John Hope Franklin died today at age 94. I met him years ago at a conference on race at Stanford. I don’t remember much about it, other than my father being really excited to be in the man’s presence. It wasn’t until later that I understood how important he was to legitimizing the study of African American history and chronicling it in scholarly manner.
I couldn’t hope to list Franklin’s many accomplishments here, but if you want to know more, relatively quickly, do watch this 2005 Charlie Rose interview. For a biography, go here.