Most of you do not know who John Hope Franklin is.

If you were a black child or young adult of school age in 1954 or ever after, you owe John Hope Franklin, along with Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP a debt that can only be paid with your high school diploma or college degree. For it was Franklin whose historical research laid the groundwork for overturning the doctrine of "separate, but equal." The landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision, Brown versus Topeka B.O.E. opened the doors to classrooms all over the country, north and south. To drop out of school is to dishonor Mr. Franklin and Mr. Marshall and all of the others who fought for your right to sit in the schoolroom and soak up all of the knowledge your brain can absorb.

"From Slavery to Freedom,"  a masterwork by any measure, is the historical record of a people's journey from the bowels of slave ships to Emancipation. John Hope Franklin, historian, integrated what had been the segregated world of "American History," by adding the rich and complex history of black America to the mix.

The Associated Press writes:

In November, after Barack Obama broke the ultimate racial barrier in American politics, Franklin called his ascension to the White House "one of the most historic moments, if not the most historic moment, in the history of this country."

Obama's achievement fit with Franklin's mission as a historian, to document how blacks lived and served alongside whites from the nation's birth. Black patriots fought at Lexington and Concord, Franklin pointed out in "From Slavery to Freedom," published in 1947. They crossed the Delaware with Washington and explored with Lewis and Clark.

The book sold more than 3.5 million copies and remains required reading in college classrooms. It was based on research Franklin conducted in libraries and archives that didn't allow him to eat lunch or use the bathroom because he was black. 

Before Franklin's book, black kids never knew that their early American ancestors did anything more than work plantations or tinker with peanuts. They would never know the excitement of reading about someone who looked like them doing exciting things like blazing a trail across the wilderness, or mapping a river or seeing the Pacific Ocean for the first time. The Revolutionary War was devoid of black patriots. They would not hear of incredible bravery  and resourcefulness and resilience and yes, defiance: escaping slavery by traveling north, following the cryptic signals of patchwork quilts pointing the way to freedom. Before John Hope Franklin, there was no Black History Month, nor Week nor Day. In so many of those classrooms there was no black history at all.

While others sought and still seek to rewrite and revise history -- black history and American history, calling it "Up From History," -- Franklin told the whole story, warts and all, of our collective history.

To learn more about this fascinating and cherished American, vist the tribute to this remarkable man at Duke University. 

 John Hope Franklin died today at age 94.