Re: Happy National #Franklin Day. On this day in 1968 The first African American pean
Franklin integrated ‘Peanuts’ 47 years ago today. Here’s how a teacher changed comics history.
“So I decided to write.”
Because she had worked with kids, and had kids of her own, Glickman was especially aware of the power of comics among the young. “And my feeling at the time was that I realized that black kids and white kids never saw themselves [depicted] together in the classroom,” says Glickman, noting that Morrie Turner‘s diverse comic “Wee Pals” was still a budding feature. And so she wrote to several syndicated-strip cartoonists — from “Peanuts” to “Mary Worth” — with the idea of cartoon integration.
“So I decided to write.”
Because she had worked with kids, and had kids of her own, Glickman was especially aware of the power of comics among the young. “And my feeling at the time was that I realized that black kids and white kids never saw themselves [depicted] together in the classroom,” says Glickman, noting that Morrie Turner‘s diverse comic “Wee Pals” was still a budding feature. And so she wrote to several syndicated-strip cartoonists — from “Peanuts” to “Mary Worth” — with the idea of cartoon integration.
“Allen Saunders was very thoughtful, and he sent a long letter, and we communicated for quite a while,” Glickman says of the “Mary Worth” scripter. “He and [artist] Ken Ernst wanted to do something like that … But he was very afraid that the syndicate would drop him.”
Glickman also received a prompt reply from “Sparky” Schulz, from up the road in the Bay Area. The “Peanuts” creator appreciated her point — “He liked the idea,” she says — but he also shared the reasons for his reservations, including whether he, as a white creator, could write a black character without unintended condescension.
Glickman decided to write back, and suggested that she could seek input from African American friends who were parents. “With his permission, I shared his letter,” she recalls. “Ken Kelly was an old friend and a father of two, and I also asked Monica Gunning.” Those two parents wrote Schulz themselves, urging the integration of “Peanuts.” A short time later, Glickman received a response from the cartoonist.
“Schulz said that he’d got the letters,” she recalls, “and that I’d be pleased with an upcoming ‘Peanuts’ story.”
Schulz had drawn strips that introduce Franklin, son of a father who’s off in Vietnam, as this new “regular kid” plays at the beach. The storyline was set to begin July 31, 1968.
“Sparky faced a question from the head of the [United Feature] Syndicate … who said: ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ ” Glickman says. “If you know Sparky, you know what his response was.
“He said: ‘Either you run it the way I drew it, or I quit.”
“Peanuts” at that point, of course, was already one of the preeminent comic strips in the world, followed and beloved by tens of millions of readers. “He was the voice in the comics at that time,” Glickman emphasizes. United wasn’t about to lose Schulz over this.
And so, 47 years ago today, Franklin joined the “Peanuts” gang. The introduction made the predictable cultural ripples.
(courtesy of Peanuts Worldwide & Mendelson Productions) Peppermint Party and Franklin in class. (courtesy of Peanuts Worldwide & Mendelson Productions)
“Schulz received some messages from the South from [editors], saying: ‘Please don’t send us any more strips with black children in the classroom with white children. We’re going through forced integration in our schools and don’t want to see any more of these strips,’ ” Glickman recounts.
Schulz was famous, of course, for doubling-down if you told him that something “couldn’t” be done. (Several years earlier, he’d included Bible passages in TV’s “A Charlie Brown Christmas” after being challenged on Linus’s monologue from the Book of Luke.) So naturally, Franklin was now a fixture.
“I know I was personally pleased when he brought Franklin into the strip, and was excited to then add him to our television shows … ,” Lee Mendelson, the Emmy-winning producer of the “Peanuts” specials, tells me. And “one writer said — when Franklin was introduced — that he was glad to see Charlie Brown was colorblind.”
Forty-seven years ago, Glickman and her three children would read “Peanuts” in the pages of the Los Angeles Times. Today, Glickman picks up the L.A. Times and sees the “Peanuts” characters running in full color, in multiple meanings of that term. Because there, this week, she glimpses Franklin.
“I just love them,” Glickman tells me. “Franklin was, and is, my fourth child.”
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