Abstract
Franklin’s heartfelt description of John Hope’s positive and inspirational influence in the moral, civic, and personal lives of his parents, qualities passed along to Franklin as “honorable precepts of living,” affectionately expressed the charismatic power of John Hope. True humility undergirded Hope’s notions of “honorable precepts of living.” Perhaps this humility, so unlike the flamboyance of Du Bois or the political artfulness of Booker T. Washington, diminished Hope in the public eye as well as in history books. Even the academic world of higher education studies, particularly black higher education, seemed blind to the depth of influence John Hope had as an educational leader of the early twentieth century.
I knew of most of the major principles in their lives for which my parents gave credit to Dr. Hope: absolute equality without delay; staunch support for his close friend W. E. B. Du Bois; the highest and most rigorous standards for our schools and colleges, if their graduates were to compete successfully in the larger world; impeccable public and private morality, if blacks were to eradicate unjust accusations of laxity and licentiousness. There were other principles—some large, some small—that also became a part of the honorable precepts of living my parents recited almost daily and attributed to Dr. Hope.
—John Hope Franklin1
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Notes
John Hope Franklin, in Leroy Davis, A Clashing of the Soul: John Hope and the Dilemma of African American Leadership and Black Higher Education in the Early Twentieth Century, with a foreword by John Hope Franklin (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1998), ix.
Raymond B. Fosdick, Henry F. Pringle, and Katherine Douglas Pringle, Adventures in Giving: The Story of the General Education Board (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), 197; Wallace Buttrick to John Hope, June 10, 1906, box 58, folder 520, GEB, RAC; and Abraham Flexner to James Bertam, May 5, 1919, box 59, folder 522, GEB, RAC.
Rayford Logan, in Ridgely Torrence, The Story of John Hope, with an introduction by Rayford Logan (New York: Macmillan, 1948; reprint, New York: Arno and The New York Times, 1969), iii;
Torrence, Story of John Hope, 184; and Edward A. Jones, A Candle in the Dark: A History of Morehouse College (Valley Forge, Pennsylvania: Judson, 1967), 82.
Myrdal, in his study An American Dilemma, noted that blacks of “mixed bloods” had “always been preferred by the whites in practically all respects.” He added that these blacks “made a better appearance to the whites and were assumed to be mentally more capable.” Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, vol. 2, with a new introduction by Sissela Bok (New York: Harper & Row, 1944, 1962; reprint, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1996), 696.
David Levering Lewis, The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919–1963 (New York: Henry Holt, 2000), 137.
Mark Bauerlein, Negrophobia, A Race Riot in Atlanta, 1906 (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2001), 433;
Clifford M. Kuhn, Harlon E. Joye, and E. Bernard West, Living Atlanta: An Oral History of the City, 1914–1948, foreword by Michael Lomax (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1990), 37;
and Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois, 333. Franklin noted other cities had race riots around this time as well: Springfield, Ohio (1904), Brownsville, Texas (1906), and Springfield, Illinois (1908). John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of American Negroes, 2nd ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964), 433–435.
Gary M. Pomerantz, Where Peachtree Meets Sweet Auburn: The Saga of Two Families and the Making of Atlanta (New York: A Lisa Drew Book/Scribner, 1996), 73.
Michael Bieze, Booker T. Washington and the Art of Self-Representation (New York: Peter Lang, 2008), 123.
Booker T. Washington to Andrew Carnegie, November 13, 1909, in Louis Harlan, ed., The Booker T. Washington Papers, 1909–1911 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1981), 600.
Ibid., 91; Benjamin Brawley, The History of Morehouse College (Atlanta, Georgia: Morehouse College, 1917), 105.
Clarence A. Bacote, The Story of Atlanta University: A Century of Service, 1865–1965 (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1969), 275; Davis, Clashing of the Soul, 188. See Lewis, W. E. B, Du Bois, 387.
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© 2013 Vida L. Avery
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Avery, V.L. (2013). John Hope: Hallmark of the Truest Greatness. In: Philanthropy in Black Higher Education. Philanthropy and Education. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137281012_4
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