John Hope Franklin: Race & the Meaning of America

Drew Gilpin Faust on the work of John Hope Franklin, who would have turned 100 this year. “Only if we understand and acknowledge this past can we grapple with the conflicts of the present and the promise of the future. ‘To confront our past and see it for what it is.’ Franklin’s words. The past ‘is.’ Not the past was. The past lives on.”