Donna L. Franklin is an author and scholar with a specialization in the family, especially African-American families. Her book Ensuring Inequality: The Structural Transformation of the African-American Family won two major awards: The American Sociological Association's William J. Goode Distinguished Book Award for "outstanding scholarship on the family" and Choice Magazine's award for "outstanding academic book." She was the first African-American author to win the ASA award. Ensuring Inequality was hailed by the Washington Post as one of the "most important contributions to the study of the black family in recent years."

Her next book, What's Love Got To Do With It? Understanding and Healing the Rift Between Black Men and Women, is one of the first books to conduct a historical analysis of gender relations in the African-American community. Donna Franklin is the past Co-Chair of the CCF and has held academic appointments at the University of Chicago, Smith College, Howard University and the University of Southern California.

Her incisive commentary has appeared in newspapers such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She is currently working on a book about African-Americans who have strong partnerships in marriage.

CONTACT: dlfranklin@earthlink.net