Bringing African-Americans into the history books.

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When John Hope Franklin was a boy in the 1920s, he told people that he wanted to be the first black President of the United States. Franklin, who died in March at age 94, lived long enough to see Barack Obama accomplish just that.

Franklin was born in 1915 in Rentiesville, Oklahoma. At the time, the South was segregated. Franklin and his mother were once forced off a train because she refused to leave a whites-only car. That and other searing experiences could have disillusioned Franklin. But his mother told him "to prove that I was as good as any of [the people on that train]."

Franklin did much more. He became one of the country's finest historians. According to Robert W. Fogel, a Nobel-Prize-winning economist, Franklin's 1947 book, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African-Americans, is "a landmark in the interpretation of American civilization." Franklin told the story of a people whose experiences had long been neglected or misunderstood.

His career as a scholar, teacher, and civil rights activist lasted more than 70 years. "Because of the life John Hope Franklin lived, we all have a richer understanding of who we are as Americans and our journey as a people," President Barack Obama said. "Dr. Franklin will be deeply missed, but his legacy is one that will surely endure."