Chester Pierce: The Forgotten Tale of How a Black Psychiatrist Helped Make ‘Sesame Street’
The Forgotten Tale of How a Black Psychiatrist Helped Make ‘Sesame Street’
Each show opened with scenes of children of different races playing together. Episodes featured a strong black male role model (Gordon, a school teacher), his supportive wife, Susan (who later is offered the opportunity to develop a profession of her own), a good- hearted white storekeeper (Mr. Hooper) and more. Within a few years, Hispanic characters moved into the neighborhood as well.
As Loretta Moore Long (who played Susan) later reflected: ‘“Sesame Street’ has incorporated a hidden curriculum … that seeks to bolster the Black and minority child’s self-respect and to portray the multi-ethnic, multi-cultural world into which both majority and minority child are growing.” The radical nature of this “hidden curriculum” did not go unnoticed.
In May 1970, a state commission in Mississippi voted to not air the show on the state’s newly launched public TV network: the people of Mississippi, said some legislators, were not yet “ready” to see a show with such an interracial cast. The state commission reversed its decision after the originally secret vote made national news — though it took 22 days to decide to do so. FELT Inside Bert and Ernie’s Brief Moment of Gay Liberation Tim Teeman “Sesame Street” would go on to become the most successful children’s show of all time.
Over time, though, the radical mental health agenda fueling its creation was largely forgotten. Later critics would instead increasingly suggest that the show, as a straightforward experiment in early education, benefited white middle-income children more than its primary target audience of disadvantaged minorities, and in that sense had arguably partly misfired.
