[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 60 (Thursday, April 23, 2009)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E960-E961]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      HONORING JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                            HON. STEVE COHEN

                              of tennessee

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, April 21, 2009

  Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the life and 
achievements of noted historian and visionary, John Hope Franklin.
  I have a copy of Professor John Hope Franklin's book From Slavery to 
Freedom: A History of African Americans in my office. The manual has 
been an invaluable reference text for me for many years. It was one of 
my college textbooks while I was an undergrad at Vanderbilt University 
in Nashville, Tennessee.
  Born in 1915 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, John Hope Franklin was the grandson 
of a slave. He went on to become one of the most prolific chroniclers 
of civil rights history in America.
  Professor Franklin was just 4 or 5 years old when he witnessed the 
horror of the Tulsa Race riots of 1921. Under Chairman Conyer's 
Judiciary Committee, I was fortunate enough to meet Professor Franklin 
in 2007. He came to testify in a hearing before Congress urging the 
passage of legislation that would clear the way for survivors of the 
riots in the Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa to sue. The hearing's main 
effort was to extend the statute of limitations survivors' claims.
  John Hope Franklin was a graduate of Fisk University, a historically 
African-American university in my home State of Tennessee; he received 
his Ph.D. from Harvard University.
  In 1956, Dr. John Hope Franklin became the first African-American 
Chairman of the History Department at the all-white Brooklyn College.
  Dr. Franklin's research contributed to the success of Thurgood 
Marshall and the Legal Defense Fund. Officially, Dr. Franklin was a 
part of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund team that helped develop the 
historic Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case that forever 
changed the face of public education in this country.
  In 1982, he became the first African American professor to hold an 
endowed chair at Duke University.
  In 1995, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest 
civilian honor in our country. Dr. Franklin received the National 
Freedom Award in 2007 from the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, 
Tennessee for his influence over the state of civil and human rights in 
America.
  Dr. John Hope Franklin has been honored by the nation's two oldest 
learned societies, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the 
American Philosophical Society.
  John Hope Franklin integrated the African American narrative into the 
fabric of American history. He made us recognize that African American 
history is the history of all of us.
  Currently the Judiciary Committee, Chairman Conyers, and I are 
working on H.R. 1843, the John Hope Franklin Tulsa-Greenwood Race Riot 
Claims Accountability Act of 2009. H.R. 1843 provides that any 
Greenwood, Oklahoma, claimant (a survivor or heir/descendent of victims 
of the Tulsa, Oklahoma, Race Riot of 1921) who has not previously 
obtained a determination on the merits of a Greenwood claim may, in a 
civil action commenced within five years after enactment of this Act, 
obtain that determination. Simply put, this is the legislation that 
stemmed from the 2007 hearing where I met Professor Franklin. This 
legislation extends the statute of limitations for survivors and 
survivors' claims.
  Thank you, John Hope Franklin.

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