Black Historian Asks End Of Racism in U.S. History

Black historian John H. Franklin called yesterday for the revision of "an uncharitable, undemocratic, and racist history which has spawned ethnocentric Americans."

The progress of the black revolution has made apparent the need for "a history that deals with all histories," Franklin said in his Lowell Lecture Hall speech yesterday afternoon. The talk was sponsored by the Charles Warren Center for American Studies.

Neglect of Negro revisionist historians has created the belief the Negroes have not been involved in history, Franklin said. American history is portrayed as "a series of great triumphs forged only by great white Americans."

Franklin denied that only blacks are qualified to teach black studies. "I don't submit to the idea that elucidation in the study of history is endowed by race," he said. "I hope I would be considered able to teach Greek history."

More Than A Handmaiden

Black history should not be looked upon as a tool for political purposes, Franklin said. "It must become more than a handmaiden of political and social reform. It must become the ground on which American scholarship can be tested," Franklin said.

Franklin conceded that there is a need for concentrated courses on Afro-American subjects, especially on the college levels. But these topics should not be taught to the exclusion of a revisionist American history, he said.

The attempts of colleges to find black studies teachers is as frantic as the Federal government's science education measures after Sputnik, Franklin added.

"Seldom has there been so much activity in a field by-passed until recently," he said. "The universities' search for black talent on occasion assumes comic proportions."

"There are at present too few qualified teachers to fill the demand," Franklin acknowledged. "A professor can become competent in black studies only by burying himself in the stacks of Widener."