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.