“More than 60 years ago, I began the task of trying to write a new kind of Southern History. It would be broad in its reach, tolerant in its judgments of Southerners, and comprehensive in its inclusion of everyone who lived in the region,’ he wrote….’Looking back, I can plead guilty of having provided only a sketch of the work I laid out for myself.‘” JohnHopeFranklin, 1915-2009. “I think knowing one’s history leads one to act in a more enlightened fashion. I can not imagine how knowing one’s history would not urge one to be an activist.”