Book Review

My Life and an Era is an autobiography by Buck Colbert Franklin. Franklin's manuscript was edited and published from a draft written nearly forty years ago by his son and grandson, John Hope Franklin and John Whittington Franklin (p. xv). The book is a self-portrait of the development of a Black lad, who became a lawyer, born and raised in Western Indian Territory, which became the state of Oklahoma. It traces the life of B. C. Franklin and his family from the nineteenth century to the 1950s. It provides a rare window through which the reader observes the trials and tribulations of a Black family and community facing the dogged challenges of an era against great odds. Yet, with rugged individualism and unrelenting perseverance, the Franklins survived. The editors of B. C. Franklin's book acknowledge that the text is partially constructed from "simulated conversations," a point of concern raised initially by the publishers because of the time lapse between the conversations reported by the author in the manuscript. The editors justify this approach to autobiography by placing the method of the conversation as conveyed to the author as "straightforward narratives of what people talked about," thus, as close "to the truth" as simulated conversations (p. x). This method of autobiography is unique, but cannot be discounted. Almost the identical method was noted by the publishers of the important autobiography of an early black Virginia lawyer (Thomas Calhoun Walker, The Honey-pod Tree [New York, 1958], 5-6).	1
B. C. Franklin's book covers a period from 1879 to 1957, the year of his birth to the year of his death. His life's journey parallels the experiences of Blacks in America from the post-Reconstruction era, dominated by de jure segregation, to the modern civil rights era, where prodigious efforts to erase the effects of de jure segregation, influenced by Brown v. Board of Education, were waged. While Franklin lived through the post-Reconstruction era to the dawn of the modern civil rights era, unlike the Harvard Law School trained Charles Hamilton Houston, and the Howard University Law School trained Thurgood Marshall, who would become two legal architects of the civil rights movement in the South, Franklin made his mark as a civil rights lawyer in the West. Franklin, who became a "Jefferson Democrat," at a time when most Blacks were Republicans, fought to restrict the Plessy v. Ferguson doctrine, characteristically manifested by disenfranchisement initiatives and menacing Ku Klux Klan activity.	2
The book contains fifteen chapters. They fall into three categories. The first five chapters and chapter fifteen tell of Franklin's experiences as a child and a young man pursuing an education. Chapter six is a transition chapter that includes information about his legal training. The remaining eight chapters report on his life as a lawyer in Oklahoma. The author states: "this book is supposed to tell of my experiences during my lifetime" (198) and it does so with grace and reverence. My Life and an Era is must reading for sociologists and legal and social historians interested in the rise of a Black family in the West that could point to a first generation lawyer by 1908. B. C. Franklin's family, headed by strong, frugal, and devoted parents, may be described as middle class, plus (124). He grew up in a circle of family and friends interconnected with common goals toward education, high standards, good morals, religious training, hard work, and industry toward commerce. These values, planted in Franklin as a child, contributed to his determination to obtain a college education. It was during his college days that he was exposed to noted Black academics in the South, who supplemented the core values of his Oklahoma roots.	3
The most significant part of My Life and an Era describes Franklin, the lawyer, practicing law in various cities in Oklahoma. Because his father retained a lawyer to look after his affairs, from a young age Franklin understood that Black people needed lawyers to protect their interests (47, 118). Franklin was not formally trained as a lawyer. However, an excellent education and a brilliant mind enabled him to master a correspondence law course and to pass the oral bar examination administered by the court.	4
B. C. Franklin's detailed account of his life as a lawyer identifies and illuminates his relationship with other Black lawyers who preceded him to the bar. Even more extraordinary is the little known fact that these lawyers formed law firms to compete with white lawyers. We learn that a few of these lawyers were formally trained at Howard Law School, a historically Black institution. Nevertheless, eking out a living was tough. Black people hired Black lawyers only if the opposite side hired Black lawyers. Otherwise they hired white lawyers, believing that a Black lawyer could not prevail against a white lawyer before white judges. To fuel this perception, white lawyers hired Black runners to falsely warn Black people that Black lawyers could not prevail against them (142). In spite of such encumbrances, Franklin and his legal colleagues out-performed their white competition under the worst conditions, even during the infamous Tulsa riots (197-98). They also became experts in oil law, representing wealthy Blacks and Native Americans against white lawyers representing oil barons.	5
Autobiographies by modern Black lawyers are scant, particularly those of lawyers born in the nineteenth century, whose careers span the period of the twentieth century. (See, e.g., John Mercer Langston, From the Virginia Plantation to the National Capitol [Hartford, 1894]; James Weldon Johnson, Along This Way [New York, 1933].) Autobiographies about Black women lawyers, particularly in the Western states are practically dormant. Two recent autobiographies by Black women lawyers in Oklahoma are exceptions: Ada Sipuel Fisher, A Matter of Black and White (Norman, 1996), and Anita Hill, Speaking Truth to Power (New York, 1997).	6
We are enriched by B. C. Franklin's detailed account, not only of his life, but of the lives and interpersonal relationships among Blacks, Native Americans, and Whites in Oklahoma. If this book has a weakness, it is that the editors might have placed Franklin in a framework for the further study of Black professionals in the western states. In the introduction to the book, more attention to such a perspective by the editors would have invited more attention to just how advanced and progressive Blacks in the West were in comparison to Black professionals in the South, about whom more is known. Otherwise, My Life and an Era stands as a historically significant contribution to the literature on the study of Black lawyers like B. C. Franklin, who "was no ordinary mortal" (p. ix).	7
J. Clay Smith, Jr. Howard University School of Law

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