How Can a Blind Person be a Racist?

This is a story that happened in downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma around the year 1927 (during the sad period of American History when blatant racism still existed).

Back then, John Hope Franklin was a 12-year-old new enthusiastic Boy Scout eager to fulfill his duty of doing one good deed per day. He saw a blind lady trying to cross a busy street and asked if she needed help. She said yes and was extremely thankful for his deed -- until mid-way across the street. That was when she asked "Are you white or black?".

Let me interject in the story at this point to ask why did it matter what color of skin John Franklin had? She was blind; she could not see! Is it not the deed that a person should be judge?

To continue with the story, John Franklin was African American. And when the blind woman found out, she said "Get your filthy hands off of me".

You can hear the story as it was being told by John Franklin himself. And you can hear disappointed tone in his voice when his good deed was thwarted by such troubling racial hostility.

Fortunately, we have come a long way since that time. Because within the same lifetime of John Franklin, we have inaugurated Barack Obama as the first African American to be the 44th president of the United States.

Fortunately, we have come a long way since that time. Because within the same lifetime of John Hope Franklin, we have inaugurated Barack Obama as the first African American to be the 44th president of the United States.

Back then, John Hope Franklin would not have ever dreamed that an African American would ever become president. But when he saw it himself, he said it was "amazing". Here is a video of what he had to say about that.

Shortly after Obama took office, John Hope Franklin passed away at the age of 94 in March 2009.