Benjamin Franklin High School is a public high school located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The school, located north of Center City, is a part of the School District of Philadelphia. Franklin serves sections of North Philadelphia and Center City. Franklin is a mostly African American school. In the late 1960s, there was a student-led effort to rename the school in honor of recently slain Malcolm X. This effort officially failed, but some students still refer to the school by this name. Around 2005, Franklin began housing a charter school catering to Chinese Americans. In addition, as part of an international studies academy, it added Mandarin Chinese as a foreign language for study in 2005. The new international studies focus attracted 40 new students from the Chinatown area. History Although housed in the 37-year-old building previously used by Central High School, Benjamin Franklin High School was dedicated on April 26, 1939. Two-thirds of the faculty and two-thirds of the student body were carried over from Central. Franklin's first principal, Dr. A. Oswald Michener, was to coordinate "the century-old tradition of Central High School with the modern spirit of scientific inquiry which Franklin represented." Following World War II, nearly 5,000 returning veterans were provided with twelve to fourteen months of special classes at Franklin under the auspices of the Veterans Accelerated Program. In 1947, there were 1,800 veterans in classes, and graduates had enrolled in over 200 colleges and universities, including Harvard. During the McCarthy era, Francis P. Jennings, President of the Philadelphia Teachers Union and a social studies teacher at Franklin, was suspended for alleged communist activity. Testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee, he declared that teachers were required to sacrifice constitutional rights to qualify for employment. Conservative economist and columnist Walter E. Williams, who graduated in 1954, was a critic of Franklin, but praised English teacher, Dr. Martin Rosenberg. Wesley Cook, although he never graduated, was a student at Franklin. In 1969, as a fourteen-year-old, he was inspired by a Black Panther Party newspaper to become involved in that movement and was one of those who proposed changing the school's name to honor Malcolm X. Subsequently, at the suggestion of a Kenyan teacher of African studies at Franklin, he adopted a "class" African name, Mumia, to which, following the birth of a son, he later added Abu-Jamal. As Mumia Abu-Jamal, he was convicted of murdering a police officer and while