Dopes about John Hope

The New York Times appears to have been asleep at the wheel on the passing of John Hope Franklin, the great historian. This was a significant moment in American life, but you wouldn't know it from the Times, which didn't front page the death, and (in my edition, at least) ran its obit on B12. Contrast that with the performance by the Washington Post, which ran an appreciation by Wil Haygood on page one, an editorial, and a fine op-ed by Walter Dellinger, who had called Franklin from the Democratic convention in Denver last summer after Obama received the presidential nomination. The Times' negligence appalled my wife, who relied often on Franklin's work, especially From Slavery to Freedom, when writing her own book on the biggest attempted slave escape in American history.