I usually avoid posting about fictional characters for Black History Month, but Franklin, the first African-American character to appear in the Peanuts comic strip by Charles M. Schulz, was a gutsy move, given the climate in the 1960s. Franklin first appeared on July 31, 1968:
He and Charlie Brown became good friends but Franklin found some of Charlie Brown's other friends to be strange, i.e. Linus telling him about the Great Pumpkin.
Harriet Glickman, a school teacher in LA wrote to Schulz in April 1968 urging him to include a black character into the strip. Schulz initially worried that it would be perceived as patronizing to the African-American community, but Glickman assured him that it would help normalize friendships between children of different ethnicities.
Some of the strips featuring Franklin did tend to border on racist or stereotypical but never in a negative fashion. Franklin has always been one of the coolest, level-headed, even-keeled character in the entire series. He is a dancer, musician and a rapper.
It was Franklin's grandfather who said: "Once you get over the hill, all you can do is pick up speed."
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