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Mirror to America: The Autobiography of John Hope Franklin

Mirror to America: The Autobiography of John Hope Franklin
By John Hope Franklin

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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. Born in 1915, he, like every other African American, could not help but participate: he was evicted from whites-only train cars, confined to segregated schools, threatened—once with lynching—and consistently subjected to racism’s denigration of his humanity. 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; and 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 of Education 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 toward 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 twentieth century, and is a powerful reminder of the extent to which the problem of America remains the problem of color.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #381178 in Books
  • Published on: 2006-10-31
  • Released on: 2006-10-31
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 416 pages

Features

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
At 90, Franklin recalls his extraordinary life. Born in the Oklahoma territory in 1915 and descended from slaves, he studied at Harvard, taught at some of the nation's most prestigious universities, served on committees for FDR and Bill Clinton, published seminal histories of blacks in America and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his work in civil rights. Franklin strove to evade the draft in WWII after being treated shamefully by the draft board when he tried to enlist, and did research for Thurgood Marshall in Brown v. Board of Education. Every aspect of Franklin's life has been influenced by the institutionalized racism he's experienced since he was six, when he was forced off a train for sitting in a car reserved for whites. Yet Franklin relates this all in dry, flat prose steeped in minutiae. The larger aspects of his life are glossed over; missing entirely is the emotional response to the ubiquitous racism. Nor does Franklin contextualize his experiences (e.g., in 1945, he refused to move to the back of the bus, but he fails to juxtapose this event with the Rosa Parks incident 10 years later). This disappointing autobiography fails to depict Franklin as the trailblazing iconoclast he was and is. Photos. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The New Yorker
At the age of ninety, Franklin recounts the story of his rise from a childhood in Oklahoma to a career as a pioneering African-American historian, whose work on the history of segregation formed part of the N.A.A.C.P.'s brief in Brown v. Board of Education. The journey is shadowed at every stage by episodes of casual bigotry and worse. He was threatened by a would-be lynch mob while surveying the economic conditions of black cotton farmers in Depression-era Mississippi; as he corrected the galleys of his groundbreaking work "From Slavery to Freedom," in 1947, he learned that his older brother, shattered by the experience of racism in the segregated military, "had either fallen or jumped" from a hotel window; and, after he hosted a dinner on the eve of receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom, a white woman gave him a numbered ticket and asked him to retrieve her coat.
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Review

Praise for John Hope Franklin:

"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

Praise for From Slavery to Freedom:

"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. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, Harvard University.
 
Praise for Mirror to America:
 
“John Hope Franklin is a true role model. He embodies the native optimism, i.e., that one can go from slavery to freedom, from ignorance to intelligence, can experience cruelty, yet manifest kindness. In Mirror to America, each citizen can see herself and himself, reflected in the life of this great American.” --Maya Angelou

"Mirror to America: The Autobiography of John Hope Franklin is an astonishing beautiful, deeply intelligent record of an extraordinary life. Required reading lest we forget what is possible in a race-based society." --Toni Morrison, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature

 "With his remarkable sense of humanity, renowned historian John Hope Franklin shares his life journey – an odyssey marked by scholarship, public service, and his passionate commitment to improve the condition of African Americans and their relations with their fellow citizens. Through candid stories of Franklin’s relentless pursuit of equality, Mirror to America calls upon all Americans to look at our nation’s past so that we may destroy the color line that continues to divide our country, and progress together into the future." --President William Jefferson Clinton
 
"This is the most important autobiography of the year! John Hope Franklin is a national treasure. Mirror to America is cause for a national celebration. For me, and countless others, Dr. Franklin is a mentor and role-model without peer, a man whose clear-eyed look into our past improved America's future. Mirror to America will lift the spirit and steel our resolve for the work ahead." --Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., Senior Manager and Director Lazard LTD and author of Vernon Can Read
 
"John Hope Franklin's story is a triumphant one, at once a chronicle of America's progress in civil rights over the past ninety years and a stirring reminder of the determination still needed to confront the country's remaining barriers to racial equality. He has inspired his students for decades; now, with Mirror to America, he offers inspiration to us all." ---David N. Dinkins, 106th Mayor, City of New York

"John Hope Franklin's Mirror to America is a singular document, a great historian's autobiography that will serve as an indispensable history of our times. Read and reflect, indeed!" --David Levering Lewis, Pulizer Prize winner, Julius Silver University Professor and Professor of History, NYU

Customer Reviews

No less powerful and moving for being modest and calm5
John Hope Franklin is one of the greatest historians that America has ever produced, and he is also one of the most valuable citizens we have ever produced. His memoir, though written in a calm, modest, and understated prose, is lucid and illuminating throughout, and readers seeking the emotional core of this great man and great scholar need only read to find it. Franklin's book is frank about his repeated experiences of racism in America, and about his justifiable anger at such experiences. It is also frank about his belief that his commitment to scholarly integrity is not only something he believes in as a committed scholar, but also something that he wants to use to prove the dignity and worth of all African Americans. This book also shows his deep love for his family, in particular for his wife and his son. And it is an all but unparalleled illumination of the scholarly and professional life of one of America's greatest historians. For anyone who is interested in becoming a historian, for anyone who wants an enlightening view of the effects of America's racial ordeal in the twentieth century, for anyone who has read any of the works of John Hope Franklin and wants to understand the author, for anyone who cares about this country, MIRROR TO AMERICANS is indispensable reading.

An astounding gift to America5
Back in the 1970's, when I worked as an education assistant at a small historical library in Ohio, John Hope Franklin spent several days in residence doing research. Having a man of such stature in our midst was a rare occurrence, and the head librarian had instructed us to walk on eggs so as not to disturb him; to her chagrin, I was scheduled to lead a group of eighth graders on a tour during his stay. Before my charges entered the building I explained who Dr. Franklin was and why it was very important that we not disrupt his work. As we tiptoed silently through the reading room hoping to go unnoticed, Dr. Franklin looked up, smiled and asked me to bring them over. He inquired about their school, their studies, their interests in history, etc. before discussing his current research project with them. Their teacher told me they were still talking about him months later.

Each page of this astounding memoir reminded of that compassion, that ability to connect with people at all ages and levels of experience and sophistication. John Hope Franklin is more than a world-class scholar. Personally and professionally, he is the bridge connecting America to its African American history. At times I felt like I was rereading FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM, augmented by personal asides and inside stories.

Reviewers detail Franklin's numerous high profile accomplishments, but for me, smaller, more personal moments in the book stand out. For example, I gave little thought to the obstacles he would have encountered while trying to access archives in the Jim Crow South, despite his impeccable Harvard credentials. Even when librarians were supportive, they had to work around the absurdities of segregation, sometimes with ironic results. For example, at one library he was given his own key to the stacks because it was deemed improper that he be waited upon by white pages who typically fetched materials for researchers. This meant he had unlimited access to the stacks - every historian's dream. Soon the white researchers demanded equal access, which was impossible, so the white pages ended up serving him instead.

And I nearly cried when I read that even in his 80's, this internationally renowned scholar was mistaken for a porter in the coatroom of a Washington club where he was a member.

If you read nothing else this year, do yourself a favor and read this book. It is more than just a mirror - it is a gift.

Mirror to America5
Dr. John Hope Franklin's autobiography, Mirror to America, accomplishes several things:

1) It gives a detailed account of the author's life and vividly demonstrates the struggle African Americans faced regardless of their education, benevolence, and willingness to be a good citizen despite daily obstacles of prejudice.

2) It provides detailed insight into the inner workings of Black communities and their interactions with White communities over a period of 90 years.

3) It gives inspiration and pride to African Americans who sincerely yearn for an African-American male mentor to give guidance. The scarcity of African-American male mentors lends more hardship to being a Black male. It is sometimes quite burdensome for Black males who strive to overcome constant obstacles as they push forward to make a place for themselves in the world.