DURHAM, N.C.--A vivid image came to John Hope Franklin's mind when then-Gov. L. Douglas Wilder approached him in the early 1990s about creating a museum to tell the story of slavery.
It should be built in Jamestown and the museum itself should be a slave ship, he thought almost immediately.
"This would be a dramatic presentation of the way in which slavery began in this country," Franklin recalled during a recent interview on the campus of Duke University, where he is the James B. Duke Professor of History Emeritus.
Franklin, a tall, thin man with an easy smile and a razor-sharp mind, saw the plan as ideal for one simple, practical reason: "You wouldn't have to imagine. That's where it pulled up."
Jamestown is where the first slaves came ashore, where they first tasted life in a land others saw as a beacon of freedom and opportunity.
When Wilder settled on Fredericksburg as his museum site in October 2001, Franklin--now a member of the museum's board of directors--was disappointed but accepting.
"I said, 'Well, it's pretty far up the river, but I hope the museum could be a slave ship,'" he said. "It's not going to be that now, I know. But I still think it was a pretty good idea."
Though Fredericksburg wasn't Franklin's first pick for the museum, the 89-year-old author and scholar does have fond memories of the city that sits on the shores of the Rappahannock River.
It was there that he and his wife Aurelia spent their wedding night--June 11, 1940--in the city's Rappahannock Hotel.
And it was there that Franklin knew of a gas station that would allow him to use the restroom as he journeyed between his home in North Carolina and points north in the days before Civil Rights legislation.
"In the black community, this was known--where you could and could not stop," he recalled.
So, with those memories, Franklin said Fredericksburg "has a special place in my heart." In his mind, it has just one problem as far as being the right home for the U.S. National Slavery Museum that Executive Director Vonita Foster said will open in three years.
"The alternative was attractive in every way but being in Jamestown," he said.
Eminent historianJohn Hope Franklin was born in Oklahoma 50 years after slavery was abolished. An avid student, he received his bachelor's degree in history from Fisk University at the age of 20 and then went on to Harvard for his master's and doctorate.
Though the scholarly work he is most associated with is "From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans," it is a text Franklin didn't seek to write.
In fact, when Alfred A. Knopf publishing company first approached the young historian shortly after World War II, he turned it down. It took a personal visit and a $500 advance to persuade Franklin it was indeed time for such an undertaking.
Today, 57 years after its first printing, the book is in its eighth edition, has been printed in several languages and continues to be popular with scholars and casual readers alike.
"Many of my colleagues and I consider it to be the Bible in importance to the field," said Darlene Clark Hine, who is the Board of Trustees Professor of African American Studies at Northwestern University and considers Franklin her mentor and friend.
But that text is just one of the prolific writer's works on U.S. history. He has written numerous articles and books, including "Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation," a recent collaboration with a former student to dispel myths about slavery.
His legacy includes having an institution--the John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary and International Studies--created in his honor on the Duke campus. His personal and professional papers now make up a special collection in the university's library where a large oil painting of him is also displayed.
That painting, by Washington artist Simmie Knox, depicts Franklin wearing the Presidential Medal of Freedom awarded him by President Clinton in 1995 and shows a framed picture of Franklin's wife at his side.
Aurelia Whittington Franklin died in January 1999. The couple had been married 581/2 years and have one son, John Whittington Franklin, an anthropologist with the Smithsonian Institution.
Historians and museum experts alike call John Hope Franklin "the pre-eminent historian" of African-American history. But they say his "scrupulous" scholarly work and his lengthy teaching career take him far beyond that.
"For so long, the profession used to label black scholars as 'great black historians' or 'great African-American historians' as if that meant something different in excellence of scholarship," said John Fleming, who has worked in the field for decades. "He was one of the most outstanding and prominent American scholars."
Nell Painter, the Edwards Professor of American History at Princeton University and an associate of Franklin's for three decades, echoed that sentiment, saying his research has crossed all color lines, thus adding to his credibility as a historian.
"He is one of the towering giants," she said.
Having entertainer Bill Cosby on its board gives the museum an icon of popular culture with a philanthropic bent. Franklin's presence gives it cachet in the academic world.
"He has the breadth of knowledge of African-American history from slavery to the present that few people can challenge or match," said Hine, who has known Franklin since the 1970s. "It was an inspired choice--but at some level, it was a no-brainer."
One man's visionFranklin's vision for a slavery museum is a facility that keeps its focus squarely on American slavery in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.
To tell that story, the author of the seminal text on African-American history said a handful of subjects needs to be addressed. The first would be the slave trade and the expansion of slavery through the Colonies.
He would also show how American society was transformed as a result of slave labor. And he would teach visitors about the nation's internal strife over the extension and expansion of slavery.
Finally, he would address the end of slavery, brought about by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified on Dec. 6, 1865.
Unlike Jacob Dekker, another of the museum's seven board members, Franklin has no interest in addressing present-day slavery. He also has no interest in expanding the museum's focus to address other experiences of African-Americans.
Franklin believes a dramatic and factual telling of the story of American slavery will provide the prism through which visitors can understand other race-related issues.
"I think, if we do this right it will illuminate all these later struggles," he said.
Franklin has no doubt this nation needs a museum devoted to the institution of slavery and no doubt Virginia is where it should be built.
"It's long, long, long overdue," he said.
Franklin's focus isn't on fund raising. It isn't on the nuts and bolts of how to get a museum built and operating. His expertise is history and his intent is that the story told will be authentic, authoritative and on target.
When asked his biggest concern, Franklin's reply was immediate.
"We spread ourselves out too thin--and therefore become competitors with all the other museums," he said. "I want us to have a special mission."
Successfully telling the story of slavery is a mission that requires educating the public effectively and dramatically, Franklin said.
That is why he keeps coming back to the image of a ship.
He sees that as the literal and symbolic vehicle for the story because that is how the slaves arrived--first to Virginia and later to ports in cities such as Charleston, S.C., and New Orleans.
Architect Chien Chung Pei designed the three-story structure with a full-size replica slave ship as its centerpiece, but Franklin isn't certain that will be as powerful as his vision.
"I want to give some notion of what it meant to be wrenched away from your home and packed in like sardines and be dragged to an unknown world," he said.
"We talk about the ships from Europe coming in, and people coming in to the promised land. This was different."
To reach PAMELA GOULD: 540/657-9101 pgould@freelancestar.com