• Recipient of more than 130 honorary degrees
• Featured on three PBS specials, "First Person Singular: John Hope Franklin," "Biographical Conversations" and, with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, "Race and Reconciliation: A Journey Towards Peace"
• Elected to the Oklahoma Hall of Fame, 1978
• Jefferson Medal Award of the Council for the Advancement and
  Support of Education, 1984
• The Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor a U.S. civilian can receive, 1995
• Honored by the establishment of the John Hope Franklin Collection for African and African-American Documentation at Duke University, 1995
• Organization of American Historians' Award for Outstanding Achievement, 1995
• NAACP Spingarn Medal, 1995
• First Recipient, W.E.B. DuBois Award, Fisk Alumni Association, 1995
• Named "Historian of the Century" by Duke, NC State, NC Central and UNC-Chapel Hill, 1996
• Appointed chairman of the Advisory Board of President Clinton's Initiative on Race, 1997
• Booker T. Washington High School Hall of Fame, 1997
• Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award, 1997
• Inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame, 1998
• First African-American Recipient of the Truman Good Neighbor Award, 1999
• "Tar Heel of the Year," (Raleigh) News & Observer, 1999
• March 12, 1999 declared "John Hope Franklin Day" by the State of Oklahoma
• Duke University establishes John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary & International Studies, 2001
• Hayti Heritage Center Spirit of Hayti Award, 2004
• Co-recipient of the $1 million John W. Kluge Prize for the Study of Humanity, awarded by the Library of Congress, 2006
• Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Academy of Arts & Letters and the American Philosophical Society, 2007
• Records of Achievement Award from the Foundation for the National Archives, 2007


Academic Appointments

Education:
A.B., Fisk University, 1935
M.A., Harvard University, 1936
Ph.D., Harvard University, 1941

Appointments:

1936-37: Instructor in History, Fisk University
1939-43: Professor of History, St. Augustine's College
1943-47: Professor of History, North Carolina College (now North Carolina Central University)
1947-56: Professor of History, Howard University
1956-64: Chairman, Department of History, Brooklyn College
1962-63: Visiting Pitt Professor of American History & Institutions, Cambridge University, England
1964-82: Professor of American History, University of Chicago
1967-70: Chairman, Department of History, University of Chicago
1969-82: John Matthews Manly Distinguished Service Professor of History, University of Chicago
1982-pres: Professor Emeritus of History, University of Chicago
1982-85: James B. Duke Professor of History, Duke University
1985-92: Professor of Legal History, Duke University Law School
1985-pres: James B. Duke Professor of History Emeritus, Duke University

Visiting Appointments:

Numerous appointments, including universities in Australia, New Zealand and The People's Republic of China. Appointments at U.S. institutions include Harvard University, University of Wisconsin, Cornell University, University of California at Berkeley, and University of Hawaii

Julius Chambers, former chief counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and chancellor of N.C. Central University, awards Franklin with the Spingarn Medal, the NAACP's highest honor, in 1995.