Product Details

• Actors: John Hope Franklin
• Directors: Dick Young
• Producers: Dick Young
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
• Rated: Unrated
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Pbs Home Video
• VHS Release Date: January 12, 1999
• Run Time: 90 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• ASIN: 0780619994
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #361,101 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

The PBS video First Person Singular: John Hope Franklin explores in fascinating detail the life and work of distinguished African American historian, writer, teacher, and activist John Hope Franklin. The author of the bestseller From Slavery to Freedom: The History of African Americans has spent a lifetime "improving relations between the races in America by shedding light on our troubled past." Deemed "revisionist" history, the revolutionary scholarship that made Franklin's reputation stripped away generations of injurious myths about blacks perpetuated in films such as D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation.

The program presents Franklin's life as emblematic of the evolution of 20th-century African Americans. He began in a small, all-black Oklahoma town. His father relocated the family to Tulsa, but racists burned down their neighborhood. Through unstinting work and determination, Franklin made it to graduate school at Harvard University. But Harvard wouldn't let him live in a dormitory. In the 1950s, as the civil rights movement burgeoned, Franklin helped Thurgood Marshall win the crucial Brown v. The Board of Education desegregation case and marched with Martin Luther King Jr. Franklin won the Medal of Freedom and 105 honorary doctorates. Still, he remains a staunch "revisionist," as witnessed by these remarks to the National Foundation of Historians: "The ideology of the American Revolution was not really egalitarian.... The Declaration of Independence said nothing about the practice of trading in human flesh...." As the film powerfully illustrates, to John Hope Franklin history is no dry study, but a living instrument for social change. --Laura Mirsky

Product Description

This arresting documentary examines the life and work of 81-year-old John Hope Franklin, one of the most highly-respected historians of the African-American experience in the U.S. Perhaps most famous as the author of his book From Slavery to Freedom, Franklin holds the Medal of Freedom and 105 honorary degrees.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars OUTSTANDING HISTORIAN, September 8, 2000

By 

Bonita L. Davis - See all my reviews

This review is from: First Person Singular: John Hope Franklin [VHS] (VHS Tape)

One of the most extraordinary historian that the United States has ever produced has his life and times chronicled for posterity in this great production. Those who heard of the name John Hope Franklin probably remember him for his outstanding historical tome, "From Slavery to Freedom: The History of African Americans. Yet his contributions to the field of history moves beyond the dry pages of print. Franklin was a scholar, activist and researcher who was out to set the record straight in exploding the mythology regarding Blacks in the United States.

Along with Charles Kuralt, Dr. Franklin tells his story which is intertwined with the history in which he wrote. Never under the illusion that his work would instantly change minds, he states immediately that he hoped that if any thing he would try to change the world with his words. The grandson of a slave and the son of a lawyer disillusioned with America's segregation, Franklin originally set out to become a lawyer.

The influence of white professor's lecture at Fisk inspired him to change his mind. With the help of his white patron and sharp mind, Franklin went on to Harvard for graduate studies and received his degree. From there he began to chart his course in breaking down the racial barriers in his field, academia and society.

We are given a history lesson from him as he places his life in the overall context of what was going on in America. His mind was insightful, thorough, objective and critical of what he viewed throughout his eight decades of life. This is truly a great work in understanding the mind and life of a great American and Black historian.