LEADERSHIP, LIKE THE RIVER, FLOWS ON

Chattanooga lost a giant last week

John Porter Franklin Sr. was a leader. A real leader.

Not a showboat, not a screamer, not a microphone grabber. Just a strong, quiet, thoughtful, mentoring kind of leader.

Franklin, who died Thursday at age 96, became the only African-American elected in a 1971 citywide vote to the old Chattanooga City Commission. Years later, he helped prove in federal court that he was the exception to the fact that citywide voting meant black residents had little chance to send representatives who looked like them to political office in our city.

One of the ways our city’s then-systematic discrimination found a showcase during the lawsuit, Brown v. Chattanooga, that challenged our then-form of government was in how Franklin was treated on the commission.

Franklin noted that when he was elected, the mayor asked him — and only him — to move his office to the basement so the commission’s assembly room could expand. Insult aside, Franklin served as Chattanooga’s Commissioner of Education for 20 years.

The lawsuit ended when a judge voided the city commission system and ordered the current council form of government, giving minorities a fair chance at representation. The first council was elected in 1990, with five whites and four blacks. Franklin opted to leave government at that point and pass the baton to new, younger leaders — some of whom he had mentored.

“He paved the way for African-Americans to get into the mainstream in Chattanooga,” then-city councilman and longtime friend Moses Freeman said in 2014 when Franklin was awarded the History Maker award by the Chattanooga History Center.

But Franklin, also a teacher, principal, coach and businessman, did more than that. He helped define humble, thoughtful leadership — and especially equity — in Chattanooga. We owe him much.