Photo of John Hope Franklin tending his orchids is at IndyWeek.com.

The country, academe, and the field of history lost one of their finest this afternoon, when John Hope Franklin died at the age of 94. John Hope was one of the most important historians of his generation — and of the 20th century. His influence has been profound, and I think it will endure, for he had a profound impact on the historical profession.

He wrote many books, but of them my favorite is The Free Negro in North Carolina, 1790-1860, originally his Harvard doctoral dissertation, first published in 1943. The book was pathbreaking in many respects, especially in its mining of manuscript court records, and I think it has never sufficiently been recognized as one of the first great research exercises in my own scholarly field, American legal history.

John Hope is best known, of course, as one of the pioneers of what is now called African-American history (a neologism he long refused to accept). His famous and best-selling text on African-American history was entitled From Slavery to Freedom: A History of American Negroes until about 15 years ago when the publisher convinced him to change it to “African American.” He always insisted that he was an American historian, not an African-American historian, and in the 1960s he opposed the establishment of separate black-studies programs, thinking the Negro a proper subject for mainstream history. He had a rigor of historical method that was seldom matched, a keen sense of historical significance, and was a superb writer.

I was fortunate enough to find a place in the University of Chicago history department in the 1970s, and I came to know John Hope well — though I had begun to know him a few years earlier when, as chairman at Chicago, he tried to tempt me to move from Wisconsin. I learned an enormous amount from him about how to do history, and even more about how to behave in a professional manner. He was, throughout his career, inspirational to younger scholars, and he was of course a great graduate teacher.

I also loved, him, quite frankly, because he was a vivid character. He was something to behold in presiding over dinners on Blackstone Avenue with his beloved wife Aurelia. He frequently took his visitors up to see his orchid conservatory before dinner — he was a breeder of orchids, and always wore one in his lapel. I was once traveling with him to New Orleans for an AHA meeting, and asked in the check-in line whether he would like to change seats to sit next to me. He demurred, confessing that he was flying first class. When I asked why, he said “Boy, I fly in the front of the plane.” Point made.

My best memory of him, however, is of an evening when we were both driving home from our colleague Arthur Mann’s house around midnight after a tenure decision meeting. John Hope drove a large Mercedes-Benz sedan and got across 53rd St. just before the light changed. I was following in my decrepit little Rambler American, and sailed through the light, only to be stopped immediately by a police cruiser. John Hope noticed, and pulled over to the curb. As the cop was bawling me out, he noticed the car stopped ahead. “Is that Professor John Hope Franklin?” “Yes it is, officer.” “Well, then, young man, if you can just get me his autograph you can drive on home.”

Drive on home, John Hope.