M i r r o r   t o   A m e r i c a

The Autobiography of

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN

(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005)

 

 

The final year at Chicago, I was invited to deliver several spring commencement addresses, but without question the most meaningful was the one I gave at the University of Chicago on the eve of my departure. The preceding November, Hanna Gray had invited me to be the speaker at the spring convocation on June 13 and 14, 1980. Since most members of the university community knew that I was retiring at the end of the spring term, perhaps they regarded this final address of mine as something of a valedictory. I certainly did, and I put much time and thought into the twelve and a half minutes that Hanna had allowed me.

 

My subject was “Clio’s Vision,” and I began by pointing out that Hesiod, the Greek poet, referred to Clio, the muse of history, as the “proclaimer.” Customarily concerned with the past, Clio was known for looking backward, not forward. However, as one of her proclaimers for more than forty years, and as a historian taking leave of his formal teaching responsibilities, on this occasion I would dare to think of Clio as having a vision of the future. This might even be fitting, since Clio had not proved very successful in teaching us the lessons of the past.

 

“Two centuries ago,” I began, “we . . . fought a war for independence and freedom, but we did so while holding fast to human bondage, which was infinitely worse and more despicable than any form of political subordination . . . We hobbled through the ensuing seventy-five years getting deeper into an impossible rationalization for the maintenance of slavery. In expanding our territory in the middle of the nineteenth century, we despoiled the rights of our neighbor to the south and created a legacy of distrust and suspicion that has clouded the relations of the two countries from that day to this.” I went on to point out that in the twentieth century we fought the First World War to make the world safe for democracy, and in its wake there emerged some of the most inhumane practices the world has ever seen, in the form of Italian fascism and German Nazism. A generation later we fought another war to preserve the Four Freedoms, but at that war’s end we witnessed the suppression of personal and religious freedom in many places, most notably Stalinism abroad and McCarthyism at home.

 

I would be the first to admit, I said, that some good was emerging. Organizations and individuals sought to assist the helpless and the powerless, while some governments sought to mete out justice and economic resources. I would hope that Clio, resting firmly on her vast knowledge of the past, might state clearly and unequivocally the implications of past events for the future. She might point out that the deeds that nations and peoples commit in the name of civilization are, as often as not, misdeeds, and the scars of the misdeeds often have virtual permanence. History was replete with examples. “When one nation enslaves another people for the ostensible purpose of civilizing them, that nation merely reveals its own barbarity and invites the eternal wrath of the enslaved. When one nation assists another in gaining its independence and then is the first to exploit the fledgling nation, not only were the older nations’ motives devoid of altruism, but its future unhappy relations with the new nation had already been predetermined by its crude and selfish conduct. When a nation’s armed forces attack and bomb an innocent people in the name of . . . outflanking some formidable enemy, it invites the scorn of the victims as well as the bystanders.”

 

I suggested that Clio must watch with interest, even distress, as she observes the world’s refusal to heed the lessons of history. “Over and over again she has recounted with pain how and why the peoples of the world have, on occasion, acted more like lower animals than human beings . . . It is about time that we took a careful look at what I call Clio’s vision of the future, her view of the consequences that will inevitably flow from our experiences and activities in the past and present. From where Clio sits the vision of the future is not bright . . . She invites the Classes of 1980 not to wring their hands in despair or to make simply gestures of apology . . . but to be as active as it is humanly possible to be in attacking and solving the problems of our time. For example, the volcano of Mount St. Helens is beyond our capacity to control. The time bombs of our so-called inner cities were built by man, and he has both the power and resources to dismantle them. He only needs the will!”

 

Increasingly, however, I feared that not only was the will lacking but an uglier, more cynical use of history was at work. Following Ronald Reagan’s nomination as the Republican Party’s 1980 presidential candidate, he and his handlers made the calculated decision to stage his first campaign speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi. It was a town almost exclusively significant as the place where three civil rights activists—Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and James Chaney—were murdered in 1964 by police-protected Ku Klux Klan members. Far from decrying this despicable event, Reagan picked this town, of all places, to voice his support for states’ rights, by then the well-established code for a candidate’s willingness to turn a blind eye to local racism. Whatever else my retirement would bring, I was certain of one thing: it could not entail any complacency in America’s ongoing struggle for civil rights and race-blind equality. (pages 290-92).

 

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In the ninety years that I have observed the human condition I have attempted diligently to understand the foibles and peculiarities of my fellows, especially my fellow Americans. There have been times when I was on the verge of giving up, when I doubted that I would ever gain more than a glimmer of insight that would encourage me to persist in my quest. I looked around me—at my contemporaries and fellow sufferers. There they were, many of them privileged all their lives, who had little or no interest in the well-being of their fellows. When many of them met their underprivileged, underserved compatriots, some in poor health, they would pass on the other side of the street. Too many were indifferent, insensitive, even uncaring to take notice of the disadvantaged among them.

 

The longer I live the more I am inclined to question the capability of the human race to be consistent in its judgment and unswerving in its commitment to lofty, constructive principles. We point with pride to the historic congressional legislation and Supreme Court decisions against racial discrimination. But racial discrimination and even racial segregation continue in blatant as well as subtle forms. Racial imbalance in the schools, described now as reflecting parental “preferences” rather than inequity, persists in every part of the country. The glass ceiling is very much intact when African Americans seek employment or promotion on the basis of skills and proficiency. Discrimination in housing continues not only in so-called upper-class neighborhoods but in low-income neighborhoods as well. Indeed, low-income neighborhoods where the majority of African Americans live are without the agencies and organizations that encourage ambition and nurture lofty goals. In such areas, reform is more a verbal expression than a committed goal. . . .

 

We cannot have a healthy and wholesome society as long as the young black male is alienated. . . .

 

The rehabilitation and redirection of young black males is not the sole responsibility of their more advantaged senior brethren. After all, our society as a whole and the fate of the least among us are inextricably woven together. And our entire social system bears the special responsibility for the current plight of these young people who, in a very real way, may be regarded as a metaphor for the ills of our society and the problems we face. It was the nation’s slave policy, even before it was a nation, that sealed their fate and the fate of the nation. It was the nation’s erection of apartheid society after slavery that made them pariahs of the land, thus hanging a chain of dishonesty and hypocrisy around the nation’s neck. It was a national economic policy that withheld from them opportunities to train for jobs requiring technical skills and special responsibilities that modern America could provide. In so doing, the nation deprived itself of much needed manpower and condemned this group that had played such a valiant role in building the nation to the lowest possible place in the social order to become a burden and a drag on the progress and well-being of the nation. And it was national policy that permitted its citizens to badger them, goad them, and humiliate them to the point that they could not be easily reached. But they must be reached, through legislation, goodwill, understanding, and compassion. The test of an advanced society is not in how many millionaires it can produce, but in how many law-abiding, hardworking, highly respected, and self-respecting loyal citizens it can produce. The success of such a venture is a measure of the success of our national enterprise. (pages 378-82)