When Mississippi Tried to Ban Sesame Street for Showing a “Highly Integrated Cast” (1970)

On Novem­ber 10, 1969, Sesame Street made its broad­cast debut.

The very first lines were spo­ken by Gor­don (Matt Robin­son), a Black school­teacher who’s show­ing a new kid around the neigh­bor­hood, intro­duc­ing her to a cou­ple of oth­er kids, along with Sesame Street adult main­stays Bob, Susan, and Mr. Hoop­er, and Big Bird, whose appear­ance had yet to find its final form:

Sal­ly, you’ve nev­er seen a street like Sesame Street. Every­thing hap­pens here. You’re gonna love it.

The milieu would have felt famil­iar to chil­dren grow­ing up on New York City’s Upper West Side, or Harlem or the Bronx. While not every block was as well inte­grat­ed as Sesame Street’s cheer­ful, delib­er­ate­ly mul­ti­cul­tur­al, brown­stone set­ting, any sub­way ride was an oppor­tu­ni­ty to rub shoul­ders with New York­ers of all races, class­es and creeds.

Not six months lat­er, the all-White Mis­sis­sip­pi State Com­mis­sion for Edu­ca­tion­al Tele­vi­sion vot­ed 3 to 2 to remove Sesame Street from their state’s air­waves.

A dis­grun­tled pro-Sesame com­mis­sion mem­ber leaked the rea­son to The New York Times:

Some of the mem­bers of the com­mis­sion were very much opposed to show­ing the series because it uses a high­ly inte­grat­ed cast of chil­dren.

The whistle­blow­er also inti­mat­ed that those same mem­bers object­ed to the fact that Robin­son and Loret­ta Long, the actor por­tray­ing Susan, were Black.

They claimed Mis­sis­sip­pi was “not yet ready” for such a show, even though Sesame Street was an imme­di­ate hit. Pro­fes­sion­als in the fields of psy­chol­o­gy, edu­ca­tion, and med­i­cine had con­sult­ed on its con­tent, help­ing it secure a sig­nif­i­cant amount of fed­er­al and pri­vate grants pri­or to film­ing. The show had been laud­ed for its main mis­sion — prepar­ing Amer­i­can chil­dren from low-income back­grounds for kinder­garten through live­ly edu­ca­tion­al pro­gram­ming with ample rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

Kids grow­ing up in shel­tered, all-white enclaves stood to gain, too, by being wel­comed into a tele­vi­sion neigh­bor­hood where Black and white fam­i­lies were shown hap­pi­ly coex­ist­ing, treat­ing each oth­er with kind­ness, patience and respect. (Sonia Man­zano and Emilio Del­ga­do, who played Maria and Luis, joined the cast soon after.)

Even though Alaba­ma, Arkansas, Flori­da, Louisiana and Ten­nessee also moved to pre-empt the inno­v­a­tive hit show, the gov­ern­ment appointees on the Mis­sis­sip­pi State Com­mis­sion for Edu­ca­tion­al Tele­vi­sion who’d oust­ed Sesame Street found them­selves out­num­bered when Jack­son res­i­dents of all ages staged a protest in front of Mis­sis­sip­pi Pub­lic Broadcasting’s HQ.]

The Delta Demo­c­rat-Times pub­lished an edi­to­r­i­al piece argu­ing that “there is no state which more des­per­ate­ly needs every edu­ca­tion­al tool it can find than Mis­sis­sip­pi:”

There is no edu­ca­tion­al show on the mar­ket today bet­ter pre­pared than Sesame Street to teach preschool chil­dren what many can­not or do not learn in their homes….The needs are immense.

After 22 days, the ban was rolled back and Sesame Street was rein­stat­ed.

That fall, the cast made a pit­stop in Jack­son dur­ing a 14-city nation­al tour. Susan, Gor­don, Bob, Mr. Hoop­er and Big Bird sang and joked with audi­ence mem­bers as part of an event co-spon­sored by the very same com­mis­sion that had tried to black­ball them, and left with­out hav­ing received a for­mal apol­o­gy.

Sesame Street has stayed true to its pro­gres­sive agen­da through­out its fifty+ year his­to­ry, a com­mit­ment that seems more essen­tial than ever in 2023.

Below, Elmo, a Mup­pet who rose through the ranks to become a Sesame Street star engages in an entry-lev­el con­ver­sa­tion about race with some new­er char­ac­ters in an episode from two years ago.

The Sesame Work­shop rec­om­mends it for view­ers aged 1 to 4, though it seems our coun­try doesn’t lack for adult cit­i­zens who could do with a refresh­er on the sub­ject…

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Watch Twin Beaks, Sesame Street’s Par­o­dy of David Lynch’s Icon­ic TV Show (1990)

Philip Glass Com­pos­es Music for a Sesame Street Ani­ma­tion (1979)

Watch Jazzy Spies: 1969 Psy­che­del­ic Sesame Street Ani­ma­tion, Fea­tur­ing Grace Slick, Teach­es Kids to Count

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.


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Comments (7)
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  • Jacqueline Tejeda says:

    I was one of those chil­dren!!!! We immi­grat­ed from the domini­can repub­lic to the Bronx, lived in the projects, and had a white-and-black tv. As a 4‑year old, I some­how con­vinced my moth­er to change the chan­nel to “that show I loved” and I was hooked. I learned eng­lish from those “all inclu­sive actors” and math from the Count. No one explained to me that I was in a dif­fer­ent coun­try, but because of Sesame Street I learned to read ear­ly, got skipped sev­er­al grades, was deemed “intel­li­gent” gra­fu­at­ed ear­ly, and even­tu­al­ly became a Doc­tor. It was in Med­ical School that I learned with great sad­ness of Jim Henson’s death. Today as a board cer­ti­fied Anes­the­si­ol­o­gist, I still sing “Lady Bug Pic­nic” and laugh when I count. Please know that the Sesame Street Crew had a pos­i­tive effect on mul­ti­tudes of eager chil­dren and that your Lega­cy lives on. You have my eter­nal and deep­est grat­i­tude.

  • renee schwalberg says:

    I recent­ly read Mup­pets in Moscow, which describes how USAID sup­ports Sesame Work­shop to export Amer­i­can val­ues like inclu­sion and coop­er­a­tion, a par­tic­u­lar­ly chal­leng­ing project in post-Sovi­et Rus­sia. I high­ly rec­om­mend it. It had not occurred to me that this type of pro­pa­gan­da was nec­es­sary with­in the Unit­ed States as well.

    I too was among the first gen­er­a­tion of Sesame Street view­ers (I remem­ber watch­ing the first episode!), and as a white, Eng­lish-speak­ing sub­ur­ban kid Sesame Street gave me a win­dow into an urban envi­ron­ment that I found immea­sur­ably excit­ing. It’s so fun­ny to look at that open­ing sequence now–the girl’s undies! Roller­skat­ing with­out hel­mets or pads!

  • Stuart Mann says:

    We are all of plan­et earth, all equal, all as valu­able, all as impor­tant.

  • DANIEL THALER says:

    YES, THERE WERE A WHOLE HOST OF DISCRIMINATORY POLICIES OVER 50 YEARS AGO, LIKE THIS EXAMPLE. CAN WE MOVE ON? WE STILL HAVE RACIAL DISCRIMINATION, BUT IT IS NO WHERE NEAR AS PREVALENT AND OBVIOUS. CAN WE MOVE ON? THERE WILL ALWAYS BE RACIAL DISCRIMINATION, WORLD WIDE. CAN WE MOVE ON? THERE IS STILL SLAv­ERY IN THE WORLD. CAN WE MOVE ON? WHAT POSSIBLE BENEFITS ARE THERE FROM POINTING OUT RACIAL DISCRIMINATION 50 YEARS AGO, IN THE SOUTH, IN REGARD TO A SESAME STREET SHOW? IS THAT SUPPOSED TO BE SHOCKING OR SOMETHING? SHED LIGHT ON SOLVING A PROBLEM THAT WILL NEVER TOTALLY GO AWAY, ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD? NO, IT WON’T DO A DAMN THING EXCEPT TO POSSIBLE CAUSE TROUBLE. I MEAN WHAT IS THE POINT?

  • Strigine says:

    Ok, I’m gonna make a crazy guess here… a real stab in the dark… I’m gonna guess… that you’re white, Dan­ny. Did I get that right?

  • Ed Davis says:

    Strig­ine’s com­ment proves that racial stereo­typ­ing just won’t go away with some.…

  • Helmut Hirsch says:

    Why are you yelling? Do you go on sites ded­i­cat­ed to food, and crit­i­cize the act of post­ing recipes?

    ‘yeah, we get it, every­one already knows how to make mac­a­roni and cheese, can we move on?’.

    You do know that this site is about cul­ture and his­to­ry right?

    If you are not inter­est­ed in this era of his­to­ry read about some­thing else.

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