Civil Rights Activist, Historian Discusses New Autobiography

GWEN IFILL: Historian John Hope Franklin carries his 91 years with grace and vigor, passionate about his research, his writing, and his beloved orchids.

The heart of his life story, however, is rooted in his country's struggles with race. From his birth in a small, black Oklahoma town, through an academic career that took him from Nashville's Fisk University to Harvard, and throughout a teacher's, writer's and lecturer's life that stretched from Brooklyn College to the University of Chicago, to Duke University and several other institutions, Franklin has authored 16 books.

Chief among those titles, "From Slavery to Freedom," a treatise on African-American history first published in 1947 and, three million copies later, now in its eighth printing.

From landmark protests in Alabama to landmark research on Brown v. the Board of Education, Franklin has appeared at many of the nation's racial turning points. In 1995, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Franklin's latest book is his autobiography, "Mirror to America."

GWEN IFILL: I spoke with him recently in Washington.

Dr. Franklin, thank you for joining us.

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN, Recipient, Presidential Medal of Freedom: Thank you.

GWEN IFILL: Why did you become a historian?

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN: There was a professor at Fisk, a young, white professor, only 12 years older than I was, who was chairman of the history department there and who really excited me in a way that I had never been excited about a subject matter before. He taught history in a way that was so exciting.

GWEN IFILL: That's Professor Courier?

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN: Professor Theodore S. Courier. And when he learned that I had an interest in history, he took an interest in me. And, as a matter of fact, he was the first white man that ever treated me as a social and intellectual equal, and I was really impressed with that.

And he began to shape my career in a way that I didn't know it could be shaped, so that I decided to become a historian then and there, and I've never regretted it.

GWEN IFILL: You've been quoted as saying that you don't consider yourself a black historian but a historian about African-Americans. What's the distinction?

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN: I'm a historian of the American people, all of them, and that's what I think you have to be. You can't be a historian of blacks without distorting the relationship between blacks and whites; you can't be a historian on whites without distorting the relationship.

They're all here together; they interact all the times. Sometimes it's not favorable or exciting or good, but the interaction is there. And you have to take into consideration all these aspects of American history before you can say that you're really a historian of the United States.

GWEN IFILL: In the 52 years since Brown, since you won the Brown case, essentially, do you feel as if the kind of progress that you had hoped for at the time has been made?

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN: No, I don't think so. I think if, I may say so, I think there were some of us who, believing that the Supreme Court could legislate, could lay down the law, could interpret the law, there were some of us who believed that the American people would then obey the law.

And I was one -- I remember so well -- I was one who was astounded when a great number of the senators said that they were not going to obey the Supreme Court decision. And this got us off to a start of what they called nullification, but of disrespect for the law, which I could not understand.

And the breakdown was rather widespread, and I was disappointed. We were celebrating the victory at a time when many southerners were plotting to nullify the victory as though the Supreme Court had not spoken. I couldn't imagine that there would be this much disrespect for the law.

GWEN IFILL: Is that what you meant when you said that you needed to have more than the law on your side in cases like this?

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN: Yes, you need to have more than the law on your side. We had the law on our side now, but we didn't have the American people on our side, large segments of them. We didn't have the American people.

We didn't have southern whites on our side, and we didn't have large numbers of northern whites on our side, as we discovered when, for example, the effort to desegregate the schools in the North met with great, great opposition.

GWEN IFILL: Along the way, there have also been those little indignities, as well, which so many African-Americans would probably find familiar. There's one that happened the night before you received the Medal of Freedom.

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN: Yes. In anticipation of the receiving of the Medal of Freedom, I was ready to celebrate even the night before, and I invited to my club in Washington a number of my friends in a private dinner which I was giving.

And then I realized that it was getting a little late, and I thought maybe my guests who had not arrived might be downstairs wondering where I was, and so I decided to excuse myself and go downstairs to see where they were or if they had arrived.

And I came down the winding staircase at the Cosmos Club. And at the bottom of the staircase, there was a white woman with a coat check in her hand. And she saw me, and she said, "Here, you go and get my coat. It's checked."

And I was sort of shocked that she would pick me out to go and get her coat. And I said -- and I realized then that she probably thought that I was there to serve. Why should I be in the Cosmos Club if I wasn't there to serve her?

And I pulled her over. I said, "Lady, now," as patient as I could, I said, "Lady, if you would take this check and give it to one of the attendants here, one of the uniformed attendants, and all of the attendants here are in uniform, just give it to one of them and perhaps will you get your coat." And I walked away from her.

GWEN IFILL: I want to ask you about something else which you mentioned in your book, which I found just got my attention. You were talking about Martin Luther King, who for so many Americans personifies what the civil rights movement was, beginning, middle and end. But you wrote that you thought that there was an unfortunate cult of personality that was built up around Dr. King.

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN: Yes.

GWEN IFILL: Tell me about that.

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN: Well, that view or that practice is a part of American confusion about what brings about change.

We do need leadership; I'm not questioning that. But when you place all of your stock on a particular person or even a group of people, then, I think, you are failing to see what the ordinary person's role is in the transformation of society and the changes that can take place.

If we depend on a person, whether it's Martin Luther King or someone else, to lead us out of the wilderness, so to speak, our dependence is going to betray us because somewhere along the line we might lose that leader, as we did in 1968 with the assassination of Martin Luther King.

Where would we be then? Where are we now without him? We were stumbling around, fumbling around in the wilderness. No, I think that we must not place so much emphasis on a person or a leader and think about the responsibility of all of us.

And if we need to keep our counsel and define what our role is, that's all right, but we have a role. Everyone has a role in improving our society and transforming it. And if we depend on one person or even a small number of people, then I think we're gambling on an eventuality that might be unfortunate.

GWEN IFILL: Final question. How far have we come in envisioning a world beyond race?

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN: Oh, I think we've not come very far in envisioning a world beyond race, even a nation beyond race. We're on our way, but we shouldn't delude ourselves into thinking we're anywhere near the point where blacks and whites can regard themselves as equal in every way.

We've come some distance, but we have so much farther to go that we should be about the business of trying to get there.

GWEN IFILL: Dr. John Hope Franklin, thank you very much.

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN: Thank you.