[2] John Hope Franklin graduated from Booker T. Washington High School (then segregated) in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Buck Franklin is best known for defending African-American survivors of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, in which whites had attacked many blacks and buildings, and burned and destroyed the Greenwood District.

[4] In 2015, Buck Franklin's previously unknown written eyewitness account of the 1921 Greenwood attack, a 10-page typewritten manuscript, was discovered and subsequently obtained by the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture.

"[6] His career demonstrated a strong professional black life in the West, at a time when such accomplishments would have been more difficult to achieve in the Deep South.

[6] "My challenge," Franklin said, "was to weave into the fabric of American history enough of the presence of blacks so that the story of the United States could be told adequately and fairly."

In his autobiography, Franklin has described a series of formative incidents in which he confronted racism while seeking to volunteer his services at the beginning of the Second World War.

Afterward, Franklin took steps to avoid the draft, on the basis that the country did not respect him or have an interest in his well-being, because of his color.

[7] In the early 1950s, Franklin served on the NAACP Legal Defense Fund team led by Thurgood Marshall, and helped develop the sociological case for Brown v. Board of Education.

This case, challenging de jure segregated education in the South, was taken to the United States Supreme Court.

David Levering Lewis, who has twice won the Pulitzer Prize for history, said that while he was deciding to become a historian, he learned that Franklin, his mentor, had been named departmental chairman at Brooklyn College.

The book is composed of three lectures, given in three different cities, in which Franklin chronicled the history of race in the United States from revolutionary times to 1976.

These lectures explore the differences between some of the beliefs related to race with the reality documented in various historical and government texts, as well as data gathered from census, property, and literary sources.

In 2006, Mirror to America received the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights Book Award, which is given annually to honor authors "whose writing, in illuminating past or present injustice, acts as a beacon towards a more just society.

"[15] In 2006, he also received the John W. Kluge Prize and as the recipient lectured on the successes and failures of race relations in America in Where do We Go from Here?

He was an early beneficiary of the fraternity's Foundation Publishers, which provides financial support and fellowship for writers addressing African-American issues.

Franklin had previously rejected Duke's offer to name a center for African-American Studies after him, saying that he was a historian of America and the world, too.

[29] In 1995, President Clinton awarded Franklin the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.

[3] The President's remarks upon presentation of the medal cited Franklin's lifelong work as a teacher and a student of history, seeking to bring about better understanding regarding relations between whites and blacks in modern times.

[35] In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante included Franklin on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.

On May 20, 2006, Franklin was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters at Lafayette College's 171st Commencement Exercises.

It includes a 27-foot bronze entitled Tower of Reconciliation by sculptor Ed Dwight, expressing the long history of Africans in Oklahoma.

The posthumous recognition was bestowed upon 29 individuals "whose dedication, accomplishments and passion have helped shape Durham in important ways.