Summary
Professor John Hope Franklin - In memoriam
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Extract
A historian in the World.
Like so many of us. Professor John Hope Franklin had been a fixture in my life ever since I first discovered his magnificent From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans in high school, and read it in earnest as a freshman at California State University at Long Beach. That same year (1981) I pledged Alpha Phi Alpha, and under the duress of hazing when we were expected to shout the names of distinguished "big brothers," I proudly included Dr. Franklin on my list, along with Paul Robeson, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Dr. Du Bois. And yet, I'd be exaggerating if I said he was responsible for my becoming a historian. The catalysts for me were Walter Rodney's How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. C. L. R. James's The Black Jacobins, Eric Williams's Capitalism and Slavery, W. E. B. Du Bois's The World and Africa (and most anything by him), and popular works on ancient African civilizations, notably George G. M. James's Stolen Legacy, Cheikh Anta Diop's The African Origins of Civilization, and Chancellor Williams's The Destruction of Black Civilization. (1) African history became my primary obsession because my Black Studies professors taught me that Africa represented our most authentic selves. ...
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