Since 2015, the Franklin Humanities Institute has sponsored an event series in honor of our namesake, Dr. John Hope Franklin. We take seriously Dr. Franklin's demand to attend to both the untold stories and the familiar ones - “intellectualizing them,” as he put it - and to place those stories in the context of the world.

This year, the FHI at Duke invited celebrated radio consultant, editor, executive producer, Tony Phillips, Ph.D., to speak about the time he spent with Dr. Franklin when working on a project for the BBC.

An experienced radio and podcasting creator, Tony's career has taken him from producing, reporting and Commissioning Editor at BBC World Service and BBC Radio 4 (creating The Listening Project), to Vice President at WNYC Studios, New York and to Broccoli Content/Sony Music in the UK. At WNYC he created and developed A Piece of Work with Abbi Jacobson, made in partnership with MoMA, was the Executive Producer on Freakonomics Radio with Stephen Dubner and managed editorial partnerships. Most recently, Tony wrote and reported an Archive on 4 for BBC Radio 4 on the tragic life of David Oluwale, a Nigerian migrant to Britain in the 1960s. Tony is executive producer with independent TV company Northern Town Productions, and part of the award-winning team who produced the Liverpool-based Statues Redressed documentary film for Sky Arts questioning the presence, place and power of public statues. In 2022 Tony completed his Ph.D. at the University of East Anglia writing about audio, storytelling and the African diaspora.

From Dr. Phillips: "When I find myself today mentoring and working with new producers, the source of one of the brightest guiding lights I can offer has come from John Hope Franklin; a rare and precious link between the past, present and future.

The meticulous attention he paid to his calling as a historian and as a teacher helped set me on a vital course in my early years as a radio producer at the BBC. For a decade I recorded and produced four programmes with John Hope Franklin for BBC Radio 4 in the UK. This talk charts and illustrates with extracts from the documentaries and interviews how and why some of those stories were told. His contributions ranged from the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, to his birth and upbringing in Oklahoma, to his work with Thurgood Marshall on the landmark ruling of Brown vs Board of Education and finally to his rumination on the uncomfortable legacy of segregation in the South.

It should also become clear how John Hope Franklin will forever illuminate the BBC archives with his wisdom, wit and humanity."

Learn more about our John Hope Franklin Legacies Series here: https://fhi.duke.edu/programs/john-ho...