Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 255
In the male-dominated fields of scholarship and television, people worried that the new project wouldn’t be taken seriously with a woman in charge. Though it had been her study and her idea, Joan [Ganz Cooney] had to sit down and write a list of names of men who could be considered for the job. “I was told that if they chose one of them that I would be number two,” she remembers. “And I said, ‘No, you don’t understand. I won’t be number two.’ It was absolutely what I was born to do, and I knew it.” She successfully overcame the skepticism to become the executive director when Sesame Street premiered on PBS on November 10, 1969.
Sesame Street was a hit with kids and parents alike. The newspapers called her “Saint Joan” and said a miracle had occurred for children, who were learning their ABCs and 1-2-3s with the help of catchy songs and characters like Oscar the Grouch. Chelsea especially loved Big Bird as a little girl, and I loved watching her light up when she learned a new word thanks to Sesame Street.
Of course, even a beloved show like Sesame Street had its detractors. Six months after it premiered, a state commission in Mississippi voted to ban the show from airing on public television. One of the commission members leaked the story to the New York Times, explaining that “some of the members of the commission were very much opposed to the series because ‘it uses a highly integrated cast of children’ ” and that those members felt that Mississippi was not yet ready for it. Joan called their decision “a tragedy for both the white and black children of Mississippi.” After public outcry, Mississippi was forced to reinstate the show after banning it for twenty-two days.
After the murder of her mother, Daisy [Bates] was raised by her father’s close friends Orlee and Susie Smith. Her father fled town to protect his own safety; Daisy never saw him again. But her adoptive father saw something in Daisy that worried him. According to Daisy, he gave her this advice on his deathbed when she was a teenager: “You’re filled with hatred. Hatred can destroy you, Daisy. Don’t hate white people just because they’re white. If you hate, make it count for something. Hate the humiliations we are living under in the South. Hate the discrimination that eats away at the South. Hate the discrimination that eats away at the soul of every black man and woman. Hate the insults hurled at us by white scum—and then try to do something about it, or your hate won’t spell a thing.” Those words guided her in the years to come.
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