The Unmistakable Black Roots of "Sesame Street"

June 15, 2020 12:16 PM

[T]he beloved children’s television show was shaped by the African-American communities in Harlem and beyond
posted by Etrigan (27 comments total)

I remember being disappointed when I started kindergarten at an all-white rural school. I had just assumed that the faculty and student body would be as diverse as Sesame Street.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 1:01 PM on June 15, 2020 [35 favorites]

I had a Sesame Street play set when I was little. I really liked it, because it was the only FisherPrice Little People set in which the people lived in an apartment building, like I did. (Also, because Ernie and Bert are so awesome and it had their apartment, along with Hooper's store).

There was talk, later, about moving Canadian Sesame Street to a suburban setting, on the grounds that Canadian kids couldn't relate to urban living. This was, of course, poppycock - and we already had dozens of suburban and rural set shows. That was our only one that showed people living in apartments. I didn't even live downtown or in a walk-up, but I related more to that set than to any of the dozens featuring detached houses.

I never realised how progressive the casting was, though, because it looked like my neighbourhood, at least the kids did. Things would have been better in reality if the faculty at our school had also looked like the people on Sesame Street.
posted by jb at 1:13 PM on June 15, 2020 [10 favorites]

also previously :P
posted by kliuless at 1:27 PM on June 15, 2020

I recently found out that Holly Robinson from "21 Jump Street" and "Rodney Peete and..." commercials fame is the daughter of the first Gordon.
posted by rhizome at 1:27 PM on June 15, 2020 [7 favorites]

Jesse Jackson on Sesame Street - I Am Somebody
posted by ChuraChura at 1:46 PM on June 15, 2020 [5 favorites]

Stevie Wonder on Sesame Street - Superstition
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 2:13 PM on June 15, 2020 [14 favorites]

Stevie wonder is a god. That’s all
posted by wheelieman at 2:21 PM on June 15, 2020 [2 favorites]

That Stevie Wonder clip is probably my favorite YT video ever.
posted by brundlefly at 2:51 PM on June 15, 2020 [7 favorites]

jb, I'd completely forgotten about the Fisher-Price toys ("Sesame Street Apartments," from 1975, and "Sesame Street Clubhouse" in 1977). Emotionally evocative evidence at the Muppet fandom wiki's Fisher-Price Little People entry.

I'd started pulling together a related post, so to piggyback:
Racism Has No Place on Our Street. Sesame Street was built on diversity, inclusion, and, especially, kindness. Today and every day we stand together with our Black colleagues, partners, and the entire Black community to speak out against racism, to promote understanding, and to create a world that is smarter, stronger, and kinder. [Current message at the Sesame Workshop website, posted June 1.]
Sesame Street & CNN: Coming Together: Standing Up to Racism, a town hall for kids and families. (Fox employee Tucker Carlson disapproved, losing more advertisers.)
On Sesame Street, 'C' Is For Controversy (NPR, November 12, 2009)
How Sesame Street’s Muppets Became Revolutionaries (Edutopia, November 8, 2019)
No, Sesame Street isn’t gentrified. (The Black Urbanist Weekly, November 15, 2019)
The Sesame Street Effect How the children’s show has enhanced learning in America—and why it’s a reminder of what’s lacking from education today (The Atlantic, June 17, 2015)
What do you remember learning from Sesame Street? (AV Club Q&A, November 14, 2014)
The Sesame Workshop model in the US (Early Childhood Education by MOOC: Lessons from Sesame Street, nber.org, September 2016), and around the world. ("The Role of Social Media in Early Childhood Education: The Sesame Workshop," UniteForSight.org, November 2011; Sesame Street Case Study, at Brookings.edu, July 2016)
posted by Iris Gambol at 2:55 PM on June 15, 2020 [43 favorites]

What a great collection of links, Iris Gambol!
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 3:43 PM on June 15, 2020 [2 favorites]

I was four when Sesame Street started, and my first three years of school, in Brooklyn, looked exactly like the people I saw on The Street. Moving away from that was very difficult, but I think those years were formative and I'm glad I had them.

Thanks for the post!
posted by blurker at 3:45 PM on June 15, 2020 [4 favorites]

I learned so much about Sesame Street today! Great post.
posted by shoesietart at 4:08 PM on June 15, 2020

It's funny how as a suburban white kid who watched Sesame Street religiously it never registered to me that the people on the show were any different. I'm really thankful I had that show to set an example, even if it was a subconscious one. I STILL vividly remember that animation with music by the Pointer Sisters about counting to 12.
posted by azuresunday at 4:16 PM on June 15, 2020 [19 favorites]

The one I remember from Sesame Street went "uno DOS tres... quaaaatro"
posted by aniola at 4:52 PM on June 15, 2020 [3 favorites]

I recently found out that Holly Robinson from "21 Jump Street" and "Rodney Peete and..." commercials fame is the daughter of the first Gordon.

Matt Robinson originally started out as a writer/producer. He only took the role of Gordon, because the original actor for the role didn't work out. Robinson's dad was a columnist for the black newspaper, The Philadelphia Independent, who got blacklisted during the McCarthy era, because he wrote a column that was insufficiently celebratory after Joseph Stalin's 1953 death.

Roscoe Orman, the most recent actor to play Gordon, played the title role in the blaxploitation movie Willie Dynamite.
posted by jonp72 at 5:22 PM on June 15, 2020 [10 favorites]

That same year, Mississippi public television concluded that its viewers were not ready for the portrayal of multiracial harmony on city streets and wouldn’t air “Sesame Street.” Parents successfully petitioned the station to bring it back and invited the show’s cast to visit Jackson, Mississippi. When the show came to town, the local police showed up in riot gear.

Flames on the sides of my face over this.
posted by Kitchen Witch at 5:53 PM on June 15, 2020 [18 favorites]

Stevie Wonder on Sesame Street - Superstition

That vid will get me every time.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 11:34 PM on June 15, 2020

I was born in 1969, so I grew up with Sesame Street from the beginning. And back when Gen X was a thing, and they kept calling us the "MTV Generation" because we (apparently) had such short attention spans, I would always say that no, we're the Sesame Street Generation. Because Sesame Street had all of the things they blamed on MTV - quick cuts, a flowing mix of live action and animation, frenetic motion and a streak of rebellion underlying it all.

Growing up, I loved Gordon, I loved Maria and Luis, I loved Mr. Hooper, but not as much. A few years ago I took my kids to the Macy's parade and there was a SS float, and Bob waved back right at me and I teared up. So apparently, without even realizing it, I guess I loved Bob. I always worry that they'll get too gentrified to do any good, and I know we'll never get another Subway, but it's good to see pieces like these that will hopefully keep them grounded in their roots.

Sesame Street is the only company that I have job alerts set up for on LinkedIn. I have no idea what job they might have that I could squeeze my skill set into, but I'm still hoping.
posted by Mchelly at 6:22 AM on June 16, 2020 [14 favorites]

This show transcended generations, cultures & so much more. I vividly remember watching it as a white English kid growing up in suburban south London in the 90s. My mum tells me I learned the alphabet from Sesame Street, and still to this day I say "...w, x, y and ZEE" instead of "ZED" as it is pronounced in the UK. I didn't realise how profound the impact had been until I saw the numbers song as an adult and had a massive flashback. There was one black kid in my class at school there and I only remember one Middle Eastern kid, but I don't think they ever struck me as unusual, probably in large part thanks to the diversity on TV I was brought up on. UK TV in the 90s was quite diverse (eg. Floella Benjamin and Andi Peters were prominent kids TV presenters and my Dad got me an autograph from the latter) but Sesame Street was far ahead of its time.
posted by Acey at 6:49 AM on June 16, 2020 [2 favorites]

I grew up in a very black/white integrated suburban neighborhood in southern Illinois, so the "black people on TV" thing didn't really resonate (they just looked like our neighbors)--but the Hispanic people were a whole nother thing. I loved Luis; he was always my favorite of the live actors. I read really early so learning the alphabet, etc., from Sesame Street wasn't really a thing for me either, so the clearest thing I remember learning from Sesame Street is Spanish. I learned to count to 20 in Spanish, and I learned "abiento" and "cerrado." Paired with a "Say It In Spanish" workbook and a children's chapter book that included Spanish words and phrases ("Trina,") I pulled together a basic Spanish vocabulary that still sticks around today. When my wife is learning Spanish on Duolingo I surprise her with what I remember sometimes.
posted by dlugoczaj at 7:03 AM on June 16, 2020

Roosevelt Franklin FTW.
posted by prepmonkey at 8:50 AM on June 16, 2020 [4 favorites]

Stevie Wonder on Sesame Street - Superstition

I was lucky enough to see Stevie Wonder performing on Curaçao and I am still convinced the event organizers basically told him to go on stage and have fun with whatever he felt like doing. The very same joy you see in that Sesame Street clip was felt that day, and it was awesome. He's such a wonderful artist...
posted by DreamerFi at 9:25 AM on June 16, 2020

This is also where i first encountered "square" as a pejorative.
posted by Mchelly at 11:35 AM on June 16, 2020

This is also where i first encountered "square" as a pejorative.

Wow. It was not until the end of this that it made me feel like it was predicting Prince. He was even purple.
posted by dlugoczaj at 12:28 PM on June 16, 2020 [1 favorite]

It wasn't until I saw his name in the article that I realized how embedded in my brain the opening to Roosevelt Franklin Elementary School is.
posted by ceejaytee at 12:38 PM on June 16, 2020 [3 favorites]

I was today years old when I noticed that "Roosevelt Franklin" is "Franklin Roosevelt" backwards. I always assumed that the "Franklin" part was for Benjamin Franklin.

I was not the most observant child.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 2:28 PM on June 16, 2020

Nobody remembers Organized Konfusion, Roosevelt Franklin?
posted by jonp72 at 3:55 PM on June 17, 2020 [1 favorite]