Ken Burch
1 min readApr 12, 2020

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I always thought is was far more problematic, and at least unconsciously racist, that, after been pressured to add a black character to PEANUTS(The woman who talked Charles Schultz into adding what became “Franklin” to the strip, Harriet Glickman, died a couple of weeks ago at age 93, btw), Schultz rarely used Franklin in the strips at all, did no major work on character development for Franklin, and gave him no real purpose in the strip other than to offer a response to something Charlie Brown or Linus had said. Franklin ended up as a cross between what Sidney Poitier’s character in GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER? might have been like as a child, or perhaps as Lionel Jefferson in grade school.

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Ken Burch
Ken Burch

Written by Ken Burch

Retired Alaska ferryboat steward, grandparent, sometime poet. Radical yet independent of dogma. Likes nice days, playing banjo and not as yet dying of Covid.

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