Full Text of HR0320 96th General Assembly
HR0320 96TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY
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| HOUSE RESOLUTION
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| WHEREAS, The members of the Illinois House of | 3 |
| Representatives are saddened to learn of the death of Dr. John | 4 |
| Hope Franklin of Duke University; Dr. Franklin was a scholar of | 5 |
| African-American History; he passed away on March 25, 2009; and
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| WHEREAS, He was a prolific scholar of African-American | 7 |
| history who profoundly influenced thinking about slavery and | 8 |
| Reconstruction while helping to further the civil rights | 9 |
| struggle; during a career of scholarship, teaching, and | 10 |
| advocacy that spanned more than 70 years, Dr. Franklin was | 11 |
| deeply involved in the painful debates that helped reshape | 12 |
| America's racial identity, working with the Reverend Dr. Martin | 13 |
| Luther King Jr., W. E. B. Du Bois, Thurgood Marshall, and other | 14 |
| major civil rights figures of the 20th century; and
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| WHEREAS, Dr. Franklin combined idealism with rigorous | 16 |
| research, producing such classic works as "From Slavery to | 17 |
| Freedom: A History of African-Americans," first published in | 18 |
| 1947; the work was considered one of the definitive historical | 19 |
| surveys of the American black experience, has sold more than | 20 |
| three million copies, and has been translated into Japanese, | 21 |
| German, French, Chinese, and other languages;
Dr. Franklin also | 22 |
| taught at some of the nation's leading institutions, including | 23 |
| Harvard and the University of Chicago, in addition to Duke, and |
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| as a scholar he personally broke several racial barriers; and
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| WHEREAS, He often argued that historians have an important | 3 |
| role in shaping policy, a position he put into practice when he | 4 |
| worked with Thurgood Marshall's team of lawyers in their effort | 5 |
| to strike down segregation in the
landmark 1954 case Brown v. | 6 |
| Board of Education, which outlawed the doctrine of "separate | 7 |
| but equal" in the nation's public schools;
Dr. Franklin also | 8 |
| participated in the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, | 9 |
| Alabama, with Dr. King; and
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| WHEREAS, Dr. Franklin's prestige led President Clinton to | 11 |
| select him in 1997 to head the Advisory Board to the | 12 |
| President's Initiative on Race, which was formed to promote | 13 |
| dialogue about the country's race problems; he was the first | 14 |
| African-American president of the American Historical | 15 |
| Association; the first black department chairman at a | 16 |
| predominantly white institution, Brooklyn
College; the first | 17 |
| black professor to hold an endowed chair at Duke; the first | 18 |
| black chairman of the University of Chicago's history | 19 |
| department; and the first African-American to present a paper | 20 |
| at the segregated Southern Historical Association, one of many | 21 |
| groups that later elected him its president; and
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| WHEREAS, John Hope Franklin was born on January 2, 1915, in | 23 |
| Rentiesville, Oklahoma, the son of Buck Colbert Franklin, a |
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| lawyer, and Molly Parker Franklin, an elementary school | 2 |
| teacher; his parents had moved to Rentiesville, an all-black | 3 |
| town, after his father was not allowed to practice law in | 4 |
| Louisiana; in the 1920s, the family moved to Tulsa, and at age | 5 |
| 11 he was taken to hear the great civil rights leader W. E. B. | 6 |
| Du Bois, with whom Dr. Franklin later became friends; and
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| WHEREAS, His youth was marked by frequent brushes with | 8 |
| racism; he was forced off an all-white train and made to sit in | 9 |
| a segregated section of the Tulsa opera house; he watched black | 10 |
| neighborhoods of Tulsa, including the one where his father had | 11 |
| his office, being burned during the infamous 1921 race riot, | 12 |
| and he was barred from admission to the University of Oklahoma; | 13 |
| Dr. Franklin attended historically black Fisk University in | 14 |
| Nashville, receiving his B.A. in 1935; there he met Aurelia E. | 15 |
| Whittington, who would become his wife, and sometime editor, of | 16 |
| almost 60 years; they had one son, John Whittington Franklin, | 17 |
| who survives him; and
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| WHEREAS, Before graduating from Fisk, Dr. Franklin | 19 |
| considered following his father into law but was persuaded by a | 20 |
| white professor, Ted Currier, to make history his field; | 21 |
| Professor Currier was said to have borrowed $500 to help Dr. | 22 |
| Franklin pursue graduate studies at Harvard; there, Dr. | 23 |
| Franklin later recalled, he felt the isolation of being one of | 24 |
| only a handful of blacks on campus; he received his master's |
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| degree in 1936 and his Ph.D. in 1941; two years later he | 2 |
| published his first book, "The Free Negro in North Carolina, | 3 |
| 1790-1860," which explored slaveholders' hatred and fear of
the | 4 |
| quarter-million free blacks in the antebellum South; almost 20 | 5 |
| other books followed, either written or edited by Dr. Franklin; | 6 |
| and
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| WHEREAS, John Hope Franklin was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha | 8 |
| Fraternity, Inc., the first intercollegiate Greek-letter | 9 |
| Fraternity established for African Americans; he was initiated | 10 |
| in the Alpha Chi Chapter at Fisk university in 1932, and was an | 11 |
| active member for the next 77 years; he was an early | 12 |
| beneficiary of the Fraternity's Foundation Publishers, which | 13 |
| provides financial support and fellowship for writers | 14 |
| addressing African-American issues; and | 15 |
| WHEREAS, Despite his acute awareness of the South's | 16 |
| troubled racial history, Dr. Franklin was often angrier about | 17 |
| Northern racism and frequently defended his adopted home state, | 18 |
| North Carolina; his major biographical project was a 1985 study | 19 |
| of George Washington Williams, a self-educated black Civil War | 20 |
| veteran and author of a 1,000-page 1882 history of blacks in | 21 |
| America from 1619 to 1880; he said he spent nearly 40 years of | 22 |
| intermittent research on the project, calling Williams "one of | 23 |
| the small heroes of the world;"; and
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| WHEREAS, Dr. Franklin's first passion was teaching, and he | 2 |
| continued to log classroom time despite his increasing | 3 |
| prominence; his teaching career began at Fisk in 1936 and | 4 |
| continued over the next 20 years at St. Augustine's College in | 5 |
| Raleigh, North Carolina, North Carolina College in Durham, and | 6 |
| Howard University in Washington; as his first books drew | 7 |
| national notice, Dr. Franklin left the world of historically | 8 |
| black colleges and went to Brooklyn College, where from 1956 to | 9 |
| 1964 he served as chairman of what had been an all-white | 10 |
| department;
Dr. Franklin later taught at the University of | 11 |
| Chicago before returning to North Carolina in 1982 to teach at | 12 |
| Duke and at the Duke Law School; and
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| WHEREAS, Dr. Franklin was also a Fulbright professor in | 14 |
| Australia and had teaching stints in China and Zimbabwe; he | 15 |
| taught at Cambridge University in England, Harvard, Cornell, | 16 |
| the University of Wisconsin, the University of Hawaii, the | 17 |
| University of California, Berkeley, and other institutions; | 18 |
| since 1992, he had been James B. Duke professor emeritus of | 19 |
| history at Duke; and
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| WHEREAS, A John Hope Franklin Research Center was | 21 |
| established in his honor at Duke; at his home in Durham, Dr. | 22 |
| Franklin continued a lifelong hobby of cultivating hundreds of | 23 |
| orchids; one species was named for him, the Phalaenopsis John | 24 |
| Hope Franklin; his honors, awards, and professional and civic |
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| affiliations were so numerous as to fill several single-spaced | 2 |
| pages of a long curriculum vitae; he received more than 100 | 3 |
| honorary degrees; and in 2006, he received the John W. Kluge | 4 |
| Prize for the Study of Humanities in a ceremony at the Library | 5 |
| of Congress; therefore, be it
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| RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE | 7 |
| NINETY-SIXTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we | 8 |
| mourn, along with his family, friends, students, and fellow | 9 |
| scholars, the passing of Dr. John Hope Franklin; and be it | 10 |
| further
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| RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be | 12 |
| presented to the family of Dr. John Hope Franklin as a symbol | 13 |
| of our sincere sympathy.
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