Scholar Who Lived Black History Dead at 94

Influential historian John Hope Franklin died yesterday at 94. The author of a seminal book on race, Franklin was born and raised in an all-black community in Oklahoma, marched in Selma, and assisted on a Brown v. Board of Education brief. "He managed to embody this history and yet recount it with extraordinary candid honesty," writes friend Walter Dellinger in the Washington Post.

Franklin—who taught at Duke, Howard, and Brooklyn College—left his stamp on American history, and it was a compassionate one. "He looked at those who opposed him and saw fellow human beings," Dellinger recalls. "Our hearts are broken around here," a fellow Duke professor told the Raleigh News & Observer.
(More John Hope Franklin stories.)