Black veterans of World War II were greeted at home with humiliation, trumped up charges, police and mob brutality, and lynching. Outrage festered in the black communities as the number of these incidents surmounted.  Blacks who remained in the military had their status worsened at the end of the war. Opportunities for training and advancement decreased. By October 1946, racial turmoil produced by segregation caused some of the youngest black enlisted men to riot (Nalty, 1986).

            The “Red Tails” or Tuskegee Airmen, found all airline positions closed to them. They, in turn, took on important responsibilities and leadership in the quest for greater access to political, economic, and social progress resulting from integration and greater institutional participation.  Some became institutional leaders, particularly after the “shackles of segregation” were broken.  Coleman Young became the mayor of Detroit for five terms (twenty years). Percy Sutton became Manhattan Borough President and was instrumental in the election of New York City’s first and only black mayor, David Dinkins, to date. Roscoe Brown rose to the presidency of Bronx Community College in New York City (Williams, 1992). 

Lee Archer, the group’s ace who was credited with shooting down five enemy planes stayed in the military for twenty-nine more years. He retired in 1970 as an Air Force colonel.  After retirement, Archer became a food company executive with General Foods and later became a member of Beatrice International’s board of directors. Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., the group’s commander, became the Air Force’s first Black Lieutenant General.

Daniel “Chappie” James became the first Black Four-Star General in the Air Force and Commander-in-Chief of the North American Air Defense Command (Nalty, 1986). These and other Tuskegee airmen distinguished themselves during the postwar period as they did during World War II. They stepped into the forefront of the struggle for civil rights and racial progress (Williams, 1992).

            The Tuskegee Airmen were an all black-segregated unit, which started out as an experiment to see whether blacks had the intelligence and courage to fly fighter planes. They were known as “Red Tails” for the number of enemy planes killed or damaged encompassing an outstanding combat record over Europe and North America, which includes the following:

• 15,000 mission
• Destroyed over 1,000 German aircrafts
• Received hundreds of Air Medals (Legions of Merit, Silver Stars, Purple Hearts, among other awards.)
• One Hundred and Fifty Distinguished Flying Crosses (Francis, 1993; Sandler, 1992).

Their first prominent postwar accomplishment was lobbying President Truman and the Demo-cratic Party to integrate the armed services.

            President Truman who succeeded FDR before the war was over and the Democratic Party pushed for the passage of a “Fair Deal” domestic plan to guarantee economic opportunity and social stability for the returning veterans. Since the Office of the Presidency was acquired and vehemently supported by blacks leaving the Republican ranks, Truman was politically and morally obligated to assist black veterans was well as white ones. In order to do so, Truman would have to oppose conservatives in both parties in order to provide equal treatment and opportunity for all returning veterans, regardless of race. The conservatives used filibusters to impede votes on Truman’s social programs and forcefully campaigned to defeat his reelection bid.  Conservatives, also, resorted to spending cuts and reducing taxes to under fund the Fair Deal.  When Truman sought reelection in 1948, they campaigned against him and polls reflected that Truman had no chance to retain his office (Berman, 1970; Gardner, 2002; McCoy, 1984; McCullough, 1992; Nalty, 1986); Strickland & Reich, 1974). 

            After black voters helped Truman retain his office in a tight Presidential race, Truman ordered the military to integrate, as soon as possible (Berman, 1970; Gardner, 2002; McCoy, 1984; McCullough, 1992).  The armed services did not “break the shackles of segregation” until the Korean War forced this change.  By that time, the top ranked military leaders found the Jim Crow system as divisive and an obstacle against an enemy with a superior number of troops, once the Chinese intervened (Nalty, 1986).

CIVIL RIGHTS STRUGGLE, 1955-1965

            The Civil Rights Movement was essentially an integrationist thrust that gave African Americans of all shades and Native American ancestry their first important accomplishments in breaking down the barriers to full participation in the U. S. society, as well as remove the penalties and other negative consequences of African ancestry. The Civil Rights Movement’s accomplishments included mass mobilization of people casted in the “dark light of oppression,” favorable executive orders and court rulings.  A Black Cultural Liberation Movement emerged in its wake demanding human rights, community control, social, intellectual, and economic development.  The integrationist Civil Rights Movement did produce activist and organizations, which would transform it into a nationalistic alternative (Karenga, 1989).

            The Brown v The Board of Education’s unanimous decision boosted the struggle by providing the legal foundation for the prohibition of segregation and its Jim Crow laws and practices. The justices found the “separate but equal doctrine” a violation of the fourteenth amendment whereby all citizens are entitled to the “equal protection of the law” and “due processes” before these rights could be abridged, on an individual basis. This decision “opened the door” to civil disobedience activities (boycotts, protest, marches, and sit-ins) to draw attention to Jim Crow state laws, local ordinances, and institutional practices that violated the justices ruling (Karenga, 1989).

            Respecting actions to challenge Jim Crow laws and practices that violated the Brown decision, the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 marked a key event in the civil rights struggle.  On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks courageously refused to give up her seat to a white man and was arrested for violating Montgomery, Alabama’s, discriminatory and humiliating Jim Crow ordinance. The church intervened in her behalf and brought in a young preacher, Martin Luther King, Jr., to lead a boycott.  The economic boycott of the local bus line dependent on black riders forced the City to integrate its bussing. This success by the black boycotter catapulted their leader, King, into the national spotlight ((King, 1958; Karenga, 1989).

            On February 1, 1960, four students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College in Greensboro began a sit-in movement against Jim Crow ordinances and practices in public restaurants, stores, and other facilities. They were spat on, insulted, had objects thrown at them, and more for a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Their actions marked a sustained period of activism and confrontation that lasted into defections in the 70s (Wolffe, 1972; Proudfoot, 1962; Karenga, 1989).

            By May 1961, another strategy was developed to challenge Jim Crow violations of the Brown decision and the fourteenth amendment concerning racial discrimination and segregation.  The Congress of Racial Equality developed the Freedom Rides to challenge the existing segregation laws and practices in transportation which forced blacks to the back of the bus and gave preference to all whites who wanted a seat.  Freedom Riders sat in seats irrespective of their race and gave no preference. In turn, they were assaulted and jailed in the South for violating ordinances and laws until the federal government intervened with hundreds of marshals and other federal officers (Karenga, 1989).

            In 1963, blacks and their allies launched a series of massive demonstrations to expose the contradictory treatment blacks confronted every day by the states and citizenry of the Old Confederacy. They demanded serious social change by 1963 the centennial year of the Emancipation Proclamation (Karenga, 1989).  In Birmingham, Alabama, marchers, including children, were brutalized before a national television audience as the media captured the hatred and abuse of Southern authorities. King was arrested and jailed among others.  In the Birmingham Jail, he wrote letters that would become an international catcall for social justice and catalyst for change.  In Washington, D. C., over 200,000 participants peacefully marched for jobs and freedom that would firmly galvanize the nation outside of the Old Confederacy against all vestiges of bigotry.

The Civil Rights Movement reached its apex of support by 1964 when the Civil Rights Act was passed.  It was the most far-reaching and comprehensive civil rights laws passed by Congress (Karenga, 1989). The attacks on civil rights activist leading a voter registration drive and a peaceful demonstrator by police officers during the March on Selma lead to the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The nation felt at that point it had done everything legally necessary to equalize the treatment of African Americans.  The civil rights coalition evaporated as the “white backlash” to changes in the racial “status-quo” elected Republican conservatives intent on retarding racial progress. Laws and decisions intended to protect the civil rights of historically excluded and discriminated minorities were used to ensure that the excluding majority (whites) could maintain its preference. The historically excluded are now being interpreted by a conservative jurist and administrations that secured their appointments from exclusionary conservatives as the discriminators or oppressors and the preferred/ privileged majority are now considered victims/oppressed. Subsequently, racial progress is deferred and most blacks are underdeveloped and forced to live in predominately segregated and underserved communities.

THE MOST PROMINENT BLACKS OF NATIVE AMERICAN DESCENT FROM THE CIVIL RIGHTS ERA THROUGH THE MILLENIUM

Rosa Parks

            In 1955, Rosa Parks, who was part Cherokee Creek Indian, became known as the Mother of the Civil Rights Movement for her personal act of civil disobedience against a racially humiliating ordinance.  She sparked a struggle that persist today in the quest for “fair treatment and access,” irrespective of race.  Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama, in violation of the Jim Crow ordinance to do so. The local ordinance dictated that blacks sit in the back of the bus in their own section and must sacrifice their seats to whites if their seats are occupied. The bus driver asked her to surrender her seat and when she refused he had her arrested.  The black clergy paid her fine and organized a boycott against the City’s bus line. They called on a young minister, Martin Luther King, Jr., to lead the bus boycott.  The City bus line depended on black riders that constituted most of their customers.  City revenues from the boycott were critically impaired.  Boycotters were dismissed from employment and leaders were threatened.  Nearly two years after the boycott started, the city of Montgomery agreed to integrate seating on its busses (Abdul-Jabbar, 1996; Benjamin, 1996; Meriweather, 1973; Rediger, 1996; Robinson, 1993). 

Rosa Parks’ maiden name was Rosa Louisa McCauley. She was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, the daughter of a carpenter and a schoolteacher.  Her libertarian views were influenced by her enrollment in the Montgomery Industrial Schools for Girls.  The school’s philosophy of self-esteem was consistent with her mother’s advice to take advantage of opportunities, ir-respective of the few available to people of color in a nation where race meant more than character (Abdul-Jabbar, 1996; Academy of Achievement, 2005; Benjamin, 1996; Meriweather, 1973; Rediger, 1996; Robinson, 1993).

            The young Rosa Louise McCauley attended Alabama State Teachers College. She married Raymond Parks and the couple settled in Montgomery, Alabama. Civic-minded, the couple joined the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). For years to come, the Parks worked quietly to improve the lot of African Americans in the staunchly segregated South (Abdul-Jabbar, 1996; Academy of Achievement, 2005; Benjamin, 1996; Meriweather, 1973; Rediger, 1996; Robinson, 1993).

            Crimes regarding flogging, peonage, murder, and rape by whites upon blacks in the South drew little attention.  But the Montgomery bus boycott initiated by the personal actions of Mrs. Parks drew international attention. The Supreme Court would intervene on the side of the boycotters by declaring that the Montgomery ordinance dictating racial segregation on public transportation and the fine imposed on Mrs. Parks for defying it violated the fourteenth amendment (Abdul-Jabbar, 1996; Academy of Achievement, 2005; Benjamin, 1996; Meri-weather, 1973; Rediger, 1996; Robinson, 1993).

            Mrs. Parks and her husband moved to Detroit in 1957 to serve on the staff of U. S. Representative John Conyers.  Mrs. Parks founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development. The Institute sponsors a yearly summer program called Pathway to Freedom.  Teenagers tour the country in buses under adult supervision. Participants learn the history of this country and the Civil Rights Movement from sites and human resources on the tour (Abdul-Jabbar, 1996; Academy of Achievement, 2005; Parks, 1992, 1997).

            Service to self and community development earned Mrs. Parks the NAACP’s Spingard Medal, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996, and the Congressional Gold Medal in 1999.  The Southern Christian Leadership had previously established an annual Rosa Parks Freedom Award in her honor (Academy of Achievement, 2005).

            After her death in 2005 at the age of 92, Mrs. Parks’ remains were placed in a casket that lay in state in the rotunda of the U. S. Capitol for two days, so the nation could pay its respects.  She was the first woman in American history to lie in state at the Capitol, an honor usually reserved for Presidents (Academy of Achievement, 2005).

Jesse Jackson

            After the Civil Rights Movement was pacified by laws assuring equal treatment and civil rights, Jesse Jackson, an aide of Martin Luther King, Jr., took the pulpit and podium left by the assassinated leader to lead the struggle into the millennium.  Jackson, a black leader with Native American ancestry, strove for black progress, freedom from racial oppression and hegemony, recognition, and respect. In order to do so, he developed a multiracial alliance known as the “rainbow coalition” consisting of the nation’s disposed and disenfranchised, irrespective of race (Burns, 2005; Henderson, (2002); Robert, 1991; Wilson, 1990). Jackson was born on October 8, 1941, in Greenville, South Carolina. His ancestry includes black slaves, a Cherokee, and a white plantation owner.  Young Jackson impressed his teachers as a charmer and a spirited competitor striving to be the best in everything.  In high school, Jackson was elected president of his class, the honor society, and the student council.  The adolescent Jackson was named a state officer of the Future Teachers of America, finished tenth in his class upon graduation, and lettered in football, basketball, and baseball (Reynolds, 1985; Henderson, 2002.

            In 1959, Jackson received an athletic scholarship to attend the University of Illinois.  After a year of dissatisfaction regarding the adverse racial climate on campus and the gridiron, he transferred to North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College a historically black institution of higher education.  At this college, Jackson quarterbacked their football team and became an honor student, fraternity officer, and president of the student body. He received a bachelor of arts in sociology and accepted a Rockefeller grant to attend the Chicago Theological Seminary. By 1968, Jackson was ordained as a Baptist minister, although he did not finish his coursework at the seminary.  In 1966, Jackson dropped-out of the seminary to commit himself to the Civil Rights Movement (Burns, 2005; Henderson, 2002; Robert, 1991; Wilson, 1990).

            Jackson’s initial involvement in the Civil Rights Movement occurred when he was a student at North Carolina “A & T.”  He joined the sit-ins at segregated lunch counters as a member of the Greensboro chapter of the Council on Racial Equality (CORE). By 1963, Jackson personally organized and staged marches, sit-ins, and mass demonstrations to push for the desegregation of local restaurants and theatres.  Jackson was elected president of the North Carolina Intercollegiate Council on Human Rights, field director of CORE’s southeastern operations and delegate to the Young Democrats’ National Convention as a result of the leadership demonstrated in the desegregation campaign. Jackson volunteered for the Coordinating Committee of Chicago Community Organizations in 1965.  In this role, he organized regular meetings of local black ministers and faculty of the Chicago Theological Seminary.  That very year, he joined Martin Luther King, Jr., and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (Burns, 2005; Henderson, 2002; Robert, 1991; Wilson, 1990).

            Jackson used his knowledge of Chicago and contacts within the black community to help the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) launch the Chicago freedom movement in 1966. Accompanying King and the SCLC, Jackson marched into hostile all-white communities to push for open housing. Jackson developed Leon Sullivan’s Operation Breadbasket to push white-owned businesses into contracting with black producers and hiring more black employees. After a year as its local coordinator, Jackson was named its national director.  Black Chicagoans won numerous concessions from white-owned businesses including products contracts and jobs (Frady, 1996; Henderson, 2002; House, 1988).

            In 1969 and 1970, Jackson led Illinois’ malnourished on marches to draw attention to and raise consciousness over the hunger issue. In 1971, he ran for mayor promising to overturn the city’s resistance to change and meeting the needs of the disadvantaged. He failed to obtain this office.  He did set an example for Harold Washington’s successful bid to become Chicago’s first black mayor in 1983 (Burns, 2005; Henderson, 2002; Robert, 1991; Wilson, 1990).

            In 1971, Jackson resigned from SCLC to create his own organization, People United to Save Humanity (PUSH).  His feuds with Ralph D. Abernathy, King’s successor as president of the SCLC, wore out his welcome with this organization. PUSH pursued the economic objectives of Operation Breadbasket and expanded into a national organization. SCLC was primarily a regional organization. PUSH engaged in direct action campaigns, weekly radio broadcasts, education, and actions to protect black homeowners, workers and businesses. PUSH spun off an Ex Cel program that focused on school retention and job placement for inner city youths (House, 1988; Todd, Blakely, & Jakoubek, 2004).

            In the 1980s, Jackson became a leading spokesman and advocate for Black Americans.  His voter registration drive was a key factor in the election of Harold Washington as Chicago’s first black mayor in 1983. Jackson and PUSH helped Harold Washington win a second term in 1987.  After achieving political access and influence through in Washington’s first term, Jackson decided to nationalize his campaign. He appealed for more and broader social programs, voting rights, and affirmative action for the poor and underserved victims of Reaganomics. His run to become the Democratic nominee attracted 3.5 million votes, a measure of power, recognition, and respect at the Democratic convention (House, 1988; Reed, 1986; Todd, Blakely, & Jakou-bek, 2004).

            Jackson’s second run for the presidency of the United State in 1988 included a stronger organization, greater funding, and respect from the Democratic Party’s elites. This time, Jackson attracted over 6.9 million votes from urban blacks and Hispanics, poor rural whites, farmers, and factory workers through the efforts of his Rainbow Coalition, which surprised media and political pundits who wrote him off as unelectable. His platform called for homes for the homeless, comparable worth and day care for women, a higher minimum wage, commitment to the family farm, an all-out war on drugs, health care, jobs, and education. During the Democratic primary, Jackson captured 5 southern states and Michigan, but Dukakis recaptured the lead and the nomination (House, 1988; Reed, 1986; Todd, Blakely, & Jakoubek, 2004).

After the 1988 election, Jackson moved his family to Washington, D. C. The family income increased tenfold as he accepted more lucrative speaking engagements on college campuses and CNN program, Both Sides, that paid him an estimated $800,000 per year for his perspective on national and international politics on a weekly basis. Over 2 million dollars was raised to pay-off his campaign debt in 2 years after the Democratic primary. The additional income from his notoriety, speeches, and perspectives helped him to fully finance his five children’s undergraduate and graduate education, comfortably (Burns, 2000; Henderson, 2002; Jackson & Jackson, 2004; Jackson & Watkins, 2001).

            By 1990, Jackson’s attention was focused on acquiring the position as the District of Columbia’s “statehood senator,” a position established by the city government to push Congress into granting statehood to the district. He did not seek reelection after his term as honorary senator ended in 1996.  (Burns, 2000; Henderson, 2002; Jackson & Jackson, 2004; Jackson & Watkins, 2001). Statehood is still being denied by a neoconservative majority in Congress on the basis that Washington, D. C., would be represented by black Democrats, like Jackson, and this would threaten their racial and political hegemony.

            In 1997, Jackson founded the Wall Street Project to strengthen the minority presence in the world’s financial capital. His organization lobbied companies for more business and employ-ment opportunities for minorities. In doing so, it focused on raising the conscientiousness among African American stockholders. The Wall Street Project lead by Jackson encouraged qualified blacks to run for openings on corporate boards of directors. Jackson hoped to provide shareholders with enough leverage to promote business opportunities and jobs for African Americans (Burns, 2000; Henderson, 2002; Jackson & Jackson, 2004; Jackson & Watkins, 2001).

            In 1979, Jackson traveled abroad to South Africa to encourage them to give up apartheid.  He also traveled abroad in the 80s and 90s to negotiate the release of political prisoners. In the Middle East on January 1984, he won the release of Lieutenant Robert Goodman. That same year, Jackson traveled to Cuba to negotiate the release of several political prisoners.  In 1990, Jackson brought hostages out of Iraq and Kuwait (Burns, 2000; Henderson, 2002; Jackson & Jackson, 2004; Jackson & Watkins, 2001).

            Jackson won a state department commendation for persuading Milsocovic in 1999 to release three U. S. soldiers to him. That same year, Jackson traveled to war-torn Sierra Leone.  He negotiated a cease-fire agreement between the government and rebels so that more than two thousand prisoners of war could be released (Burns, 2000; Henderson, 2002; Jackson & Jackson, 2004; Jackson & Watkins, 2001).

            A tireless leader who is fiercely committed to his causes, Jackson was never too far from controversy even when bedridden from his sickle-cell trait. He has offended some businessmen that felt his economic boycotts were a form of extortion. Others were offended by his negotiations with the Palestine Liberation Front and his connection to outspoken and controversial Minister Louis Farrakhan and his Black Muslims (Muwakkil, 2004). Yet, a consensus of national elites awarded him the Presidential Award of the National Medical Association, 1969; Humanitarian Father of the Year, 1971; Presidential Medal of Freedom, 2000; and numerous honorary doctorates (Burns, 2000; Henderson, 2002; Jackson & Jackson, 2004; Jackson & Watkins, 2001).

            During the millennium, Jackson and his organization are focusing their political activities on assuring the integrity of the black vote. Partisan tricks and widespread incompetence had evidently disenfranchised the black vote and assured a neoconservative victory for local, state, Congressional, and executive offices. The U. S. Commission on Civil Rights opinion regarding the suppression of the black vote in Florida did not support accusations made by Jackson and other civil rights leaders that the election was ridged. A shrewd overemphasis on preventing fraud “resulted in the inexcusable and patently unjust removal of disproportionate numbers of African American voters from Florida’s voter rolls (Rights Commission’s Report, 2001). There was no conclusive evidence that fraud was evident prior to the election other than partisan belief that the Democrats do not represent the true interest of Americans and their political strength is a result of fraud and mischief. Jackson and other progressive leaders found the overemphasis on fraud a guise to disqualify Democratic Party voters by neoconservatives. They also used other voter disenfranchisement, undercounts, ballot manipulation, and cover-ups by right-wing court appointee to undermine votes for the “social justice” platform of the Democratic Party.

            The trend to disenfranchise the black vote through electoral tricks, fraudulent voter disqualifications, ballot manipulation, rigging of voting machines, placing the most inoperable machines in black communities, and other election manipulations persist by conservative groups.    Jackson and his Rainbow Coalition was joined by People for the American Way, the NAACP and other progressive organizations in monitoring the election and gathered complaints that the Republican Party has again mounted a campaign to keep African Americans and other minority voters away from the polls in November, 2004. Blackbox.Org reported that voting irregularities opposed by Jackson and other civil rights leaders are foreseeable (Harris, 2004).            The 2004 presidential election was decided by Bush’s win in Ohio. Jackson was the first major national figure to demand a recount on the bases of irregularities, which disenfranchised the black vote in this state. The Republican Secretary of State, Kenneth Blackwell, a black conservative, denied the recount request. Kerry’s margin in 37 of 88 Ohio counties was suspiciously low compared to an unknown Democratic State Supreme Court candidate on the same ballot (Fitrakis & Wasserman, 2004). A neoconservative lead Congress and Administration have stalled the kind of election reform needed to mitigate voter disenfranchisement.

John Hope Franklin

            Dr. Franklin, the third most prominent black with Native American ancestry, was the James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of History. As the Dean of African American History, he was a black scholar with numerous articles and books chronicling a revisionist view of black history, primarily from American slavery through the Reconstruction Period. Franklin was born in Rentiesville, Oklahoma, during the World War I Era. In his autobiography, Mirror to America, Franklin recounts that his father staying on the Choctaw Nation where he was born and raised to be near his dying father. In 1903 Buck Franklin married Mollie, John Hope Franklin’s mother.  They moved back to the Indian reservation where Buck took correspondence courses in law and studied for the bar.  In Rentiesville, Oklahoma, his mother taught and his father became a lawyer.  Franklin’s father then proceeded to establish a legal practice and a new home in Tulsa prior to the Race Riot of 1921 (Franklin, 2005). 

Buck Franklin’s Tulsa office was torched along with the affluent black business district by envious white rioters (Franklin, 2005). The white rioters also killed 3,000 citizens and destroyed 600 successful businesses in the black community. The police joined them in their assault. There were 21 churches, 21 restaurants, 30 grocery stores, two movie theatres, a hospital, a bank, a post office, libraries, schools, law offices, half dozen private airplanes, and a bus system. The white vigilantes worked in consort with ranking city officials, and many sympathizers to burn down one of the most affluent black communities in the history of this nation. Most of the 5,000 black homeless residents who survived the assault by the mobs and police permanently left Tulsa. A large Black Indian population resided in the pre-riot community with an ancestry linked to a third of the inhabitants who survived the “Trail of Tears.” They had built a global business community until white envy erupted into the largest massacre of non-military Americans in the history of this country (Wilson & Wallace, 1995).

Buck Franklin rebuilt a law office in Tulsa representing black residents who tried to defend themselves, their families, and property from the white rioters. John Hope Franklin grew up in this hostile environment where racial insults and Jim Crow based injustices and humiliations were an integral part of black-white relations. His parents encouraged him to persevere and excel regardless of the limitations placed on his potential because of race and bigotry. Both parents also encouraged all the siblings to pursue higher education and goals. As a result, the quest to determine his own future, tell the true story of his people, and gain respect due, common to other prominent blacks with Native American ancestry, remained an intrinsic motive throughout an illustrious teaching, research, and publishing career (Franklin, 2005).

In high school, Franklin graduated valedictorian at the age of 16. He enrolled in Fisk University. His professors were so impressed by his scholarship that they borrowed money for room, board, tuition, and fees so Franklin could attend Harvard University. He attended and earned a master’s degree by 1936. Then, Franklin sought and was admitted to Harvard’s Ph. D. program in history, which he finished (Franklin, 2005).

During the World War II Era, when Jim Crow notions denying blacks jobs beyond supply and service, Franklin’s skills were contained in the wrong hue. Initially, Franklin tried to enlist and was told that his skills and color did not match openings. So Franklin avoided the draft by leaving St. Augustine College to accept a position at North Carolina Central College. His new employer recruited him by promising to and acquiring an exemption for him from military service (Franklin, 2005). 

In the 40s, Franklin began to publish numerous articles and books on African American History. The most noteworthy book From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans went from its first edition in the 40s through ninth edition in the 90s. Other noteworthy books he authored include: The Emancipation Proclamation, The Militant South, The Free Negro in North Carolina, Reconstruction After the Civil War, A Southern Odyssey: Travelers in the Antebellum North, Race and History: Selected Essays, 1938-1988, The Color Line: Legacy for the Twenty-first Century, and, My Life and an Era: The Autobiography of Buck Colbert Franklin, etc.,  (Franklin, 2005).

In the 50s, Franklin worked with Thurgood Marshall on the Brown v. Board of Education case. By 1956, he went to Brooklyn College as Chairman of its Department of History. He ran into discriminatory real estate practices when his family sought housing outside of the black ghettoes in Brooklyn. The New York residential experience was an unsatisfactory memory for the Franklin family (Franklin, 2005).

In 1964, Franklin accepted a faculty position at the University of Chicago.  From 1967 to 1970, he served as the Chairman of the Department of History. Franklin became the John Matthews Manly Distinguished Service Professor from 1969 to 1982. At that point, he became Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago (Franklin, 2005). During the 80s, Franklin became a Professor of Legal History in the Law School at Duke. He became the James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of History at this school and holds that distinct today. Duke University devoted a research center and collection in his name and honor (Franklin, 2005).

Franklin served on numerous professional and educational boards, as well as in various leadership positions. He was on the editorial board of the Journal of Negro History, member of the Board of Trustee of Fisk University, the Chicago Public Library, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association. He served as President of the following organizations:

• American Studies Association (1967)
• Southern Historical Association (1970)
• United Chapters of Phi Beta Kappa (1973-76)
• Organization of American Historians (1975)
• American Historical Association (1979) (Franklin, 2005).

Franklin’s service to the larger community includes appointments to the following:

• National Council on Humanities
• President’s Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy
• General Conference of UNESCO
• Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions at Cambridge University
• Consultant on American Education in the Soviet Union
• Fulbright Professor in Australia
• Lecturer in American History in the People’s Republic of China
• Chairman of the Advisory Board for One America: The President’s Initiative on Race (Franklin, 2005).

Franklin’s awards include the following:

• Jefferson Medal Awarded by the Council for Advancement and Support for Education

      (1984)

• Cleanth Brooks Medal of the Fellowship of Southern Writers (1989)
• Encyclopedia Britannica Gold Medal for Dissemination of Knowledge (1993)
• Charles Frankel Prize for contributions to the humanities (1994)
• Cosmos Club and Trumpet Awards from Turner Broadcasting Corporation (1994)
• W. E. B. Du Bois Award, Fisk University Alumni Association (1995)
• Organization of American Historians Award for Outstanding Achievement (1995)
• NAACP’s Spingarn Medal (1995)
• Presidential Medal of Freedom (1995)
• Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award (1997)

He also received 13 honorary degrees from various colleges and universities (Franklin, 2005).

DAWES CHALLENGES AND RETRENCHMENT

            The Civil Rights Movement coalition turned into various liberation movements after legal segregation was prohibited at all levels of the government. Mexican Americans, Native Americans, Black Americans and Women activist took the strategies they learned and applied them to cultural and cohort revolution designed to offset the white male hegemony that had subordinated their own self-esteem as much as it had barred institutional access and participation. Coalition members also diverted their energy, attention, and commitment to stopping the Vietnam War that defeated the War on Poverty more conclusively than the spread of communism. With the coalition leaders assassinated, discredited, or displaced, those that benefited by exclusion of coalition members reorganized their campaign, regained the presidency under Nixon and turned the concerns of legislators away from the “have-nots” toward the “haves.” Blacks with Native American particularly confronted this swing to the right when they tried to once again claim their tribal membership, culture, and traditions.

            The Dawes Act and Commission decisions established a “blood quorum.” As the right rose and their misinformation campaigns turned sympathy towards blacks, browns, and reds, generated by the Civil Rights Movement into apathy, “benign neglect,” and reemergence of Jim Crow policies separated so-called “full-blooded” Indians from those with African descent. With this lucrative market freed of former members, special amenities, like casinos and alcohol, flourished free of most taxes and state restrictions while fully occupied resort hotels and golf establishments on Indian reservations brought massive wealth to cooperating tribes.  Con-sequently, a coalition of greed formed between conservative tribal and community-at-large elites formed a monopolistic economic and political alliance extract this wealth for them.  Black Indians were further disenfranchised. Elites within the tribal councils and members of this conservative economic interest took away the voting rights and membership of Black Indians through tighter and more restrictive “blood quorums.” Constitutions were revised to reflect these changes in violation of Civil Rights Laws of 1964 and 1965 and previous treaties (Pierpoint, 2002).

            In addition to the windfall profits from unrestricted gambling and tax-free drinking, tribes, like the Seminoles, certain tribes through political brokers got rich from belated government payouts for lands taken through the Indian Removals Act and forced migration of the 1830s and 1840s. In the “Trail of Tears” removal a third of the inhabitants were Black Indians. Most of them possessed land allocated to them for a share of the crops they raised. The federal government interpreted all the Black Indians as landless slaves and the conservative tribal leaders agreed rather than share the belated payment for the land. In Florida, this meant that the federal government would pay the Seminoles 56 million for the land in 2002 disinherits the most Black Seminoles (CBS News, 2002).

            The disinheritance was verified by the actions of the Seminole tribal council under Chief Haney, who decided that most Black Seminoles did not meet the Dawes Commission’s “blood quorum” and were “landless slaves” when the Seminoles possessed the land. This decision was contrary to a non-Jim Crow interpretation of history and the truth.  Seminoles were unlike most tribes in the late eighteenth and nineteenth century when American and European contemporaries recognized them as a tribe. The Seminoles were formed in the eighteenth century by a mixture of Indians and runaway blacks that in early years were both captives of slavery in the Carolinas and had escaped together into Florida (Katz, 1986). 

The word Seminole is not even an Indian word. It is derived from Spanish word, Cimarron, referring to a “runaway slave.” Blacks and Indian Seminoles fought together against slave catchers and their militias through three bloody wars and were forced out of Florida together into the Indian Territory. But after nearly 200 years, Seminoles with apparent African features are denied any part of their inheritance (CBS News, 2002).

The Bureau of Indian Affairs now refers all Black Indian claims to the tribal councils who must meet the Department of Interior’s standard for recognition and eligibility for tax-free amenities. The standards for tribal admissions derived are in violation of treaties, fourteenth and fifteenth amendments. Yet, the excluded Black Seminoles continue to press for recognition, cultural participation, setting the record straight respecting ancestry and legacy over monetary gains.