Earl N. Franklin
Tuskegee Airman
Colonel Earl Newlan Franklin (January 26, 1917 – November 11, 2003) was born in Joliet, Illinois. He is one of the original Tuskegee Airmen, along with his brother George.
Franklin was a graduate of the second Tuskegee class and stayed on the base as a flight instructor and pilot. He saw active service in Germany, France and Greece.
In the early 1970s Franklin acted as the Regional Exchange Commander in Vietnam. He also served as Chief of the Air Force Services Office in Philadelphia. A role from which he retired after 35 years of service.
Franklin was married to Marion T. Franklin (née Hall). They had a son, James M. Franklin and grandson, James E. Franklin. He was step-grandfather to Shaney.
“Earl N. Franklin” enters the record as tuskegee Airman. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Earl, Franklin and Tuskegee can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5326023. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1917 and 2003.
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This entry incorporates text from “Earl N. Franklin” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.