An Interview with B. C. Franklin,
Colored
Attorney
My people came from Mississippi My grandfather belonged to the Burney’s
back there and when they cane to this country In the ‘40's they brought my
grandfather with them, as a slave.
My father, David, belonged to Wesley C. Burney brother of Ben Burney, who
later became Governor of the Chickasaws mother was Minnie; she was a most unusual colored woman. She was owned by the Colbert’s and
Pitchlynn’s of
Mississippi
. They were Choctaw.
They raised my mother and allowed her every privilege of their own people.
She was a Bible student. My parents were married after the war. I received my
first schooling at the old
Dawes
Academy
, twelve miles north of
Ardmore
. This negro school was founded by white missionaries of the
Baptist
Church
.
We had same white missionary teachers. After that I attended
Roger
Williams
University
at
Nashville
,
Tennessee
. It burned down and the site was bought by whites and the Peabody
Institute is there today. My wife was a teacher. We are both college graduates.
I completed my law course long ago.
We have three children of whom I am very proud. Mozella Franklin-Jones, A.
B. West Virginia State College, a teacher at
Dunbar
School
,
Tulsa
.
Oklahoma for four years; Buck Colbert Franklin, Jr. an A. B. from Fiske
University and a principal of a six-room school at Bixby; John Hope Franklin,
twenty-three and got his A. B. from
Fiske in 1935, master's degree from Harvard in 1936, has completed his residence
work at Harvard and is now ready to get his Ph. D. That is not a bad record for
grandchildren of slaves.