V. P. FRANKLIN

Biography 

V. P. Franklin is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History and Education at the University of California, Riverside. From 2001 to 2018, he served as the editor of The Journal of African American History, the leading scholarly publication on African American life and history (formerly The Journal of Negro History). During his editorship, the journal’s articles received awards for excellence in scholarly research from five national and international historical organizations. During the 2004–2005 school year, Dr. Franklin held the Fulbright Commission’s Uppsala Chair in American Studies at the Swedish Institute for North American Studies at Uppsala University, Sweden. Between September 2000 and August 2002, he was the Rosa and Charles Keller Professor of Arts and Humanities at Xavier University of Louisiana; in 2005, he was appointed to the Revius O. Ortique Endowed Chair in Politics, Historical Inquiry, and Social Thought at Dillard University; and between 2007 and 2015, he held a University of California Presidential Chair.

Dr. Franklin received his BA in History with honors from Penn State University, a Master of Arts in Teaching from Harvard University, and a PhD in the History of Education from the University of Chicago. He has taught in Boston, Cambridge, and Philadelphia public schools, and at the University of Illinois, Yale University, Drexel University, Arizona State University, Dillard University, Xavier University of Louisiana, and Teachers College, Columbia University. In 1997, he served as a Fulbright Senior Lecturer in American History at the Universidad de Barcelona and the Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona in Spain. Dr. Franklin has also served as the Director of African American Studies programs at Yale, Arizona State, and Drexel universities; was a Scholar-in-Residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City; and was a Fellow at the Midlo Center for New Orleans Studies at the University of New Orleans. 

Dr. Franklin has published more than 70 scholarly articles and many books on African American history and education, and he has served on editorial boards of The Journal of Negro History, The Journal of American History, The Black Scholar, History of Education Quarterly, and Paedagogica Historica. He has received fellowships, grants, and awards from many agencies and institutions, including the Danforth Foundation, Ford Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Academy of Education, and National Research Council. In 2002, he was awarded the Carter G. Woodson Medallion for Outstanding Achievement in African American History from the Association for the Study of African American History and, in 2011, the Cheikh A. Diop-Ida B. Wells Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Africana Studies from the National Council of Black Studies. In 2020, he was given the Outstanding Alumnus Award from Penn State University, and in 2021 the first V. P. Franklin Prize will be awarded by the Association for the Study of African American Life and History for the best article published in The Journal of African American History in 2019–2020.