Book Review: Mirror to America: The Autobiography of John Hope Franklin

Authors

Ben Keppel, University of Oklahoma

Date of this Version

2006

Document Type

Article

Comments

Published in GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY 26:4 (Fall 2006). Copyright © 2006 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

Abstract

With Mirror to America John Hope Franklin has given his colleagues an extremely valuable document for understanding American society in his lifetime. Franklin grew up in the segregated West. To those who see in segregation a lost world of unity and cohesion, Franklin offers up his account of a boyhood in Rentiesville, Oklahoma. His account leaves no doubt that so-called "black towns" were as prone to deep divisions founded in prejudice and profound pettiness masquerading as high principle as any other congregation of humans. His experiences as an adolescent in "T-Town" (Tulsa) also argue powerfully against the notion that virulent and institutional racism were imported to Oklahoma from somewhere else.