{"id":33289,"date":"2018-08-03T09:16:24","date_gmt":"2018-08-03T16:16:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=33289"},"modified":"2018-08-03T09:16:24","modified_gmt":"2018-08-03T16:16:24","slug":"friday-fun-happy-50th-birthday-franklin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2018\/08\/03\/friday-fun-happy-50th-birthday-franklin\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday Fun: Happy 50th Birthday, Franklin!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Truthfully, a belated <strong><em>\u201cHappy Birthday!\u201d<\/em><\/strong> because <strong>Franklin<\/strong> was actually \u201cborn\u201d on <strong><em>July 31, 1968<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 \u00a0And what a \u201cbirth\u201d it was!<\/p>\n<p>Undoubtedly you are probably asking yourselves, <em>\u201cWho is this Franklin that he\u2019s talking about?\u00a0 Other than Benjamin, I don\u2019t know any Franklins.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>But I bet dollars to donuts you do \u2013 even though Franklin was only a couple inches tall when he first came into the world fifty years ago.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"695\" height=\"391\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/mTcrSA8nfAQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>As noted, the story of how Franklin came into being is one worth sharing!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>During the Civil Rights struggles of the late 1960s, and only eleven days after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., <strong>Harriet Glickman<\/strong>, a retired schoolteacher and mother of three from the Los Angeles suburbs, sat down at her typewriter to craft a letter to <strong>Charles Schulz<\/strong> requesting the inclusion of a Negro character in his wildly popular and famous comic strip, <strong><em>\u201cPeanuts\u201d<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Franklin_Glickman-Letter_2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-33290\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Franklin_Glickman-Letter_2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"493\" height=\"630\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Franklin_Glickman-Letter_2.jpg 493w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Franklin_Glickman-Letter_2-117x150.jpg 117w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Franklin_Glickman-Letter_2-235x300.jpg 235w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 493px) 100vw, 493px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>But Glickman\u2019s sentiments were not created <em>de novo<\/em>.\u00a0 Her upbringing was exemplary as she explained in an interview almost three years ago about what motivated her to draft her letter in the first place.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>My parents\u2026 were very concerned about others, and the values that they instilled in us about caring for and appreciating everyone of all colors and backgrounds \u2014 this is what we knew when we were growing up, that you cared about other people.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>And so, during the years, we were very aware of the issues of racism and civil rights in this country. And remember, when I was young, black people had to sit at the back of the bus, black people couldn\u2019t sit in the same seats in the restaurants that you could sit\u2026 the period before I wrote the letter was the major period of civil rights activities.\u00a0 Every day I would see, or read, about black children trying to get into school and seeing crowds of white people standing around spitting at them or yelling at them \u2026 and the beatings and the dogs and the hosings and the courage of so many people in that time.<\/em><em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>So it wasn\u2019t as if, one day, I said, oh things are bad and Martin Luther King was shot and I should do something. It was the accumulation of all the years of seeing the discrimination, the segregation, the hatred and all\u2026.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Glickman was amazed when she actually got a reply from Schulz.\u00a0 While he told her he liked the idea, he was worried that it would appear to be patronizing.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Franklin_Glickman-Letter_REPLY.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-33291\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Franklin_Glickman-Letter_REPLY.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1132\" height=\"825\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Franklin_Glickman-Letter_REPLY.png 1132w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Franklin_Glickman-Letter_REPLY-150x109.png 150w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Franklin_Glickman-Letter_REPLY-300x219.png 300w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Franklin_Glickman-Letter_REPLY-768x560.png 768w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Franklin_Glickman-Letter_REPLY-1024x746.png 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1132px) 100vw, 1132px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Glickman wrote back asking if it would be alright if she shared his letter with several of her Negro friends and then have them share their thoughts about it with him.\u00a0 He heartily approved, and her friends were very supportive of the idea in their correspondence to Schulz.<\/p>\n<p>A short while later Schulz wrote to Glickman telling her to keep an eye out on his comic strip panels during the last week in July of 1968.\u00a0 And so the character Franklin was \u201cborn\u201d on July 31, 1968.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Franklin_Character_Strip-Background.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-33292\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Franklin_Character_Strip-Background.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"440\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Franklin_Character_Strip-Background.jpg 440w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Franklin_Character_Strip-Background-150x102.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Franklin_Character_Strip-Background-300x205.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 440px) 100vw, 440px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It was over recovered a beach ball, baseball and crooked sand castles that Franklin and <strong>Charlie Brown<\/strong> form a friendship \u2013 a first for syndicated comics!<\/p>\n<p>While widely acclaimed, that didn\u2019t mean Franklin\u2019s introduction didn\u2019t meet with some resistance \u2013 particularly from editors in the South.\u00a0 They especially pleaded with Schulz to NOT show any panels with Franklin in the same school with the other characters, because they were dead-set against integration.<\/p>\n<p>It wasn\u2019t long before Schulz soon thereafter put Franklin in the same schoolroom \u2026 seated right in front of a little white girl, <strong>Peppermint Patty<\/strong>!<\/p>\n<p>Schulz recalled a discussion with <strong>Larry Rutman<\/strong>, head of the company that distributed <em>\u201cPeanuts\u201d<\/em> (King Features Syndicate):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cI remember telling Larry at the time about Franklin\u2014he wanted me to change it, and we talked about it for a long while on the phone, and I finally sighed and said: <strong>\u2018Well, Larry, let\u2019s put it this way: Either you print it just the way I draw it or I quit. How\u2019s that?\u2019\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>[Emphasis added]<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In truth, it would be hard to argue against folks who have complained that Franklin is a little too one-dimensional and a little too perfect \u2013 always wise, fair and just.<\/p>\n<p>And it\u2019s true he does lack the eccentricities that all of Schulz\u2019s other characters possess.\u00a0 But at the same time, I think we can agree that Franklin has gently nudged readers toward the notion that, as Martin Luther King Jr. famously said, the content of your character is more important than the color of your skin.<\/p>\n<p>So <em><strong>\u201cHappy 50<sup>th<\/sup> Birthday!\u201d<\/strong><\/em> Franklin!\u00a0 And thanks for all you\u2019ve done!<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>NOTE:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The <em>&#8220;Peanuts&#8221;<\/em> comic strip ran until Mr. Schulz\u2019s death in 2000. \u00a0It was published in more than 2,600 newspapers in 75 countries and translated to 21 languages, and it has reached more than 300 million people around the world.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>BONUS FEATURE:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Interview with Ms. Glickman at the Charles M. Schulz Museum in 2014 on how she wrote to Schulz:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"695\" height=\"391\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/8MtZ3XoFQwI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>RESOURCES<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/schulzmuseum.org\/50-years-of-franklin\/\">[1]<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.saturdayeveningpost.com\/2018\/07\/31\/culture\/50-years-franklin-charlie-brown.html\">[2]<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.snopes.com\/fact-check\/charlie-brown-racist-franklin\/\">[3]<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/codeswitch\/2015\/11\/06\/454930010\/how-franklin-the-black-peanuts-character-was-born\">[4]<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.afp.com\/en\/news\/206\/franklin-first-black-peanuts-character-turns-50-doc-1811121\">[5]<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/kotaku.com\/franklin-broke-peanuts-color-barrier-in-the-least-inter-1793843085\">[6]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Truthfully, a belated \u201cHappy Birthday!\u201d because Franklin was actually \u201cborn\u201d on July 31, 1968.\u00a0 \u00a0And what a \u201cbirth\u201d it was! Undoubtedly you are probably asking yourselves, \u201cWho is this Franklin that he\u2019s talking about?\u00a0 Other than Benjamin, I don\u2019t know any Franklins.\u201d But I bet dollars to donuts you do \u2013 even though Franklin was <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2018\/08\/03\/friday-fun-happy-50th-birthday-franklin\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33289\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}