Benjamin Franklin:

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Benjamin Franklin

• Through a Darker Lens

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• Presented by JoEllen Broome
• Information Services Librarian at Henderson
  Library, Georgia Southern University
• BIGGER CONFERENCE on April 17,
  2009
• Zach S. Henderson Library at Georgia
  Southern University
• Statesboro, Georgia
• BIGGER stands for Bibliographic
  Instruction Group, Georgia Eastern Region

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• Background
• Ben Franklin traveling exhibit comes to
  GS via an ALA/NEH Grant plus a series of
  free lectures and activities called,
  Bens 10.
• March 14, 2009 to April 22, 2009

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• New revelations about Ben Franklin that are
  awesome, amazing and
• Experiments with electricity from a lecture about
  Ben Franklin and Electro-magnetism on April
  1, 2009 by Dr. Mark Edwards, Chair of the Physics
  Department in the College of Science and
  Technology at Georgia Southern.
• Micro Loans to promising young
  entrepreneurs from a lecture on March 25, 2009 by
  Dr. John H. Brown, Acting Chair of the School of
  Economic Development in the College of Business
  Administration at Georgia Southern.

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• 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Goes to Micro-Loan Pioneer
  Muhammad Yunus from
• Bangladesh and the
  Grameen Bank--photo from http//news.nationalgeogr
  aphic.com/news/2006/10/061013-nobel-peace.html

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• Revelations about Ben Franklin that are
  disturbing and disappointing...
• He owned slaves, sold slaves and placed ads for
  slave owners looking for runaways in his
  newspaper, The Pennsylvania Gazette
• He was a womanizer.

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Advertisement in the Pennsylvania Gazette,
September 4, 1746

• Run Away on the 16th of July from Thomas
  Rutter, of this city, a Negro man named Dick,
  aged about 27 years Had on when he went way, a
  Bearskin jacket and a light Duroy Jacket, without
  sleeves, Oznabrigs shirt and trousers and one
  pair of brown linen trousers, blue stockings. New
  shoes, a new castor hat and a blue worsted cap.
  Whosoever takes up and secures the said Negro, so
  that his master may have him again, shall have 30
  shillings reward and reasonable charge paid by
  Thomas Rutter.

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• Petition from the Pennsylvania Society for
  Promoting the Abolition of Slavery to the U.S.
  Congress, February 3,
  
  
  1790
  that was written by Benjamin Franklin.
• As President of the Society he was telling them
  to devise means for removing this inconsistency
  (slavery) from the character of the American
  people because equal liberty was originally the
  Portion, is still the Birthright of all men.
  It was his last public act before he died on
  April 17th (TODAY) 219 years ago.
  

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Portrait of Deborah Franklin(1708-1774), ca.
1758-59 by Benjamin Wilson after an unknown
American Artist

• Approximately 50 years old at the time
  it was painted

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• Franklin surrounded by the ladies at the French
  Court, engraved by W.O. Geller, c. 1830, painted
  by Baron Jolly, Bruxelles

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• What to make of these findings.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY (Partial)

• BOOKS
• Lopez, Claude-Anne, Mon Cher Papa Franklin and
  the Ladies of Paris. New Haven and London Yale
  University Press, 1966.
• Talbott, Page, Editor, Benjamin Franklin In
  Search of a Better World. New Haven and London
  Yale University Press, 2005. ( Dedicated to the
  late Edward C. Carter II, former librarian of the
  American Philosophical Society).
• Waldstreicher, David, Runaway America Benjamin
  Franklin, Slavery, and the American Revolution,
  New York Hill and Wang-A division of Farrar,
  Straus and Giroux, 2004.
• ARTICLE Nash, Gary B. Franklin and Slavery.
  Proceedings of the American Philosophical
  Society, Vol. 150, No. 4, December 2006, 618-635.
• WEBSITE http//www.benfranklin300.org