The University of South Florida-St. Petersburg recently endowed the John Hope Franklin Professorship in Southern History to enhance the institution's commitment to liberal arts and to honor the 1995 Presidential Medal of Freedom winner.
The 84-year-old civil rights scholar graduated from Fisk University and received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1941. His 1947 book, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans is now in its eighth edition and has sold over 4 million copies. In 1954, he assisted NAACP attorneys in their preparation for the Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation suit. The following year, he became chair of the history department at Brooklyn College, the first African American to hold such a position at a traditionally White higher education institution.
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