He'd been, see he was made the head of the Bureau in 1865 when it was started by Congress. Howard was, yeah. Howard became a black university because

it was open to all. Isn't that the way it started? All of the black universities and colleges were open to all. The first place I went was open to all. So Atlanta University, all of them were open to all. But of course, in the case of Hampton, Indians went and fairly considerable numbers. In the case of Howard and Feskin places like that. In the early years, the children of the white teachers went to these schools. They would really not welcome at the public schools or at the white so-called white schools because their people, their parents were associated with this outrageous program of teaching blacks so that they were sort of ostracized by the white community. And that left them no alternative, but the institution where their parents taught. Fesk is, like other schools, it's coming

on bad days in monetary support. Yes. I've been on the board of trustees at Fesk since 1947. I've followed this development, great pain, personal pain. I think it'll be all right. And it was essentially a cash flow problem. It was a problem, too, of it's not being supported by two very important groups that owed so much to it. One is Nashville, the city of Nashville, and people at Nashville who did not support Fesk. And the other is the alumni who did not support Fesk with the kind of generosity that Fesk required. So it came on hard times. And I think that it's very plight. And the dramatization of its plight has brought to the attention of the American public generally the importance of

an institution like Fesk, and specifically Fesk, which is something of a national treasure. It goes back to 1866. It stands so much in terms of contributing to the cultural life of the country as well as contributing large numbers of extraordinarily able leaders. From W. V. Du Bois to Wade McGree, who was Cardiff's solicitor general, all in between. So when you have an institution that's produced people like that, I think that the nation itself owes the institution a great deal. And I would hope that the nation will come through. But I certainly hope that the alumni and Nashville will come through. Tied turning then maybe. I hope so. Well, let's get down to the facts of the matter, the heart of the matter. Black History Month.

Where did it come from? We asked John Hope Franklin. Where did it come from? Why? Well, it began as Negro History Week in 1926 by Dr. Carter G. Woodson, who had been a founder in 1915 of the Association for the Study of Negro Life in History. Woodson founder of the Association in 1915 founded the Journal of Negro History in 1916. And then 10 years later, he established Negro History Week. And it was Woodson's argument that something ought to be done to bring blacks into the consciousness of America generally. So that Americans could understand and appreciate the fact that blacks had all through the years since the early 17th century made important contributions to the life of this country.

And he hoped that by emphasizing the matter for one week, that that would increase, that is the consciousness of America, would increase to the point that perhaps you would not even need the week anymore. You wouldn't need that kind of emphasis because it was his hope that it would be emphasized the year round, you see. Now the month, the month long celebration is a relatively recent origin in the post-World War II days. Indeed, not until about the 60s, was there much talk about black history month. So that I would say in the last 10 or 15 years, you've had black history month, what you've had, black history week for almost 60 years. Is the observation of important blacks in history and their gifts to the nation? Is that

to persuade the white majority that blacks have really something to contribute, or is it perhaps a stiffening for the backbone of blacks themselves? I think it's both, really. Because history of this country has been taught, as it's been taught, information about blacks has been withheld from themselves. That is, blacks are generally not acquainted with their own past, if they go to the average school and take up the history of the United States at the points that they do in the eighth grade and in the eleventh grade, I think that's where it's taught, most places. They would not learn very much about blacks. So that what Woodson had in mind and what his successors had in mind was to really acquaint young blacks about their own history. There was, of course, the additional objective

to acquaint Americans generally, particularly the white community about blacks because after all, they did not know either. And there had been for so many years what one might call the conspiracy of silence to make certain that they did not know. So they would continue to feel that blacks had made no contribution to the history of the United States. And therefore, it would follow along their line of reasoning that they were not deserving of certainly not equality. So that Woodson and the others hoped that by acquainting Americans generally with what blacks had done through the years, that they might, with knowledge and understanding,

have greater respect for and interest in the place of blacks in American history. And in contemporary America too. As a young man, I lived in Indianapolis Indiana. And there was a high school there called Crispus Attics. And it wasn't until long after I left Indianapolis that I knew that it was a Negro high school and who Crispus Attics was. I suppose he was the first one who laid down his life for the nation in the Black community. Well, so the story goes that even before the War for Independence began, that is in 1775, on the 5th of March, where the British Red Codes, who were patrolling Boston, were supposed to keep order and keep all the colonists

in their place and whatnot. And it was, and a crowd began to harass the British soldiers. And one of them who had harassed them and who led in the agitations, Crispus Attics. And they were so put upon and so irritated by this agitation from the crowd that they shot into the crowd. And of course, since Attics was out in front, he was the, he caught the first five. That is regarded as a, he's, he's therefore regarded as a first person to fall in the revolution. But to be fairly, to be accurate, this is more than a year before the Declaration of Independence. And consequently, I suppose that stretching a bit to say that

was a part of the revolution. But there was some other black in history about the revolutionary time that you find amusing. And at the, at the heart of modern history, I found it very, I found it very interesting. Let me tell you about him. His name is Paul Cuffey, who at the time of the War for Independence was a sailor and owner of property in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He owned his own ship, by the way, although he was still less than 30 years old, but he had accumulated a good deal. And, and he was all for the War for Independence, particularly was he enthusiastic about the great cry that taxation without representation is tyranny, which of course, Patrick Henry and many other patriots were malding during that time.

But Paul Cuffey and his brother, despite the fact that they owned property and were a man of some standing in the community, were not permitted to vote because they were black. So they decided to withhold their taxes on the ground that they were not represented and were not permitted to participate in the political process. So when the, when they were called upon to pay their taxes, they refused. And as a result, they were slammed in jail. And then they pointed out to the authorities that they were only acting as the patriots had acted against Britain. That after all, the whole War for Independence was a war that was based on the assumption that those who were contributing to the maintenance of the government should have a voice in the government. They said, we don't have any voice. You won't let us vote. Therefore, we're not going to contribute. It was an embarrassing moment,

of course, for the good patriots of Massachusetts. And after some deliberation, they struck a kind of compromise on the ground, saying that they would look into the matter of their voting if they would just pay their taxes. The cuff is paid their taxes, although it's not clear that they got the chance to vote during their lifetime. But it does point out the remarkable inconsistency, and one could add the hypocrisy of the founding fathers who would expect people despite their color to participate in the War for Independence although, because of their color, they would deny the rights for which the patriots were fighting Britain. Like Peter Grace said, just recently, if you pay your taxes, high sucker, I suppose that the internal revenue service wouldn't welcome any emulation of this man. I suppose not. Although I hear that there's a whole underground economy that doesn't pay any taxes anyway, and whereas they might expend some energy

trying to collect from the Paul coffers of our time, they seem to be completely frustrated by all those others who they seem unable to get a land on, even. The history, of course, spreads from either way from the Revolutionary War before, after. What is the significance in those ancients to us on these days, Dr. Franklin? Well, they suggest to us that there's a long tradition, one of standing up for freedom, an equality, and secondly, they indicate to us that blacks have, in a sense, not only been in the middle of the fray, but also have been the conscience of the nation that is they have done what they could to keep the nation honest, even when it didn't want to be honest.

Now, this is true not only of the Paul coffers of the War for Independence period, but it's true for all of those blacks who fought for freedom in the so-called anti-bellum years, Harriet Tubman, who was one of the leaders in the Underground Railroad and who led more than 300 slaves to their freedom out of the South slave states, southern slave states, into the free states of the North and into Canada. They were not always safe in the northern part of the United States, so she frequently led them all the way to Canada, or another abolitionist woman, black woman by the name of Sojourner Truth, who went all over the northern part of the United States, speaking against slavery and raising money to support fugitive slaves, and that sort of thing. Of course, Frederick Douglass, the most remarkable and the most eloquent of all of the black

abolitionist leaders, if not all of them, black are white, who for many, many years, thirty odd years before the war, spoke against slavery, fought against it, spread the word to Europe, raised funds, edited a newspaper, and was very active in the American Anti-Slavery Society. These are people who were in the tradition of Paul Cuffey and who did so much to keep alive, the fight for equality and freedom, when it was not very alive in some parts of the United States. What does black history, week and month, there ago, mean to blacks, and what does it mean to whites? What are the opinions? I think it means, to some extent, what it wanted it to mean back in 1926.

It means that Americans should pause at least for a month, hopefully, as Woodson hoped, that they would be aware of it for much longer, for much longer time. They would pause and recognize the remarkable contributions that black blacks have made. Not merely contributions in the sense of outstanding individual as Cuffey or Douglas or Bunch or anyone that we could mention, but in terms of their being a part of the ongoing development of American life and American civilization, that even if you can't single out individuals that stand above the crowd, that there's the crowd itself that helped to clear this country,

to beat down the wilderness, to make it into a great agricultural nation, to help transform it into a great industrial nation, to improve its institutions, to contribute to its well-being generally, that all Americans ought to understand that American blacks have been a part of this country, a part of its history, they were here in 1619, not many Europeans can boast that fact, no Asians can boast that fact. And we're saying to that despite the fact that they have been here all these years and have contributed so much to the development of the country, they are among the least to benefit from its largesse, from all that it has become, for it is clear that discrimination

persists, that all kinds of differentials exist in the workplace as well as in the educational arena, and that as long as that is the case, one needs to make a case for the fact that Afro-Americans, black Americans, have done what they've done, and have been so much a part of this country from the very beginning. There are some who would see it as a divisive issue, that the observation of this group, particularly in the different groups we have nowadays in the nation. Well, yes. You can make anything divisive if you want to, and some of the groups that are regarded as divisive are groups that have come into the picture much later.

What we're suggesting is that Afro-Americans are entitled to equality, not merely because that is the touchstone of American life and American civilization, but also because whatever America is, blacks help make it that. Now, if that's divisive, sorry, but it's the truth, and no amount of undercutting can deny that fact. But also, to be made, that Afro-Americans are entitled to, at least to the same thing that others are entitled to, and if that entitlement is brought into question, then it is incumbent

upon our public institutions to put that question to rest, and to provide guarantees for equality, guarantees for what we call freedom, and that's all, I think that's all America, all black Americans are asking for, and that's what America is about, at least one thought so. Will there be a time when you think that Black History Month will not be necessary? Not at nighttime, not in the foreseeable future, but I can hope that there will be justice, Dr. Woodson hoped in 1926, but the time would come and you wouldn't need it.

Well, now, as an historian, you've reviewed the lives of blacks, important to us, important to our history. Who's your favorite all those years? I have two favorites, a sort of general favorite, and it's a favorite of many, that would be February Douglas. Then I have my personal favorite, that's George Washington Williams. Douglas, of course, is a giant, remarkable man, I think a genius, whose utterances stand up today, as well as they did at any time, in his lifetime, whose life span the great period right across the 19th century, born around in 1817, we're not sure, because the circumstances

were born in slavery, where a clear notation was made of his birthday, and died in 1895, now that's a fairly long life. He was very early, very early in his life, after he became a fugitive, ran away from Maryland, and went north, he then became involved in the anti-slavery movement, and he's extraordinary self-taught, he's very illiterate, very eloquent, very profound, very learned, his essays, his narrations, his editorials, his columns stand up well. He had become one of the most prominent Americans by the time of the Civil War, and of course was active as a recruiter in the Civil War, and then, among other things, was an official

in Washington after the war, registered deeds, et cetera, and then became United States Minister of Haiti, president of the Friedman Savings Bank, and through all this, not one flicker of scandal, or of graft, or of corruption, a person's life was extremely exemplary, in terms of its public, the discharge of public duties and public responsibilities, so that he is easy to admire, he's one of the great giants of the 19th century, regardless of race, he has few peers. Those people who might visit the United States and Washington DC will see his house, only about two blocks from the Capitol building, where there is an African art museum, and heritage

museum, isn't it? Yes, of course, that's the, his real, his original home, though, is across the river out in South East Washington, that section of Washington, I can't remember what it is, and a costume, and an a costume, that's his real home, but all of the materials in the African American Museum, that now, I think, is a part of the Smithsonian Institution, is they have a kind of branch museum in his original home in Alacostia, and in there is the major museum in very nearly Capitol, and I understand that the plans are being made to build a much more commodious structure for housing, all these marvelous things of African and African American culture.

There's a lesson from a professor of history, John Hope Franklin, who is the James B. Duke professor of history at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Thank you, Dr. Franklin. Thank you. In Durham, this is John D'Alzel for the Voice of America. I don't in my own history, you're a professor of history, in my own, there are certain things that pose only, and every day I find them revealed, and one was Douglas School, which was a great school in Cocomondiana when I was a kid, I didn't know anything about who Douglas was or anything, so perhaps it's not too late to learn. Let me ask you this, was that Douglas School a black school? It was, well, then it was named for Frederick Douglass. You see, in the Midwest, one has to be careful because some of those Douglas schools are named for Stephen Douglas.

Well, this had two answers, yes, yes, and that's the difference, that's the real difference, but in Chicago, for example, there was a school named for Stephen, there was a lab, sorry, a library named for Stephen Douglas, and when I was on the board of the Chicago Public Library, a whole delegation of blacks came to the board meeting, asking that the name of that school, that library, be changed to Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass Library, and they made a strong case, for they didn't know very much about Stephen Douglas, and they made a strong case for it, it was there in their neighborhood, and the board voted to change the name. I wasn't certain that that was the right and proper thing to do. I, of course, was very familiar with Douglas's views about blacks, but they were not terribly different from Lincoln's views at that time, and I asked them if they knew what Douglas's,

what Stephen Douglas's attitude and conduct was after he lost the election in 1860, and they did not. And I told them that Douglas, in the following year, gave everything he had to trying to preserve the union, and calling for the support of Abraham Lincoln, as indeed he wore himself out. He died that year, and I think it showed that he was also able to roll with the punches and come out on the right side, and I did not think that they should be unaware of that part of Douglas's history. What they had said about Douglas, we were talking about Stephen Douglas, what they had said

about Stephen Douglas was true, but they didn't know the whole truth, you see, and I had to tell them that, and I pointed out that there might have been room in Chicago for a Stephen Douglas library and a Frederick Douglas library, they didn't think so. It must have been, those must have been exciting days on the stump with the little giant and tall gauky guy. Across the lake from Chicago, you probably know the town's twin cities of St. Joseph and Benton Harbor. Also as a youngster, I lived over in St. Joseph, which was as white as the tablecloth on table where we're sitting today, and Benton Harbor, which was as black as the traditional age of space, how did they keep St. Joe white and Benton Harbor black? I suppose it was a kind of unwritten understanding, even if you wanted to live over there at all, and were black, you lived in Benton Harbor, and if you were white, you lived in St. Joseph.

I suppose that it was the initiative, the initiative almost always, until most recently was taken in such matters by whites. We know too many white towns where it was quite unequivocal that blacks could not be there when the sun went down. I don't know of any black towns like this. Three of the black towns were a response to the existence of white towns, or white oppression. Take my own case, for example, I don't think you know this. I was born in an old black town in Oklahoma, and I was born there because my mother and father moved there several years before.

She was attempting to live and be a part of a logic community, both black and white. My father was a lawyer in Ardmore, Oklahoma, and he had some clients who had some legal matters to attend to in St. Louis, Louisiana, and my father went there to, it was a matter in litigation in the court. My father took his client there, and the case was called, and my father stood, and the judge looked down and said, boy, what are you doing standing up? He said, I am representing this client, this case was called, and I am representing my client in the case, and the judge said, oh, oh, no, he says, no nigga represents anybody in my court.

I used to sit down or get out, and it was, I guess, the most humiliating experience of my father's life, and particularly to be embarrassed before his client that way. My father went back to Ardmore, he decided that he would rather live among blacks, among blacks only, than to be subjected to this kind of humiliation. And so they moved to Rente'sville, Oklahoma in 1912, and I was born there in 1915. It was a very small community, too small, really believable. My father was a lawyer, and he was just to the peace, and notary public, and president of Rente'sville training company, which was not on the New York Stock Exchange, I assured you. And after a while, he realized that he couldn't make it there, and he then moved to Tulsa. And we moved also a few years later, and my adolescent years were spent in Tulsa, where

I graduated in high school. But you see what I'm talking about, that sometimes blacks go into these all-black communities as a kind of refuge from the humiliation, oppression, harassment, degradation, heaped on them by the white community. I suppose it, no black would have attempted to move to St. Joseph for that reason. But a white could have moved to Benton Harbor. And there wouldn't have been anything that could have kept him from doing it. He had all the law and enforcement of the law of community sanctioned everything on his side.

And even if blacks did not want whites there, which they may not have, they didn't make any difference. Whites could do what they would please. And that was the difference. Even that far north, it didn't matter. Oh, that far north, you know Indiana better than I do. Well, that's what I was thinking about. Oh, yes, yes, but I could tell you some stories about Michigan, which is just about its bad. No, but no, that far north wouldn't make any difference. It didn't make any difference when I moved to Brooklyn in 1956 as chairman of the history department at Brooklyn College. They didn't make any difference there. No real estate dealer in Brooklyn would show me a house. When I found a house on my own, no bank in New York City would lend me the money to purchase a house.

Not even 30 years ago. It's late 1956, almost 30 years ago. So north is north, but, you know. I wonder what your father would have thought last week when a young attorney, a black attorney in Chickasaw, Alabama, was okay to represent the Ku Klux Klan with the ACLU and the Klan's right to demonstrate in a march in Chickasaw. He would have been all right with him. He believed in civil liberties, even if you were completely out of sympathy with the cause. He believed in freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and that sort of thing. So that wouldn't have bothered him and nor would it have bothered him. That a young black lawyer was retained to defend their right. No, I don't think that would have disturbed him at all. What would have disturbed him would have been any effort on the part of ways to deny blacks,

anything including the right to march or demonstrate or whatever. He just believed in equal treatment. He would not, he did not even, he did not recognize segregation. He did not, he did not submit himself to segregation, I mean, I don't know how he, how he always got away with it. I don't know. He would never let me sit in the segregated section of the court room when I went to, when I went to the courthouse with him, in which city? Tulsa. Tulsa. No. I either sat if there was a nun, I sat at the table with him if it was a jury trial or if there wasn't a jury, I sat over in the jury box, about alone at 11 and 12 years old. That's like the old film to kill a mocking bird. Yes. That was true to form, wasn't it? So what do you have to do with Tulsa?

What's he doing, Tulsa? He did very well in Tulsa. He was, he did make a lot of money, but he did quite well, he highly respected. When the ride came in Tulsa in 1921, race ride, he called it a race war, and everything he had was burned to the ground, and I suppose it for a while he felt like moving back to the Renaissance Bill, but the city passed an ordinance that provided that no structure could be built within the city limits unless it was fireproof. Well, you see, blacks, there was a capricious piece of legislation obviously, no plaques in town, had any money to build fireproof structures. And my father, who was practicing law in a tent, I have a picture of him, it's beautiful.

Advise his clients to build with orange crates, you know, anything, build, and they would be arrested for breaking the ordinance and he would get them out of jail. And he took that case to the Supreme Court of the State of Oklahoma and won on the ground that this was legislation designed to harass a segment of population, and that it was, it could not be administered equally, whites were not, he was able to establish a fact and whites were building houses that were not fireproof. And so the law simply was declared unconstitutional. Did he build, indeed, build his own law, was that of orange crates after that? He was content to stay in a tent, I mean, just someone built a brick building.

I won't hold you on a long answer. Thank you so much.