A portion of Interstate 85 in North Carolina will be named after a civil rights professor and historian.
According to U.S. News, part of the road in Durham on Monday was named the John H. Franklin Highway. According to the news outlet, former transportation secretary Anthony Foxx deemed a portion of the highway to be named in Frankin’s honor a little bit before he left office in January.
Franklin, who was an Oklahoma native, spent his early years teaching at St. Augustine’s University in Raleigh. He then moved on to teach at Durham’s North Carolina University.
In 1947, he published From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African-Americans. He later went on to teach in Chicago, New York and Washington.
Franklin died in 2009. He was 94.
