John Hope Franklin

Alfred A. Moss

Revised and updated for a new generation of readers, the definitive African American history retraces the origins of this community in Africa and the slave trade that brought these people to the West Indies, Latin America, and North America. Reissue.

A History of African Americans

From Slavery to Freedom

Loren Schweninger

Presents details about plantation life before the Civil War when slaves frequently rebelled against their masters and escaped

Rebels on the Plantation

Runaway Slaves

The Autobiography of John Hope Franklin

Mirror to America

A History of Negro Americans

Genna Rae McNeil

Bringing together distinguished jurists, historians, and legal scholars -- including Mary Frances Berry, Matthew Holden, Gary Orfield, Derrick Bell, A. Leon Higginbotham, and Julius Chambers -- this book explores such topics as the legacy of racial discrimination and issues of affirmative action, hate speech, and institutionalized racism.

African Americans and the Living Constitution

A biography of fhe life of the amateur scholar who wrote the first history of African Americans in the United States: A HISTORY OF THE NEGRO RACE IN AMERICA (1882).

A Biography

George Washington Williams

The classic work of American history by the renowned author of From Slavery to Freedom, with a new introduction by historian Eric Foner. First published in 1961, John Hope Franklin’s revelatory study of the Reconstruction Era is a landmark work of history, exploring the role of former slaves and dispelling longstanding popular myths about corruption and Radical rule. Looking past dubious scholarship that had previously dominated the narrative, Franklin combines astute insight and careful research to provide an accurate, comprehensive portrait of the era. Franklin’s arguments concerning the brevity of the North’s occupation, the limited power wielded by former slaves, the influence of moderate southerners, the flawed constitutions of the radical state governments, and the downfall of Reconstruction remain compelling today. This new edition of Reconstruction after the Civil War also includes a foreword by Eric Foner and a perceptive essay by Michael W. Fitzgerald.

Reconstruction after the Civil War, Third Edition

Describes the Reconstruction period, including the North's occupation of the South, influences of former slaves and moderate southerners, and flaws of the constitutions drawn up by state governments.

Second Edition

Reconstruction After the Civil War

The Militant South, 1800-1861

Frederick Law Olmsted, the northerner who wrote comprehensively about his travels in the South, had no southern counterpart. But there were thousands of southerners -- planters, merchants, bankers, students, housewives, writers, and politicians -- who traveled extensively in the North and who recorded their impressions in letters to their families, in articles for the local press, and in the few books they wrote. In A Southern Odyssey the distinguished historian John Hope Franklin canvasses the entire field of southern travel and analyzes the travelers and their accounts of what they saw in the North. Many went out of sheer curiosity. Others went on business, to get an education, to make purchases for the store and home, to attend religious or political conventions, or to instruct northerners about the superior qualities of the southern way of life and warn them of the dangers of unbridled abolitionist attacks. The more they went, the more they doubted the wisdom of spending money among their enemies. But they continued to go, even against their own advice to fellow southerners, and some tarried until the attack on Fort Sumter. Concentrating as it does on the human side of North-South relations during the antebellum years, A Southern Odyssey represents a fresh and imaginative approach to a long overlooked chapter in southern history. It is also a handsome book, with twenty illustrations that comprise "An Album of Southern Travel."

Travelers in the Antebellum North

A Southern Odyssey

Selected Essays 1938-1988

Race and History

John Roy Lynch

Born into slavery on a Louisiana plantation, John Roy Lynch (1847-1939) came to adulthood during the Reconstruction Era and lived a public-spirited life for over three decades. His political career began in 1869 with his appointment as justice of the peace. Within the year, he was elected to the Mississippi legislature and was later elected Speaker of the House. At age twenty-five, Lynch became the first African American from Mississippi to be elected to the United States Congress. He led the fight to secure passage of the Civil Rights Bill of 1875. In 1884, he was elected temporary chairman of the Eighth Republican National Convention and was the first black American to deliver the keynote address. His autobiography, Reminiscences of an Active Life, reflects Lynch's thoughtful and nuanced understanding of the past and of his own experience. The book, written when he was ninety, challenges a number of traditional arguments about Reconstruction. In his experience, African Americans in the South competed on an equal basis with whites; the state governments were responsive to the needs of the people; and race was not always a decisive factor in the politics of Reconstruction. The autobiography, which would not be published until 1970, provides rich material for the study of American politics and race relations during Reconstruction. It sheds light on presidential patronage, congressional deals, and personality conflicts among national political figures. Lynch's childhood reflections reveal new dimensions to our understanding of black experience during slavery and beyond. An introduction by John Hope Franklin puts Lynch's public and private lives in the context of his times and provides an overview of how Reminiscences of an Active Life came to be written.

The Autobiography of John Roy Lynch

Reminiscences of an Active Life

John Whittington Franklin

“My father’s life represented many layers of the human experience—freedman and Native American, farmer and rancher, rural educator and urban professional.”—John Hope Franklin Buck Colbert Franklin (1879–1960) led an extraordinary life; from his youth in what was then the Indian Territory to his practice of law in twentieth-century Tulsa, he was an observant witness to the changes in politics, law, daily existence, and race relations that transformed the wide-open Southwest. Fascinating in its depiction of an intelligent young man's coming of age in the days of the Land Rush and the closing of the frontier, My Life and an Era is equally important for its reporting of the triracial culture of early Oklahoma. Recalling his boyhood spent in the Chickasaw Nation, Franklin suggests that blacks fared better in Oklahoma in the days of the Indians than they did later with the white population. In addition to his insights about the social milieu, he offers youthful reminiscences of mustangs and mountain lions, of farming and ranch life, that might appear in a Western novel. After returning from college in Nashville and Atlanta, Franklin married a college classmate, studied law by mail, passed the bar, and struggled to build a practice in Springer and Ardmore in the first years of Oklahoma statehood. Eventually a successful attorney in Tulsa, he was an eyewitness to a number of important events in the Southwest, including the Tulsa race riot of 1921, which left more than 100 dead. His account clearly shows the growing racial tensions as more and more people moved into the state in the period leading up to World War II. Rounded out by an older man’s reflections on race, religion, culture, and law, My Life and an Era presents a true, firsthand account of a unique yet defining place and time in the nation's history, as told by an eloquent and impassioned writer.

The Autobiography of Buck Colbert Franklin

My Life and An Era

The matriarch of a remarkable African American family, Sally Thomas went from being a slave on a tobacco plantation to a "virtually free" slave who ran her own business and purchased one of her sons out of bondage. In Search of the Promised Land offers a vivid portrait of the extended Thomas-Rapier family and of slave life before the Civil War. Based on personal letters and an autobiography by one of Thomas' sons, this remarkable piece of detective work follows the family as they walk the boundary between slave and free, traveling across the country in search of a "promised land" where African Americans would be treated with respect. Their record of these journeys provides a vibrant picture of antebellum America, ranging from New Orleans to St. Louis to the Overland Trail. The authors weave a compelling narrative that illuminates the larger themes of slavery and freedom while examining the family's experiences with the California Gold Rush, Civil War battles, and steamboat adventures. The documents show how the Thomas-Rapier kin bore witness to the full gamut of slavery--from brutal punishment, runaways, and the breakup of slave families to miscegenation, insurrection panics, and slave patrols. The book also exposes the hidden lives of "virtually free" slaves, who maintained close relationships with whites, maneuvered within the system, and gained a large measure of autonomy.

A Slave Family in the Old South

In Search of the Promised Land

John Hope Franklin has devoted his professional life to the study of African Americans. Originally published in 1943 by UNC Press, The Free Negro in North Carolina, 1790-1860 was his first book on the subject. As Franklin shows, freed slaves in the antebellum South did not enjoy the full rights of citizenship. Even in North Carolina, reputedly more liberal than most southern states, discriminatory laws became so harsh that many voluntarily returned to slavery.

The Free Negro in North Carolina, 1790-1860

Persisted in racial discrimination and segregation. Examining the historical role of race in both the Republican and Democratic parties, Franklin argues that while opponents of affirmative action claim to promote a color-blind legal system, many have adopted race-encoded rhetoric to raise the specter of racial fear and hatred. Franklin also outlines the questionable civil rights record of Clarence Thomas, whose nomination and confirmation as Supreme Court justice.

John Hope Franklin

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