John W. Franklin
Director of Partnerships and International Programs
National Museum of African American History and Culture
Smithsonian Institution    

John W. Franklin, the Director of Partnerships and International Programs, at the Smithsonian’s 19th museum, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, has worked on African American, African and African Diaspora programs for the past 24 years at the Smithsonian. Initially, he served as researcher and French language interpreter for the Smithsonian’s African Diaspora program of the 1976 Bicentennial Folklife Festival while living and teaching English in Dakar, Senegal. Franklin developed symposia and seminars for the Office of Interdisciplinary Studies from 1987-1992. At the Smithsonian’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage he curated Smithsonian Folklife Festival programs on the Bahamas (1994), Cape Verdean Culture (1995), Washington, D.C. (2000) and Mali (2003). Franklin served on the Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture from 1998 to 2008. He  serves on the boards of the Reginald Lewis Maryland Museum of African American History and Culture and the Joint Center for Economic and Political Studies. He edited My Life and an Era: the Autobiography of Buck Colbert Franklin with his father, John Hope Franklin.