Racial Equality/color Line

In 1976 John Hope Franklin delivered the prestigious Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities.  On the occasion of the Bicentennial, Racial Equality in America allowed Franklin to reflect on our nation's brutal history of racial discrimination.  His message was harsh:  with inequlity embedded in the roots of our land, the task of achieving racial equality would be a monumental one indeed.

Nearly twenty years after Racial Equlaity in American, Franklin addressed the issue of racial inequality.  In the Paul Anthony Brick Lectures given at the University of Missouri-Columbia, just one day after the "not guilty" verdict was returned in the trial of Los Angeles police officers for the beating of Rodney King, Franklin delivered a piercing depiction of the color line that persists in America.  A scathing portrait of how discrimination has been allowed to flourish and a poignantly despairing prognosis for its end, The Color Line:  Legacy for the Twenty-First Century is a perfect companion to the earlier volume.  Together these books powerfully define and describe the long-held, but still unrealized, goal of equal rights for all Americans.

John Hope Franklin is the author of many books, including From Slavery to Freedom:  A History of Negro Americans and the highly acclaimed biography George Washington Williams.  With more than ninety honorary degrees and dozens of other awards and honors, Franklin is the James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of History and, from 1985 to 1992, was Professor of Legal History in the Law School of Duke University.