When Mississippi Once Banned Sesame Street

August 15, 2023 2:21 AM

When Mississippi Once Banned Sesame Street. The show ran into problems during its first season in 1970 when a small group of Mississippi television consultants found it too controversial. The reason? Black cast members.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries (16 comments total)

Texas, 2023: Trustees with the Conroe Independent School District in Montgomery County, Texas, want to crack down on racial unity and other diversity posters.
posted by PlusDistance at 4:13 AM on August 15, 2023 [13 favorites]

...needs MississippiGodDamn tag
posted by k3ninho at 4:53 AM on August 15, 2023 [9 favorites]

I’m not who most needed it, but I was in fact a Mississippi child who took crucial early lessons from Sesame Street. Aside from the counting, I also learned fondness for apartments and cities. I’ve pursued them for my whole adult life.

It’s amazing to think that was only thirteen years or so after this happened. But I recognize one thing for sure—when they no longer have the power to claim their beliefs are right and good, MS conservatives will claim the state is “just not ready” for certain ideas. They have been emboldened lately, and I cannot wait until they are whipped back under cover of that at least.
posted by Countess Elena at 5:19 AM on August 15, 2023 [12 favorites]

Meh. If you read the story, it looks to me like — as a formal matter — Mississippi never banned Sesame Street.
posted by PaulVario at 6:02 AM on August 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

It's still important. Public broadcasting is a lifeline to actual ideas in MS, and it's not just limited to kids' television or even the British SF and comedy they broadcast (which was also formative to me). You have a lot of local shows doing their damnedest, not just on The Issues but in ways that cement public broadcasting as part of society. I'm thinking particularly of Felder Rushing's gardening show, of the medical call-in show Southern Remedy, and of Thacker Mountain Radio, all nonpartisan (AFAIK) and popular with all walks of life.
posted by Countess Elena at 6:21 AM on August 15, 2023 [5 favorites]

Meh. If you read the story, it looks to me like — as a formal matter — Mississippi never banned Sesame Street.

From the actual article:

“This appeared to be too much for the Authority, which discussed how lawmakers with control over ETV’s budget—which had just been set at $5,367,441—might find the mixed-race assembly offensive. The panel's participants were all white.

The board pushed the discussion aside until April 17, 1970, when they took an informal poll and decided, by a margin of three votes against two, to prohibit ETV from airing Sesame Street—a show that came free of charge to all public television stations. (The decision affected mainly viewers in and around Jackson, as the station had not yet expanded across the state and was not expected to do so until the fall of 1970.)

The members who were outvoted were plainly unhappy with the outcome and leaked the decision to The New York Times, which published a notice of the prohibition days later along with a quote from one of the board members.

“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 person, who did not wish to be named, said. “Mainly the commission members felt that Mississippi was not yet ready for it.””

Did YOU read the story!?!??!

Maybe don't come into a thread about the very real history of racism in the South and discount that. It's gross and ignorant. And to try to hand-wave away the bigotry and racism and say it was just a formality. Ugh.
posted by Fizz at 6:22 AM on August 15, 2023 [35 favorites]

Sorry, hit post too soon! Anyway, the point is that there's a sword of Damocles over the head of MPB, and it's the very fact of Mississippi. So even this is newsworthy.
posted by Countess Elena at 6:22 AM on August 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

> The board pushed the discussion aside until April 17, 1970, when they took an informal poll and decided, by a margin of three votes against two, to prohibit ETV from airing Sesame Street—a show that came free of charge to all public television stations.

Looks like a ban to me.

> Board members who spoke with press, usually anonymously, claimed the decision was a simple “postponing” of the show, not an outright ban.

Ah yes, just a "temporary" measure.

> Highly resistant to integration in the city during his tenure in office, Thompson was also the founder of Freedom of Choice in the United States, or FOCUS, an activist group that promoted what they dubbed “freedom of choice” in public schools—a thinly veiled reference to segregation.

Isn't it interesting how fascists always steal the word "freedom"?
posted by AlSweigart at 6:22 AM on August 15, 2023 [11 favorites]

I knew what the last sentence of this post was going to be as soon as I read the first one.
posted by brundlefly at 9:48 AM on August 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

“Our lawmakers fundamentally misunderstand the role of DEI in reconciling a longstanding history of systemic exclusion in Texas’s institutions of higher learning,” a group of leaders from Texas Students for DEI said in a statement, the Texas Tribune reported.

I think the lawmakers understand the role of DEI just fine.
posted by TedW at 9:58 AM on August 15, 2023 [3 favorites]

would the article on mental floss not be better to link to than pocket?
posted by ego at 10:36 AM on August 15, 2023

I came to say the exact same thing as Countess Elena. This very much echoes what it was like to grow up in the MS Delta, in an all- white academy, but be able to see that there was something else in the world that was different and exciting besides BBC reruns of Agatha Christie and Are You Being Served?

I did not expect to see my uncle mentioned in the same breath, or memories of living in Oxford and knowing all the people at Thacker Mountain Radio. The ban was doubly ironic, since Jim Henson is Mississippi boy who grew up in Leland and was born at the same hospital I was born in.

I moved from soul- crushing racism and ignorance to the "damn liberal" Oxfotd at a young age and escaped a world where your best bet was to be a catfish farmer, an Army officer, or a cop.
posted by gwydapllew at 10:43 AM on August 15, 2023 [8 favorites]

Nope. False headline. The state commission took an “informal poll” and voted 3-2 not to broadcast the show, then reversed itself due to public embarrassment at the next meeting. Informal polls do not have the force of law or ban anything. When the state got the Sesame Street tapes, it broadcast them. There is no such thing as a ban of zero duration. RTFA.

Fizz: I appreciate that it’s a lot of fun to accuse me of discounting the history of racism and then allege that I’m gross and ignorant. It’s also completely groundless and incredibly rude. But I recognize that, for some, facts ultimately do not matter.
posted by PaulVario at 5:17 PM on August 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

The NY Times article from 1970 has the headline Mississippi Agency Votes for a TV Ban On ‘Sesame Street’

You can see another 1970 headline from the Arizona Daily Star that reads 'Sesame Street' Banned From Mississippi TV

I suppose a person could split hairs that the headline should be "Mississippi Voted to Ban Sesame Street" instead of "Mississippi Banned Sesame Street", but then people will start wondering why it's so important to that person to split these hairs in defense of obvious racists. Ethics in censorship journalism?
posted by AlSweigart at 10:49 PM on August 16, 2023 [2 favorites]

Arguing over the effectiveness or duration of a ban doesn't challenge the fact of a ban. The state authority voted to prohibit the show.

I suppose we are to think that abortions are not banned in Mississippi because women of means can travel or receive a pill in the mail?
posted by eustatic at 4:25 AM on August 17, 2023 [2 favorites]

Mod note: Comment removed. At this point, everyone should move on and let go of the back and forth about the exact meaning of the word "ban" in this case. Please drop it and find other other aspects to discuss about the post, thank you.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 7:30 AM on August 17, 2023