How a schoolteacher helped create the first black Peanuts character

 


Franklin, the first African American Peanuts character, was introduced to Charlie Brown and the gang in 1968.

In 1968, shortly after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., a Los Angeles schoolteacher named Harriet Glickman wrote to Charles Schulz regarding the lack of integration in Peanuts.

At that time, Peanuts was already one of the most popular comic strips in America — it was also predominantly white. While the country faced widespread social tensions over civil rights, Glickman believed that the popular comic strip could help influence American attitudes on race. She also believed that the Peanuts brand had "a stature and reputation which can withstand a great deal."

As a result of their correspondence, a black character named Franklin was introduced to the cartoon that summer, and would eventually become a regular member of the Peanuts gang.

Of course, it wasn't that simple.

Over three months in 1968, Schulz and Glickman exchanged several letters, which were kept by the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, California and recently displayed as part of a social commentary exhibit.

Schulz responded to Glickman's letter with concerns that he, along with other cartoonists who were aware of the issue, would be condescending to people of color.

"We all would like very much to be able to do this, but each of us is afraid that it would look like we were patronizing our Negro friends," Schulz writes. Adding, "I don't know what the solution is."

Rather than accepting the issue as too uncomfortable to approach, Glickman responded with her own suggestion. She asked permission to show Shulz's letter to some African American friends who were parents, as well as Peanuts fans.

"Their response may prove useful to you in your thinking on this subject," Glickman writes.

Schulz welcomed their input, further expressing his dilemma. On one hand, the cartoonist realized that not addressing the problem "would be wrong" for him to do — however, he still worried that it would come across as disrespectful.

"I would be very happy to try, but I am sure that I would receive the sort of criticism that would make it appear as if I were doing this in a condescending manner," Schulz writes.

The letters from fans strongly urged Schulz to create a character that depicted racial amity — not only for their kids to see themselves more accurately depicted, but to help break out of the media's regular exclusion of minorities in everyday scenes.

"At this time in history, when Negro youths need a feeling of identity; the inclusion of a Negro character even occasionally in your comics would help these young people to feel it is a natural thing for Caucasian and Negro children to engage in dialogue," writes an anonymous mother of two.

On July 1, Schulz sent a letter to Glickman instructing her to check the paper during the week of July 29.

"I have drawn an episode which I think will please you," Schulz writes.

Franklin made his debut in the comic strip on July 31, 1968. The character meets Charlie Brown on the beach and the two grade-school boys engage in casual banter about baseball and what their dads do for a living. Franklin mentions that his father is fighting in Vietnam, which at the time, was the first major war with an integrated military. (Black soldiers had previously fought in all American military conflicts, but units were segregated.)

Franklin appeared in the comic for three days in a row. The response from readers was generally positive, though some objection, particularly in the South, resulted in certain papers refusing to run the series.

Soon after his initial appearance, Franklin became a regular character in the comic strips. He attended school on the other side of town with Peppermint Patty and Marcie. Despite letters from critics and editors urging Schulz not to show the characters in school together, the cartoonist ignored critics to the best of his ability.

"I did get one letter from one southern editor who said something about 'I don't mind you having a black character, but please don't show them in school together.' Because I had shown Franklin sitting in front of Peppermint Patty," Schulz said in an interview with Gary Groth. "But I didn't even answer him.

Franklin made his first animated appearance in the 1973 special A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. He would become the first, but not only black character three years later, when Schulz introduced the character Milo, who was a part of a diverse group of toddler friends called "The Goose Eggs."