The year 1997 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of John Hope Franklin's literary landmark From Slavery to Freedom. Now in its seventh edition, translated into five languages, with more than three million copies sold, this book, more than any other, has reshaped the way African American history is understood and taught. Since writing it, John Hope Franklin has become one of the world's most celebrated historians.

Born in Rentiesville, Oklahoma, and raised in Tulsa, he graduated from Fisk University in 1935 and earned a master's and a doctorate in history from Harvard University. He credits his "careful training" at both schools with helping him to achieve the scholarly discipline necessary to write the story of his race — including painful events that touched his own life — with the historical accuracy and clear sense of fairness that characterize the book.

With his wife's support and a contract from publisher Alfred A. Knopf, Franklin began research on From Slavery to Freedom at the age of thirty-two while on the faculty of what is now North Carolina Central University in Durham. "My challenge," he said, "was to weave into the fabric of American history enough of the presence of blacks so that the story of the United States could be told adequately and fairly." When the book first appeared, few people took the study of African American culture seriously.

"For decades, blacks were marginalized in American history books," said Duke University historian William Chafe. "From Slavery to Freedom inspired many historians to begin to set the record straight." The book spans the period from ancestral Africa to the present, with each new edition offering an updated examination of the struggle toward racial equality, the accompanying setbacks and unfolding social change. "It coincided with the civil rights movement," according to Yale University historian David Brion Davis, "and helped to evaporate the racist myths that had upheld racial segregation and oppression."

Although From Slavery to Freedom is his best-known work, Franklin has been a prolific author. In 1990, a collection of essays covering a teaching and writing career of fifty years was published under the title Race and History: Selected Essays, 1938-1988. In 1993, he published The Color Line: Legacy for the Twenty-First Century. His most recent book, My Life and an Era: The Autobiography of Buck Colbert Franklin, is an autobiography of his father that he edited with his son, John Whittington Franklin.

John Hope Franklin is James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of History at Duke University and has also served on the faculties at St. Augustine's College, Howard University, Brooklyn College, and the University of Chicago. A former president of the Southern Historical Association, the American Historical Association, and the United Chapters of Phi Beta Kappa, he has received dozens of major awards and more than 100 honorary degrees. In 1995, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. That same year the John Hope Franklin Research Center was founded at Duke as a repository for African and African American studies documentation. Last summer, the distinguished Duke historian was appointed by President Clinton to lead a panel of advisers on promoting racial understanding in the United States.

Excerpt from From Slavery to Freedom: A History of American Negroes
(Knopf, 1947)

The Carolinas The Carolina colonists never debated either the question of bringing Negroes into the colony or what their status should be upon arrival. There can be no doubt that the founders of the colony had observed the value of slaves in the economic development of the other colonies. Not only were they interested in the use of slaves in the solution of their labor problem, but they had a material interest in the slave trade. Four of the proprietors of the colony were members of the Royal African Company and doubtless looked forward to realizing profits both in the traffic and in the employment of Negro slaves. With slavery so firmly established in several of the English colonies and with a vast grant of some of the best lands for the cultivation of staple crops in the New World, the proprietors had good reason to believe that plantation slavery would be the basis for a healthy economic life in Carolina. Small wonder, then, that slavery was established even before the colony was settled. In his “Fundamental Constitutions,” John Locke said that “every freeman of Carolina shall have absolute power and authority over his negro slaves, of what opinion or religion soever.” Not only was slavery thereby sanctioned, but its existence was protected against any presumed jeopardy to which conversion might expose it. In no other colony did slavery begin more auspiciously, nor was there anywhere any greater prospect for its success. The proprietors early sought to encourage the importation of Negro slaves into the colony. In 1663 they offered to the original settlers twenty acres for every Negro man slave and ten acres for every Negro woman slave brought into the colony in the first year, or ten and five acres respectively for every man or woman slave brought in within the first five years. Although there are no available estimates of the Negro population of Carolina before the early eighteenth century, legislation as well as the remarks of colonial leaders indicate that Negroes were in the colony from the beginning. In 1708 the Negro and white population was almost equal, with 4,100 Negroes and 4,080 whites. By 1715 the Negroes led the whites with 10,500 to 6,250. In 1724 there were three times as many Negroes as whites, while in 1765, the Negro population was 90,000, while the whites numbered only 40,000. These figures eloquently reflect both the impetus which slavery early received from the encouraging legislation of the Restoration and the effective cooperation between the traders and the planters. This tremendous increase in Negroes filled many white South Carolinians with apprehension. No other colony experienced quite the threat that sheer numbers brought to South Carolina; and the colony did not wait for any demonstrations of the Negroes’ ungovernable temper to erect a slave code that became a model for the mainland in severity and scope. Beginning in 1686 the colonial legislature passed laws to insure the domination of white masters over their slaves that Locke’s Constitutions had promised. The first law forbade Negroes to engage in any kind of trade and further provided that they should not leave their master’s place between sunset and sunrise without a note of explanation from the master. White persons who encountered a slave violating this act were authorized to chastise and correct him and send him home. The law was strengthened in 1722 when justices were authorized to search Negroes for guns, swords, “and other offensive weapons” and to take them unless the Negro could produce a permit less than a month old authorizing him to carry such a weapon. Not more than one Negro on a plantation was to be permitted to have possession of a gun. Patrols were given full authority to search Negroes and to whip those who were deemed to be dangerous to peace and order. Murder, burglary, robbery, arson, and running away were, of course, capital crimes. For lighter offenses such as stealing hogs and chickens, slaves were to be branded with the letter “R” on the right cheek. Chronic offenders in these categories were to suffer death. While the Carolina colonists were enthusiastically in favor of Negro slavery, they feared that the flood gates that had been opened by unlimited importation would prove disastrous in the long run, and that not even the stringent code could keep the Negroes under control. Consequently they began to pass laws looking toward decreasing the disparity in the ratio of the white and Negro population. In 1716 a law was enacted requiring each planter to have one white servant for every ten Negro slaves, and a bounty of 25 pounds was offered for every white servant brought into the colony. In 1719 a duty of 10 pounds per head was levied on all Negroes imported from Africa and 30 pounds on all Negroes imported from the islands. In 1722 a duty of 50 pounds was laid on Negroes brought from other colonies, for South Carolina did not want to have in her borders any Negroes that were deported from other colonies because of ill behavior. . . . By 1700 the northern portion of the Carolina colony was evolving a history that was in some respects separate and distinct from that of the southern portion. Even before 1700 men of small means began to leave Virginia and settle in the unoccupied lands of the Albemarle Sound. The stream of settlers increased in the eighteenth century, and the newcomers filled in the northern and central portion of the colony. The Cape Fear region gradually attracted settlers, and finally Scotch and Irish, Germans, and others filled in the Piedmont back country. The Negro population was small during these early years, for the more affluent Carolinians were occupying the rich lands in the region of the Ashley and Cooper Rivers. Final separation from South Carolina came in 1729, at which time the population of North Carolina was about 6,000 Negroes and 30,000 whites. No great stimuli to importation were present, and as late as 1756 there were only 10,000 Negroes in a total population of 79,000. Down to the separation of the colonies North Carolina and South Carolina shared the same slave code. In 1741 North Carolina passed an act entitled “An Act Concerning Servants and Slaves” that constituted the basis of her colonial slave codes. It was concerned primarily with the procedure by which slave offenders were to be tried. Two justices and four slave-owners were to sit in judgment of a slave before the court and to direct the punishment of guilty parties according to their discretion. By the law slaves were not permitted to own property, to carry arms, or to move about without permission. Other clauses provided for the punishment of slave thieves, insolent slaves, and those who transacted business with whites. The presence of Quakers in North Carolina had a salutary effect upon the conditions among slaves in the colony. They urged the establishment of regular meetings for slaves, and Quaker slaveholders were enjoined to use their Negroes well. Before the end of the colonial period there was some sentiment among the Quakers to discourage members to purchase slaves and finally, in 1770, the organization described the slave trade as “an iniquitous practice” and sought its prohibition. Members of the S[ociety for the] P[ropagation of the] G[ospel in Foreign Parts] also sought to improve conditions among Negroes as well as Indians and, as in South Carolina, encouraged masters to permit their slaves to attend religious services. It is interesting to note that there was no real slave insurrection in North Carolina during the colonial period. The fact that the slave population was relatively small and that there was little impersonality on the North Carolina plantation was doubtless responsible for this peaceful situation. The early dispersion of the population and the impecunious state of many of the inhabitants discouraged extensive slaveholding. In comparison with her neighbors, North Carolina presented a picture of remarkable calm in the period before the War for Independence.

African Americans and the Living Constitution. [Co-edited with Genna Rae McNeil.] Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995.

Black Leaders of the Twentieth Century. [Co-edited with August Meier.] Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982.

Color and Race. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1968.

The Color Line: The Legacy for the Twenty-First Century. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1993.

The Emancipation Proclamation. Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, 1963.

The Free Negro in North Carolina, 1790-1860. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1943.

From Slavery to Freedom: A History of American Negroes. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1947.

An Illustrated History of Black Americans. [Co-edited with the editors of Time-Life Books.] New York: Time-Life Books, 1970.

The Militant South, 1800-1861. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1956.

My Life and an Era: The Autobiography of Buck Colbert Franklin. [Co-edited with John Whittington Franklin.] Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997.

George Washington Williams, a Biography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.

Race and History: Selected Essays, 1938-1988. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989. 450 pp.

Racial Equality in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976.

Reconstruction: After the Civil War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961.

A Southern Odyssey: Travelers in the Antebellum North. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1976.

Dr. Franklin has also been a frequent contributor to historical journals, general interest magazines, and other periodicals.

Additional information about Professor Franklin can be found in:

Anderson, Eric, and Alfred A. Moss, Jr., eds. The Facts of Reconstruction: Essays in Honor of John Hope Franklin. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1991.

Applebome, Peter. "Keeping Tabs on Jim Crow: John Hope Franklin." New York Times Magazine (23 April 1994): 34-37.

"The Genius of John Hope Franklin." Black Issues in Higher Education 10 (13 Jan. 1994): 16-32.

Podesta, James L. "John Hope Franklin, 1915- : Historian, Educator, Writer." In Contemporary Black Biography, edited by Barbara C. Bigelow, Vol. 5, 96-101. Detroit: Gale Research, 1994.

Links to further information:

John Hope Franklin Research Center at Duke