JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN

Franklin (1915- ), the preeminent African American historian, was born in Rentiesville, Oklahoma, and earned his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University in 1936 and 1941 respectively. He has taught at Fisk University, St. Augustine's College, North Carolina College, Howard University, Brooklyn College, Cambridge University, the University of Chicago, and Duke University. In 1947, he published From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans, a study that is widely considered to be the definitive work on the subject. Franklin also served on the team that helped develop the 1954 Supreme Court decision ending the legal segregation of black and white children in public schools. Franklin was named the James B. Duke Professor of History at Duke University in 1982, and elected the James B. Duke Professor of History Emeritus in 1985, the same year he joined the Duke Law School as a professor of Legal History. Franklin delivered State Department and United States Information Service lectures in over 34 countries, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1995. In his honor, the John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary and International Studies opened at Duke University in 2000.

ANNETTE GORDON-REED

Gordon-Reed became fascinated with history when she was 12 years old and read a book that mentioned Thomas Jefferson’s relationship with Sally Hemings. Years later she used her training as a lawyer to analyze the evidence, publishing her book on the subject in 1997 after examining every piece of information on a question historians have pondered for almost 200 years. Gordon-Reed came to the conclusion that it was probable, even highly likely, that Sally Hemings and Jefferson had a relationship that lasted almost 40 years and produced six children.

Bibliography
Gordon-Reed, Annette. Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy. Charlottesville, Va.: University Press of Virginia, 1997.

DARLENE CLARK HINE

Hine is the John A. Hannah Professor of History at Michigan State University and one of the foremost African American historians in the country. She has written or co-authored books on the history of African American women and has won awards and prizes for her outstanding publications.

BENJAMIN QUARLES

Quarles (1904-1996) was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1941. To counter the accusation that African-American history lacked sufficient primary sources for serious research and writing, Quarles confirmed the existence of a rich documentary of African-American life. His first scholarly article, “The Breach Between Douglass and Garrison,” appeared in the Journal of Negro History in 1938 and spotlighted his interest in race relations. His essays in the Mississippi Valley Historical Review in 1945 and 1959 were the first from a black historian to appear in a major historical journal. His other articles studied relationships between blacks and whites, for example the topics of African-American connections with Lincoln and John Brown, as well as black contributions to the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and abolitionism. He also wrote to history textbooks.

Suggested Link
http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/703/Dedicated_historian_Benjamin_Quarles