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John Hope Franklin
When former Chicagoan John Hope Franklin agreed to chair the advisory board of President Bill Clinton's Initiative on Race and Reconciliation, he accepted a job that would exhaust someone half his 82 years.
But Franklin has been studying, teaching and writing about American history since before 1921. His book, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans, published 50 years ago, is the standard text for college-level African-American history courses. And Franklin's work has always had an impact beyond academia. He contributed research for Thurgood Marshall's legal team in the landmark 1954 Supreme Court case. Brown v. Board of Education. A professor emeritus of history at Duke University in Durham, N.C., Franklin taught at the University of Chicago from 1962 to 1980 and chaired the history department from 1967 to 1970.
Clinton asked the seven-member board to spend tire next year coming up with ways to improve race relations. Illinois Issues asked Burney Simpson, a staff writer for the investigative monthly The Chicago Reporter, to talk with Franklin about the current state of race relations and his hopes for change. The following is an edited version of that interview. The photographs were taken by Johnathon Briggs when Franklin came to Chicago last month.
Q. What does the board hope to accomplish?
We hope to stimulate a national conversation about race in America. We will do that by a number of means: town halls, symposia, panel discussions. We hope to focus particular attention on education, health, housing and the workplace, and the administration of justice. We hope by the end of our commission to make some recommendations to the president that he can do with his office. He can speed up the process of leveling the playing field, bringing about real racial and ethnic equality. And he will hopefully function as the executive and encourage legislative bodies, federal and state, and even local, to enact legislation that will facilitate the leveling of the playing field.
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Q. Can that be accomplished in a year? Oh no, no. We intend to get started. We can't do in a year what this country has not been able to do in 300 years. But we hope that we will increase the pace somewhat so that we won't be moving at a snail's pace. Q. There's been a backlash against affirmative action in the last few years. Is that symbolic of how we stand in America in general? I don't know. I hope not. For every action there is a reaction, and this is no exception. It is a bolder reaction, perhaps, than the reaction to Brown against the Board of Education when they were attempting to desegregate the public schools in 1954. There was strong opposition then, which continues to the present time. But we hope in this case — if we have the kind of discussion that will clear the air and improve the climate generally, where things aren't brushed under the rug as they all too often are — we will be able to do what we haven't been able to do in previous years. I don't want to say we will do it, but I am cautiously optimistic that we will be able to do some significant things and move us beyond where we are today. |
Q. Are race relations better or worse today?
It depends on what area you're talking about. What area of life you're talking about. What section of the country you're talking about.
I would suspect that Chicago — not suspect, I know, I lived there many years — is different from St. Louis. It's different from Springfield, or any of those places. You can't make a generalization throughout the United States.
We had affirmative action for many, many years, but it was the kind that gave white people a very clear advantage over everybody else. When I finished college in 1935 and wanted to go to gradate school, I couldn't go to graduate school in Oklahoma where I was born, despite the fact that my father paid taxes. Any white person could go to graduate school at the University of Oklahoma. But I couldn't even be caught in the town after sundown. The quota for blacks was zero. The quota for whites was big, as much as they wanted. But no one said that was unfair or unjust.
We've never fretted setting aside a certain number of scholarships for athletes or for children of alumni. But the moment you say, "Well, we ought to let some blacks into law school," they say, "Oh, that's just terrible, unjust, unconstitutional, uneverything."
24 / November 1997 Illinois Issues
I don't know how we are going to get along in this country unless we are willing to conceive that there are things that ought to be done to right some of the wrongs that have been done over the years, over the centuries. And to give people an opportunity without calling them unfair, or [say they are] being singled out for special consideration simply because they happen to be of a certain color. I ask no quarter ever except to be given the opportunity, which my state didn't give me. I think we ought to come to grips with things like that.
Now, to be sure, blacks have opportunities that they have never had before. And for that I'm deeply grateful. At the same time, I don't believe there are more blacks in jail than there are in college simply because blacks are more criminal. I think something else is at work here, including [the lack of] economic opportunity. Including discrimination that continues in education. Including the imbalance in the preparation of kids from one neighborhood to another, even in Chicago, where the schools are not the same in various parts of the city, and the disadvantage is always to the inner-city kid.
Q. Around the time you were filing in Chicago, it was called the most segregated city in America. Was there any change as far as segregation or race relations during your time here?
By the way, I would argue with that designation, as I hope you would too. I don't think it was all that much worse than other cities. I came from New York and I felt that New York was worse than Chicago in terms of race. So let's start with that. It's not as bad as people claim it was.
Q. I'm sure there are some people who will take some pride in that.
Well I do; I love Chicago. It's not a Garden of Eden, but it's a great city.
Now did I notice any change? When Dr. Martin Luther King came there to try to do something about housing and economic opportunities, the opposition was very strong. I think King suffered his worst defeat in Chicago. But he was talking about things that he hadn't talked about before. The drive was not for getting people to sit in and have coffee at a lunch counter, but to get them jobs and housing and education. And those areas are much more difficult to penetrate. So [the city] showed up poorly.
Q. Some observers say the board is the president's attempt to appease blacks and other minorities while the courts and states are moving against programs like affirmative action. Is that fair?
No, that's not fair at all. In the first place, there's much more to the program than affirmative action. In the second place, if the states and people are moving against what the president stands for in terms of racial equality, that doesn't mean he should abandon it. If it's a sop to blacks, it's going pretty far. It's what no president in the history of this country has ever done. And it seems to me, if he were just a slick politician, he could find some other way of doing it [than] to speak to the entire nation about what everybody ought to know, namely that minority groups have never had a fair shake.
Why don't they say what the president ought to do? It's a very extensive, elaborate program that he's developing. Why would he go to all that trouble? But the cynics and naysayers are always ready to pounce on any action that changes the situation, to which they might have some serious objection.
Q. Is there one issue or one area you have a personal focus on?
If we could have every school in Chicago being first rate, absolutely first rate, you wouldn't have whites running from areas where schools are poor. You wouldn't have blacks moving into areas where schools are good. You could see where you were.
There ought to be fair housing. A man ought to be able to buy a house where he wants without discrimination by banks and insurance companies. Suppose people could purchase homes wherever they wanted. There wouldn't be anywhere to run. Why shouldn't I have the right to buy a house anywhere I want? It took me two years in New York City to buy a house. I had to use all my intellectual resources to outwit them, just to get a house to live in. What kind of society is this? We ought to do something about that.
Q. Do you think the board's job is too big?
Any effort to do something about the race problem in this country is a big job. Certainly big for the president alone, big for Congress alone, big for Chicago alone. But everybody has to join in if we're going to make it anything approaching success.
But to say too big, that sounds like throwing in the white towel. If we felt we couldn't cross the mountains and get to the Pacific Ocean because it was too much, then we'd still be living on this side of Chicago.
Q. Is it too much to talk about not only black and white issues but ethnicity issues?
I mentioned Asians, Hispanics, Native Americans. But what you must always remember is that the black/ white paradigm set the stage for discrimination and segregation, humiliation and alienation. What was developed from the 17th to the 19th centuries was applied to Hispanics and Asians, Native Americans. In varying degrees, depending on what you wanted to do with this particular group.
Q. One of the themes the president listed when announcing the board was to "promote dialogue." What does that mean?
Illinois Issues November 1997 /25
It means we must discuss it the way we've never discussed it before. You see, we've never discussed race in this country. We say, "Oh, what do they want?" Or we say, "I'm not interested in that." Or we say, "Everything's fine."
My senior senator [Jesse Helms] says, "There are no race problems in the state of North Carolina. What's this all about?" If you feel that way, then you're not interested in it. That's what we've always done. What the President is trying to do is to rise above that. And to concede that this is a problem.
Any American who's lived here for 15 minutes ought to know there's a problem. That there's racial discrimination, that there's ethnic discrimination, that there are all kinds of discrimination that have been endemic in this country from the very beginning. And that it's been promoted and cultivated and preserved all these years. That's why one good thing for me is to see it in historical perspective.
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Q. So how do you have a dialogue with that person who says, "What's the big problem?" Is it realistic to think you can get through to that person? I don't know; I doubt it. But there are those persons whose minds are open. Or who are sitting on the fence. You'd be amazed; the mail is just pouring in. They're saying, "This is an important thing. What can we do?" Local groups, national groups. People volunteering, asking, "What can I do to help?" Maybe they haven't had this opportunity before, because maybe nobody ever broached the subject. This was something they never talked about. These people really want to do something about this, and they run into the millions and millions and millions. |
We might be able to create some kind of improved climate, maybe not ideal, but better than it has been.
Q. In your books, you've written that racism is ingrained in the American ethos, and you've asked, "Are blacks truly equal in America?" Do you think we're close to that? Audi/racism is ingrained in the American ethos, how do we change that?
I have faith in education. If people feel they are superior to someone else, it's out of ignorance. I believe if we can replace ignorance with knowledge we will be moving a long way.
When Thomas Jefferson said in 1782 that blacks had no power to reason, and that he had not seen black who had the capacity to understand the geometric propositions in Euclid, he was just showing his own ignorance.
In the first place, how many white men in 1782 could understand Euclid? How many of his neighbors knew Euclid? And how many blacks did he know that had no power to reason? He was the quintessential 18th century American, the man who was probably the most enlightened American. Certainly the most reasonable. And if he felt that way, what do you think the rest of them felt? And if he hands that down to the next generation, as he did, it merely reinforces the ignorance or the absence of information with respect to blacks.
What he did in the 18th century [went] on into the 19th century. And I'm not talking just about slavery. I'm talking about the development of the doctrine of racial superiority on the part of whites.
I hope it can be changed. But [it's] difficult because it's been so long. And it makes the historian's job and the job of the sociologist all the more difficult, because it's been an insidious, deliberate, committed effort to carry on a doctrine that is not only inhuman but uncivilized and ignorant.
Q. Clinton brought up the idea that there should be some government apology for slavery....
He didn't bring it up. Someone asked him about it.
Q. And he said, "I have to think about that:'
I think he said he would ask his advisory board about it [laughs].
Q. So how would the board advise him?
I can't speak for the advisory board. We haven't discussed that.
Let me just say this: I think you might have observed from what I said about the doctrine of racial superiority, that that looms more important than slavery in terms of perpetuating the notions about African Americans and other groups.
And if you were to apologize for slavery this afternoon, that wouldn't do anything about what's been going on since the 17th century regarding the inferiority of blacks or the superiority of whites.
I would rather talk about educating Americans.
26/ November 1997 Illinois Issues
