Howard Dodson's blog

Michael Jackson’s sudden and tragic death has revealed the truly iconic status he had achieved in the world. While some of the news media has chosen to continually harp on what they have labeled as Michael’s eccentricities, especially what they have called his bizarre appearance and behavior over the last few years, his 40 years of unbroken creativity and musical genius have secured his enduring iconic status in the minds of an adoring global public. No death in the last century, including Elvis’s and Princess Diana’s has generated the kinds of spontaneous and sustained expressions of love, respect, and tribute that Michael’s passing has.

His musical genius and his iconic status have earned him a permanent and revered place in the hearts, minds, and memories of people of all races, colors, creeds, cultures, and genders throughout the world. The bigger than life icon that Michael Jackson became did all of that for him. Becoming an icon has its price however. Icons frequently consume, confuse, and destroy their hosts. They compete with and frequently engulf the real self. They rob the person of their identity and privacy, then turn them into objects of prey, subvert normal human relations, and induce aberrant behavior. (Witness icons like Elvis, Anna Nicole Smith, and most recently Heath Ledger.) Such was likely the case with Michael Jackson.  read more »

The New York Public Library, especially the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, joins millions of Americans in honoring the pioneering, purposeful, immensely productive life of Dr. John Hope Franklin (1915–2009). The preeminent scholar of the African American experience, he was a leading authority on Southern American history, a distinguished educator, and an uncompromising advocate for equality and justice in American society.

A New York Public Library Lion (2007), a co-chair of the Schomburg Center's first private fundraising campaign, member of the Schomburg Center's National Advisory Council, and recipient of the Schomburg Center's Africana Heritage Award (2006), Dr. Franklin was a passionate supporter of the Schomburg Center and The New York Public Library for more than 35 years. He also brought respect and dignity to the study of American history, having devoted his life to rescuing, reconstructing, and reinterpreting African American and American history.

For more than 60 years, Dr. Franklin's From Slavery to Freedom has been the definitive, authoritative text on African American history. First published in 1947, it has sold more than 3 million copies and been translated into several languages. In addition to documenting and interpreting the African American experience, From Slavery to Freedom challenged many of the dominant assumptions and interpretations of American history. Dr. Franklin's autobiography, Mirror to America (2005), received critical acclaim for its unflinching honesty and candor and its transcendent insights into America's national character. His biography, George Washington Williams (1985), rescued one of the pioneer American historians from obscurity and anonymity and reminded the world that his own achievements in the field rested on the shoulders of his ancestors. Williams's 1,000-page History of African Americans from 1619 to 1880 was published in 1882.  read more »