Not quite, already did a write up on Franklin once so I’m stealing from that.
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People I like can be divided into two groups: a) those who enjoy and get Charles M. Schulz’s wonderful Peanuts comic strip; b) those fools who don’t. All of human life is in the artist and writer’s 17,897 comic strips.
In 1968 Schulz noticed the Civil Rights movement, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and read a letter from Los Angeles schoolteacher Harriet Glickman. She had a question for Schulz: would he include a black child in the Peanuts gang?
After she asked the first time, he responded with the I’d rather not do it because I don’t want to do it wrong, 1968 and the guy was worried about patronizing and tokenizing if he were to include a black character in the strip. A move that even today progressives would applaud.
Mrs. Glickman responded:
Dear Mr. Schulz,
I appreciate your taking the time to answer my letter about Negro children in Peanuts.
You present an interesting dilemma. I would like your permission to use your letter to show some Negro friends. Their responses as parents may prove useful to you in your thinking on this subject.
Sincerely,
Harriet Glickman
True to her word, Mrs Glickman showed the letter to others. Kenneth C. Kelly, one of Mrs. Glickman’s ‘Negro friends’, saw the missive and wrote to the artist:
Dear Mr. Schulz:
With regards to your correspondence with Mrs. Glickman on the subject of including Negro kids in the fabric of Peanuts, I’d like to express an opinion as a Negro father of two young boys. You mention a fear of being patronizing. Though I doubt that any Negro would view your efforts that way, I’d like to suggest that an accusation of being patronizing would be a small price to pay for the positive results that would accrue!
We have a situation in America in which racial enmity is constantly portrayed. The inclusion of a Negro supernumerary in some of the group scenes in Peanuts would do two important things. Firstly, it would ease my problem of having my kids seeing themselves pictured in the overall American scene. Secondly, it would suggest racial amity in a casual day-to-day sense.
I deliberately suggest a supernumerary role for a Negro character. The inclusion of a Negro in your occasional group scenes would quietly and unobtrusively set the stage for a principal character at a later date, should the basis for such a principal develop.
We have too long used Negro supernumeraries in such unhappy situations as a movie prison scene, while excluding Negro supernumeraries in quiet and normal scenes of people just living, loving, worrying, entering a hotel, the lobby of an office building, a downtown New York City street scene. There are insidious negative effects in these practices of the movie industry, TV industry, magazine publishing, and syndicated cartoons.
Sincerely,
KCK
(supernumerary = background character/face in the crowd/space filler)
Schulz sent Mrs. Glickman a personal note:
Franklin was in the gang, and absolutely not background.
I can’t think of anything outside of some kind of family heirloom I would ever be prouder to own and display.
Why Charles M. Schulz Gave Peanuts A 'Negro' Character
One last little bit from this article.
In the 1980s, Schulz recalled the fight to feature Franklin:
“There was one strip where Charlie Brown and Franklin had been playing on the beach, and Franklin said, ‘Well, it’s been nice being with you, come on over to my house some time. [My editors] didn’t like that. Another editor protested once when Franklin was sitting in the same row of school desks with Peppermint Patty, and said, ‘We have enough trouble here in the South without you showing the kids together in school.’ But I never paid any attention to those things, and I remember telling [United Features president] Larry [Rutman] at the time about Franklin—he wanted me to change it, and we talked about it for a long while on the phone, and I finally sighed and said, ‘Well, Larry, let’s put it this way: Either you print it just the way I draw it or I quit. How’s that?’ So that’s the way that ended….
“People say, ‘Don’t you ever deal in social issues?’ ‘Well, don’t you read the strip?’ If you read the strip every day, you’ll see that I deal with more social issues in one month than some of these deal [with] in a whole year. But you have to be a little more sensitive to it.”
Okay… I’m watching the Lorax (please don’t let my containment facility know I’m seeking out entertainment that isn’t a fairy porn book series), and… The Onceler really needs a boyfriend. Like, REALLY. He’s so yaoitastic looking. But…
There’s nobody in the movie to really ship him with in a yaoi way.
But… He has two different parts of his character arc, that kind of have different personalities, and different outfits.
Thinking about how a year ago we were eagerly counting down days until we saw each other. Thinking about how Doritos taste different in your country than they do here. Thinking about sitting on your counter drinking squash while you cool and we bitch about our roommates or whatever we’ve seen on tiktok. Or football. Thinking about being curled up on the couch with you while you do your schoolwork and I read a book. Thinking about ratatouille in bed. About the day you let me walk to the corner shop with you. About the way you click your teeth when you’ve first drifted off to sleep.
Nobody will ever be able to make me feel safe like you did. Nobody will ever be able to embody home like you could. I’ve never been so at peace as I was in those months. Today I miss your smile. I miss your laugh when you’re telling a story about something somebody did and you keep cracking up the whole time. Today I miss the microwave dance and picking the perfect playlist.
I hope you’re doing well. I hope I learn to let you go because holding onto you is starting to hurt.
Missing you extra tonight. I wish you were still my drunk text. I wish I could send you videos about how much I love you for you to wake up to. I wish we were planning our next visit to each other right now. I wish I was packing my things to come take a job in Brighton and we could be happy together.
I wish I hadn’t ruined us. I wish I had been patient enough to let you work with me like you wanted to. I wish I could have let myself be vulnerable with you instead of being so afraid.
I keep hoping you’ll come back to me. That we can talk again. That maybe I’ll get a chance to make you fall in love with me all over again. I know you deserve more than I could give you though. Doesn’t make the missing you stop.
I hope you had a good day. I hope you still think of me sometimes.
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