Robert Vernon Franklin, Jr. was a retired Lucas County Common Pleas Court judge who presided over trials and hearings in over 25 counties throughout Ohio. He was born on January 6, 1926, in Toledo, Ohio, to Josephine Beard Franklin and Robert V. Franklin, Sr. As the youngest child, he had two sisters, Lucille Franklin Odom and Flora Mae Franklin Mudd, and two brothers, James Franklin and John Franklin. The family was actively involved in the Third Baptist Church on Pinewood Avenue.
Robert Franklin’s early education began at the segregated John Gunkel Elementary School. He graduated from Jessup Wakeman Scott High School in Toledo in 1943. After high school, he enrolled at Morehouse College, a prestigious all-male HBCU in Atlanta, Georgia. There, he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy in 1947, studying with Dr. Benjamin Mays, a former dean of the School of Religion at Howard University. Notably, Robert graduated one year after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who had been his classmate.
After graduating from Morehouse, Franklin returned to Toledo to attend the University of Toledo College of Law, where he earned his Juris Doctor degree in 1950. He also served in the Korean War with the United States Army from 1950 to 1952, holding the rank of sergeant.
On August 3, 1952, Franklin married Kathryn Jane Harris, and together, they had two sons, Gary Robert Franklin and Jeffrey Mayo Franklin. Robert Franklin then practiced law in the offices of Attorneys J. Slater Gibson and William Thomas, one of the two African American law practices in Toledo. In 1952 Franklin was appointed Prosecuting Attorney of the City of Toledo and then Assistant Law Director, serving in that post until 1960.
In 1960, Franklin was a delegate at large to the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, California, which nominated John F. Kennedy as the Democratic candidate for President of the United States. Later that year, Ohio Governor Michael V. DiSalle appointed him to the Toledo Municipal Court bench, making him the fourth African American to hold that position and the first in Northwestern Ohio. In 1968, Franklin was elected to a judgeship in the Common Pleas Court and was re-elected in 1974 and 1980, becoming the first person of color on either bench.
In 1980, Franklin joined the Board of Trustees at Morehouse College, where he served for 30 years. He was also a Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity, Inc. member, known as the Boulé, and from 1982 to 1984, he served as the Grand Sire Archon (International Chairman) of the Fraternity. He also served on the Boulé Foundation and the Fraternity’s National Scholarship Fund for 30 years.
Judge Franklin retired in 1985 as the senior elected judge of the Lucas County Common Pleas Court and after having served as president of the Ohio Common Pleas Association. In 1987, he received the Distinguished Toledo Attorney award from the University of Toledo Law Alumni Association and the Order of the Heel award from the Toledo Junior Bar Association.
The Honorable Judge Robert Vernon Franklin, Jr. died in Toledo, Ohio on November 29, 2011. He was 85.
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“Judge Robert Vernon Franklin Jr.,” Findagrave.com., https://:www.findagrave.com.
Mark Zaborney, “Robert V. Franklin, Jr., 1926-2011: Retired judge broke the race barrier in 2 courts,” The Toledo Blade, https://www.toledoblade.com;
The Sojourner Truth-Toledo, https://www.thetrithtoledo.com.