Mirror to America by John Hope Franklin

Author:John Hope Franklin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2011-02-04T00:00:00+00:00

16

Hail Britannia

TWO CHAIRS in United States History are reserved at Oxford and Cambridge universities for visiting professors from the United States. While the one at Oxford, the Harmsworth, is older, both are equally coveted by professors in this country. The committee overseeing the Pitt Professorship of American History and Institutions at Cambridge approached me shortly after I went to Brooklyn College to see if I was interested in holding the chair and, if so, when I would like to do so. After consulting with Aurelia, we decided that the academic year 1962-63 would suit us best. By that time we would be well settled in at Brooklyn; Whit would then be ten years old, an age when the experience would be meaningful and lasting; and Aurelia would have made some decisions about her own professional future that she had postponed to provide Whit the security and self-confidence he needed as long as the neighbors on New York Avenue and nearby streets remained unfriendly, and some even hostile.

The decision made and the departure date set, we booked passage to Southampton on the Queen Mary, sailing from New York on September 5, 1962. Our cabin was quite commodious, and it is well that it was, for we had invited several friends from the college as well as from the city to a champagne party we were giving just before the afternoon sailing. The Queen Mary’s magnificent public rooms and recreational parlors duly impressed Whit, and when Aurelia and I lounged in our deck chairs, he took walks around the deck. He even met a few youngsters with whom he became friendly. The experience was, on the whole, quite different from our first voyage in 1951, when the French line had humiliated us with their dining hall seating arrangements. Whatever else had changed in international race relations over the past decade, on the Queen Mary we discovered that we should judge our treatment on a case-by-case basis rather than make hasty assumptions about the treatment we might receive.

Before leaving New York, I had purchased a Mercedes-Benz automobile to be delivered at the Cunard pier in Southampton. I am proud to announce that despite the unfamiliar right-side steering wheel and the rain that greeted us on our arrival, within an hour or so of having packed the new car, we arrived safely in Cambridge. The first order of business was to get Whit settled in school. The Perse had been recommended by my friend Frank Thistlethwaite, the U.S. historian at St. John’s College, and its headmaster welcomed Whit and placed him in the fifth form, the U.S. equivalent of somewhere between the sixth and seventh grades. It was an all-boys school, and as soon as he acquired his gray suit, short pants, purple and gray cap, and scarf, he was ready for his daily bicycle commute. Since The Perse was not so very far from where we lived, he did not, to our great relief, have to navigate the traffic through town. Soon, he

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