Franklin's lasting gift to black people - and America

The black community — and the world — said goodbye to someone wonderful this past week. His death gives us a particular sadness — sadder even still is the fact that too many of us did not even know who he was.

Last Wednesday, John Hope Franklin died at Duke University Medical Center in Durham. He was 94.

Franklin was far more than just another university professor. His body of work — most notably the 1947 classic, “From Slavery to Freedom” — was considered the forerunner and template by which all other chronicles of the black American experience sprang up.

That is an understatement.

During his notable career, he taught history at a long list of prestigious postings. He headed the President’s Commission on Race under President Clinton and even received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Franklin once wrote, “You cannot understand the world as it is, until you understand the world as it was.”

In describing his own role he once noted, “We must go beyond the textbooks, out into the bypaths and untrodden paths of the wilderness, and travel and explore and tell the world the glories of our journey.”

His was indeed a splendid journey.

But here is the really sad part of our story. During a Google search for this column, I came upon — quite by accident — a column by my friend and Pulitzer-prize winning columnist Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald. Part of what he wrote is worth sharing here.

Pitts calls “criminally brief” Black Entertainment Television’s Web site coverage of Franklin’s death, almost as if it were only a footnote. He goes onto recount a posting on the Web site message board asking the moronic question, “Was this guy related to Aretha Franklin?”

The irony is heartbreaking, yet at the same time alarming.

If we as a community continue to fail to embrace and acknowledge that which is worthy and most beautiful among us, do we risk becoming a semi-permanent sub-class in this country?

Again, the words of Franklin: “If the house is to be set in order, one cannot begin with the present, he must begin with the past.”

Still, I suppose Franklin’s name never became a household word because he went about his work with a quiet elegance and gracious dignity, unlike some of our so-called leaders today who appear much like brass bands with tones that are often either too loud or too sharp.

Instead, he did his work with the same contemplated thoughtfulness that he tended his beloved orchids — something he loved nearly as much as the history of his people. We owe him a great debt.

In a much broader sense, one can postulate that the fact that we now even have a black president may be due in part to the work of Franklin — who was born when Woodrow Wilson was still in office — for he gave rise to countless others. One of those who would come later on was Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.

It is somewhat ironic that Gates was featured this past weekend on C-Span (not BET) discussing his latest book.

Gates candidly told the story of a conversation that he and his father had one night while passing a jammed-packed community basketball court. The elder Gates reportedly said, “If we studied calculus like we study basketball, we’d be running MIT.”

It is plainly obvious that too many of us are simply watching too many of the wrong channels — both literally and figuratively. Goodbye, Dr. Franklin. Sleep now. You’ve earned your rest. The rest is up to us.

• John M. Fisher of Danville is a businessman, documentary filmmaker and freelance writer, and is the former bureau chief for KDFW, a CBS affiliate in Fort Worth, Texas. You may contact him at johnfisher@john-fisheronline.com.