A scene of the US children's series "Sesame Street" with puppets Ernie (r) and Bert (l), photographed in March 1976. Photo by: Dieter Klar/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images

Sunny Days

The History of Sesame Street in America and the World

11.22.19

This month marks the 50th anniversary of Sesame Street, the children’s television show that has made an indelible mark on American culture, not to mention people all over the world. So on this episode of BackStory, Brian, Ed and Joanne explore the history of Sesame Street and what made a show about muppets and their neighbors so revolutionary.

This episode and related resources are funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this podcast, do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Sesame Street; children’s entertainment; public media; television

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In November 2019, Sesame Street celebrated its 50th anniversary of being on television. The original concept of the show was simple: using television to teach young children. Specifically, the show’s creators wanted to help young, disadvantaged children who were at risk of struggling in school. Sesame Street has evolved over these fifty years, but the show’s core objective remains the same. Though income inequality has remained a significant problem in the United States, Sesame Street remains steadfast in providing equal educational opportunities for children.

As the audience for Sesame Street has grown, the show has used its characters to embody the values of multiculturalism and diversity. The show has incorporated characters with autism, HIV, and physical disabilities to provide children with relatable examples of people different from themselves. They have also embraced different cultures, languages, races, and ethnicities, giving children opportunities to see themselves in the lives of puppets. As a result, Sesame Street has become a global phenomenon with variations of the show existing in countries across the world.

This lesson focuses on the history of Sesame Street and its value in promoting diversity and multiculturalism. Using a segment about Rosita, a longstanding bilingual character, students will examine how the show explores issues of identity and diversity.

Segments

The Founding of Sesame Street

Ed talks with Lloyd Morrisset, co-founder of Sesame Street, about the initial goal of the show, which was all about closing the education gap between rich and poor children.

Music:

Orange Juicier by Podington Bear

Sesame Street; children’s entertainment; early childhood education; education inequality

00:00:00 / 00:00:00

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Speaker 1: Major funding for BackStory is provided by an anonymous donor, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation.

Brian Balogh: From Virginia Humanities, this is BackStory.

Brian Balogh: Welcome to BackStory, the show that explains the history behind today’s headlines. I’m Brian Balogh.

Ed Ayers: I’m Ed Ayers.

Joanne Freeman: And I’m Joanne Freeman.

Brian Balogh: If you’re new to the podcast, we’re all historians, along with our colleague Nathan Connolly. Each week, we explore a topic in American history.

Ed Ayers: For many Americans, nothing brings back wistful childhood memories quite like Sesame Street. Whether it was practicing your ABCs with Big Bird, learning the value of friendship from Bert and Ernie, or exploring your emotions with Elmo, the show has a special place in hearts all across the country.

Ed Ayers: Since it first aired in 1969, Sesame Street has raked in countless awards and has become one of the longest running children’s television shows in history. But in 1966, Sesame Street was nothing more than an idea.

Lloyd Morrisett: Several of the people at the party were interested in or actually working in television.

Ed Ayers: That’s Lloyd Morrisett, the co-founder of Sesame Street. He says the origins of the show can be traced back to a dinner party in New York City hosted by Joan Cooney, a television producer.

Lloyd Morrisett: I said at one point in the conversation, “Joan, do you think television could be used to teach young children?” Her answer was, “I don’t know, but I’d like to talk about it.”

Ed Ayers: Without question began the development of what would become Sesame Street. But to understand why Lloyd would ask such a question, we have to rewind a bit. Before Sesame Street, he was a psychologist at the Carnegie Corporation, an organization that supports academic policy and childhood development. At the time, there was lots of talk about the education gap between rich and poor children. That’s where Lloyd’s work as a psychologist comes in.

Lloyd Morrisett: We financed I think three to five, I’m not sure of the number anymore, experiments to see if something could be done about it, where children were given the special treatment, special curriculum, and to see whether or not when they went into school, they could do better. All of those programs worked.

Ed Ayers: But Lloyd says those experiments, while successful, only reached a few thousand children. His solution to that problem, television, but not everybody agreed with him.

Lloyd Morrisett: The general feeling in the academic world at the time was that television was the boob tube. There wasn’t any uniform feeling that it was really possible for television to be of beneficial educational applications. The audience we were particularly trying to reach was a disadvantaged audience that was otherwise likely to fail in the early grades.

Lloyd Morrisett: Typically, speaking, there were about four and a half million children entering school each year. About a third of those would enter at a disadvantage in reading, for example, of three months. By the end of first grade, they would be further behind. By third grade, they’d be a year behind and they never made it up.

Lloyd Morrisett: Now, most of those children lived in urban areas. In choosing a setting for the program, we chose an urban area. Of course, we were in New York, that had a very large population of the children we were talking about. Decided that it should be in New York and it should be, in the very beginning, representative of the multicultural nature of New York.

Ed Ayers: Over time, did it turn out that kids who were not from disadvantaged backgrounds were just as attracted to the show, kids who grew up in the countryside and never really seen a city street? Did you find that strategy that you had to reach your target audience also reached other kids?

Lloyd Morrisett: Well, the viewing conditions were very different then than they were now. The time we went on the air in 1969, a typical family would have one television set and the family would watch the television together, because there was only one program [inaudible 00:05:04] watched. We had to design a program that would appeal fairly broadly to both adults and children. The writers concentrated on having content that adults would find humorous and funny, and keep them involved so that children would indeed watch.

Lloyd Morrisett: Now, what happened in answer to your question was yes, we did find that the entertainment values in the show attracted children who did not need as much in the educational realm as the children we were directing the curriculum at. As the audience grew, I think it meant that we really had to continue to think of the curriculum that was going to most benefit the children most in need, but at the same time, keep the show entertaining enough so that it would have a large audience that attract adults as well as children.

Ed Ayers: There was television that young people learned something from before Sesame Street. I was fascinated by Captain Kangaroo. I loved the show, so I shouldn’t speak poorly of it, but the main thing I remember is I really, really wanted a Schwinn bicycle. He had this great sense of solidarity with him, and then he would come on there and talk about just how excellent a Schwinn was. I can remember just, “Uh, it’s so solid and excellent.” How would you differentiate yourselves in the early days from shows like Captain Kangaroo?

Lloyd Morrisett: Over the first year of the program, the main hurdle that we had to overcome was to prove that television could indeed be used to teach other children. The study that was done after the first year showed that the more children watched, the more they learned. Indeed, they did learn some of the things we were trying to teach. The things we were trying to teach were chosen not only because they were things that were useful to children, but they were also things that could be measured. Did they know their letters? Did they know their numbers? So on.

Ed Ayers: At the beginning, the very explicit purpose of Sesame Street was to give kids who otherwise were starting in a deficit when they started school a headstart. Do you feel that Sesame Street has helped narrow the gap between more and less fortunate kids?

Lloyd Morrisett: In some ways, yes, but in accomplishing the original goal, no. The demographics of that group have changed considerably over the years. That is, the third of the kids that enter a school of some deficit have changed, but what I think now, I’m speaking personally, is that what we saw as an educational problem was secondarily an educational problem. Really, it was an income inequality problem. That we have not overcome.

Lloyd Morrisett: I’d say one other things here, Ed. Where I live now in California, I see many Spanish background children and several have told me they learned English from Sesame Street. That wasn’t one of our goals, but children that are motivated can find something to learn and Sesame Street offers a lot of possibilities.

“Muppet Diplomacy”

Sesame Street might be one of the most famous streets in the United States. But there were — and in some cases still are — international versions of Sesame Street that have aired all over the world.

Joanne talks to Charlotte Cole, who worked for 20 years as Senior Vice President of Global Education at Sesame Workshop, about the international appeal of Sesame Street and the wonder of ‘muppet diplomacy.’

Music:

Proliferate by Podington Bear

By Grace by Podington Bear

Sesame Street; children’s entertainment; diplomacy; internationalism

00:00:00 / 00:00:00

View Transcript

Brian Balogh: Today on the show, in celebration of Sesame Street’s 50th Anniversary, we’re walking down memory lane and bringing you a history of America’s most beloved children’s show.

Ed Ayers: We’ll learn how the show has been successfully exported all over the world.

Brian Balogh: We’ll find out how a Sesame Street writer advocated for disability representation throughout her 45 years on the show.

Joanne Freeman: And you’ll hear from a special furry friend.

Joanne Freeman: Sesame Street might be one of the most famous streets in the United States, but it turns out there were and in some cases still are international versions of Sesame Street all across the world. I’m talking about Russian versions of Sesame Street, German versions of Sesame Street, Sesame Street in Northern Island, Canada, South Africa and the Middle East. But these versions aren’t the same thing you would see in the United States. In all cases, they’re tailor made to reflect the local concerns and issues of children.

Joanne Freeman: For 20 years, Charlotte Cole helped develop international programming for Sesame Workshop. I got in touch with her recently to find out what it was like developing Muppet characters that connected with kids all over the world. But I started our conversation by asking Charlotte to explain the international model of Sesame Street and how it developed in the days before she joined the project in 1994.

Charlotte Cole: What evolved in the ’70s very early on was this co-production model where initially about 50% of the content was from Sesame Street in the United States and then another 50% was produced locally. In the German show, which has been on for years, and years and years, you’d see Bert and Ernie and those segments were dubbed into German, but kids living in Germany really thought of Bert and Ernie as German. So much so that there were even postage stamps in some of these countries there were … Yeah. But the difference when I came was that there were some opportunities to really look at how you could use Sesame Street to promote international development aims.

Joanne Freeman: I’m assuming then that would be a combination of American producers and educators, working with producers and educators in whatever, Russia or South Africa, and coming up with what that message ought to be, or is that really mostly coming from the country where the show is going to be?

Charlotte Cole: It was a collaboration that was just the most … Some of the most exciting elements about working on these programs was this opportunity to be working with these amazing minds all over the world. The Sesame Workshop model, which was used and is still used today in the United States was innovative in that it brought together researchers, educators to work over the course of an entire project with the producers.

Charlotte Cole: Then in the international realm, you layer in that whole element of bringing in educators from whatever region you’re working in, whatever country. They’re working with researchers there and the production team, and then collaborating with experts at Sesame, and so it became this uber collaboration.

Joanne Freeman: Let’s talk about an example of that, just so people can get a sense of that. Maybe talk about working on the Israeli and Palestinian version. How did that work, what messages were you developing together, and then what did the outcome look like?

Charlotte Cole: With that production, we began first by having meetings that were separate with Israelis and Palestinians, and then there’s also a group of Palestinian/Israeli citizens who were Arab citizens of Israel. I had a meeting with experts from those three groups, and then having a separate time to really have them articulate what did they want the program to bring their children and what did they want their kids to learn. Then we had an opportunity to bring people together in a seminar that was fascinating.

Charlotte Cole: There were people that joined who had never been in the room with somebody from the other group. They really talked about what should kids know and what should they learn. What’s amazing, I think, in terms of Sesame Street and why we were able to work in these different realms was for all of the discourse that might be negative across group divides, everybody wants a brighter future for their children.

Charlotte Cole: Children become a huge unifier. You could get people to talk about their kids, and talk about what they wanted for their kids, and even be a much more playful engagement just because everybody was focused on kids. That particular project, it had its ups and downs in accordance with what was happening politically, and it morphed into different things. But the essential core was to 1) it had a basic curriculum that was very much like the curriculum here in the United States of literacy, numeracy, basic social skills, but it was also to help introduce Palestinian children to Israelis and Israelis children to Palestinians.

Joanne Freeman: Now, I understand that particular show, as you put it, morphed over the years explicitly because of the politics of the situation, particularly having to do with the idea of one street. Is that true?

Charlotte Cole: Well, there had been a program in Israeli for a long time that was quite beloved that was a Sesame Street program. That was produced by Israeli Educational Television. This was an extension of that in many ways at the very beginning. But the innovation was that there was a Israeli street and there was a Palestinian street.

Charlotte Cole: Really what evolved was basically two different shows. Then there was some crossover between the characters where Israeli characters would come to the Palestinian program, and vice versa. But there were distinct differences between the end products for a lot of reasons. Well 1) the Palestinian program was in Arabic and the Israeli was in Hebrew. Then it did have some Arabic elements to it.

Joanne Freeman: Is there a character, or a segment, or something that really stands out to you from the Israeli/Palestinian version of Sesame Street that really captures what that was all about?

Charlotte Cole: Well, let’s see. In terms of characters, each of the Israelis had their cast and the Palestinians had their cast. Then they had other characters that would talk to each other, like there’s a beautiful exchange between these two little Muppets that are just these happy-go-lucky Muppets that are exchanging, and at one point they’re realizing one speaks Hebrew and the other speaks Arabic, and they’re trying to figure out how they’re going to communicate.

Charlotte Cole: In the end, they realize that they share a love of falafel. So they just started echo back to each other, “Falafel, falafel, falafel.” The falafel becomes their shared word and their shared love. It’s this idea of finding your common humanity.

Joanne Freeman: Let me shift from the Israeli/Palestinian version that we have been talking about, to another one of these international Sesame Street editions that had educational and then some kind of deeper message to it. That’s South Africa. I understand that you helped develop a character named Kami for the South African version.

Charlotte Cole: Yes. This was really wonderful. Early on, Sesame had visited South Africa. It was a little bit before I arrived, they were invited to come and talk to people, and see if it would be possible to do a Sesame co-production there. The company was very interested, but had decided they wanted to wait until after apartheid.

Charlotte Cole: Once apartheid ended, they decided to do a program that would support South Africa’s new curriculum. This Sesame piece was going to support that. But after the program had been on for a year, the program’s called Takalani Sesame, there was, and this was true from the very beginning, the educators in South Africa really felt that any educational program in South Africa needs to address HIV and AIDS.

Charlotte Cole: At the time, there was a wonderful Minister of Education. His name was Kader Asmal. He had seen Sesame Street and he was very familiar with it. He knew its potential. He also was deeply concerned about the situation of HIV and AIDS in South Africa. I think he felt it was a responsibility of the Ministry of Education to be educating the population about the issues of HIV and AIDS. He also believed in starting early. This was a country where one in nine South Africans was affected by the disease, and so it was impacting them on a huge level. He felt very strongly that even young kids can even learn about this.

Charlotte Cole: It was really his drive that set us up. We began by just looking at what should young kids know and we did formative testing to find out what do kids already know. What we found out was the kids, they associated HIV and AIDS with a negative valence. They knew it was something bad, but they didn’t know what it was. They didn’t know it was a disease.

Charlotte Cole: Really what emerged was there was such a huge culture of silence around HIV and AIDS, and what people felt was that we need to give kids a lexicon for talking about HIV and AIDS, kids and their parents. The result of that was the development of this character, Kami, whose name means hope. Every aspect of her was deliberate.

Charlotte Cole: First of all, she’s a more humanoid looking Muppet. The reason for that was that it’s a human disease. They didn’t want there to be confusion with a more animal like character. She’s female because of the disproportionate number of women who are infected. All the different elements of her personality and who she was were debated by these educators, and working with the creative staff. She became this vehicle for helping kids learn about HIV and AIDS. It really became a wonderful thing.

Charlotte Cole: What’s interesting is the feedback that we got from parents, from kids. It really worked. It was a way for people to talk about it. She became a champion for children, for UNICEF. She got an official, I don’t know, it wasn’t exactly Ambassador title because I don’t think you can be an ambassador if you’re a Muppet, but she was as close as you can be.

Kami: Mr. President. I have a very important question for you. What does our former Mr. President do?

Bill Clinton: Well, Kami. One of the things I do is talk to people about things that are important to them, about things that will make a difference in their lives.

Kami: Oh, yes. Well I do that also. I like to talk to people about my school, and my friends, and my favorite things. Oh, and I also talk to them about HIV and AIDS.

Bill Clinton: Me too, Kami.

Joanne Freeman: Now, actually talking about whether a puppet can be an ambassador or not. I understand that you’ve used the term Muppet diplomacy before in talking about this work. What actually do you mean by that?

Charlotte Cole: To me, Muppets are playful, they are endearing to people. I’ve seen people be in meetings and will have little plush toys sitting on the table. When things, the discussions get difficult, people will start fiddling around with these plush toys. A certain amount melts. I think that Muppet diplomacy is really about getting at that common humanity that we share and the Muppets just do that.

Joanne Freeman: Charlotte Cole is the Executive Director and co-founder of Blue Butterfly Collaborative, which supports locally made educational programming in low income countries. For 20 years, she was Senior Vice President of Global Education at Sesame Workshop. Thanks to UNICEF for the audio you just heard of Kami with, if you couldn’t tell, Former President Bill Clinton.

Rosita la Monstrua de las Cuevas

It’s easy to imagine beloved Sesame Street characters like Big Bird and Elmo as actual living creatures, but the reality is that behind every Muppet is a talented “Muppeteer” bringing them to life. Joanne talks with Carmen Osbahr, muppeteer of Rosita, a bilingual turquoise monster, about her journey in puppetry and how Rosita strengthens the program’s mission of inclusion and diversity.

Music:

Transmogrify by Podington Bear

Pshaw by Podington Bear

Good Times by Podington Bear

Sesame Street; Spanish (language); diversity; linguistics

00:00:00 / 00:00:00

View Transcript

Joanne Freeman: Okay, guys. I have a confession.

Brian Balogh: Yeah, Joanne. Let’s hear it.

Joanne Freeman: I’ve always had this wish to one day meet a Muppet.

Ed Ayers: Who hasn’t had that wish? Did your wish come true?

Joanne Freeman: It did. I am very happy to report that it did.

Rosita: Is that you, Joanne? Hola.

Joanne Freeman: It is me.

Rosita: I’m a furry monster.

Joanne Freeman: Meet Rosita. Well, actually her full name is …

Carmen Osbahr: Rosita, la monstrua de las cuevas.

Joanne Freeman: She’s an adorable turquoise monster who’s been a recurring character on Sesame Street for nearly 30 years. Rosita stands out among her furry friends because she’s bilingual. You can often find her teaching her fellow Muppets words or phrases in Spanish.

Carmen Osbahr: She loves to share her culture with her friends. She’s actually teaching Elmo to say a few words. She loves music. She plays a guitar. She’s just happy to be part of the gang.

Joanne Freeman: It’s easy to imagine beloved characters like Big Bird, Elmo and Rosita as actual living and autonomous creatures. But the reality is that behind every character is a talented Muppeteer bringing them to life.

Carmen Osbahr: Yeah, my name is Carmen Osbahr and I’m a Muppeteer on Sesame Street. I perform Rosita and Ovejita for the Word on the Street, and chickens, and penguins, and monsters. There I am to help with that.

Joanne Freeman: Carmen has been with Rosita since the character was introduced in 1991. Carmen even worked with the show to create Rosita’s personality and appearance.

Carmen Osbahr: I wanted live hands, for her to be very touchable, like grab things, hug friends and beautiful huge arms. I also said, “I don’t want her tiny. I want a big monster.” Then they asked me, “Well, what will be her name?” I thought, “Well, it has to be with an R so people can roll the R when they say Rosita and I can teach them how to roll the R,” so Rosita came along too.

Joanne Freeman: By the time Carmen joined Sesame Street, she was already a skilled puppeteer. She had worked on the show Plaza Sesamo in Mexico City. Today, it’s just called Sesamo. It’s the version of Sesame Street for Spanish speakers in Latin America. Carmen says it was actually the first episode of Plaza Sesamo in 1972 that initially sparked her fascination for puppetry.

Carmen Osbahr: I wonder too, “Wow, how do they do that?” It’s just I didn’t know that they wear those things and their costumes. I had no idea. When the opportunity came to me when I was 18 to take a workshop, that was for me the moment, the moment that I realized that there was nothing else I wanted to do than perform puppets. It was so difficult, Joanne. I realized that it was not just you are not wearing a puppet. It was a little guy with just one expression right into your hand, above your head, and that you have to do everything else. It was so challenging.

Joanne Freeman: But Carmen got the hang of it and eventually landed a job with Plaza Sesamo. After a few years working in Mexico, she was invited to check out the set of Sesame Street in New York City. That’s when a conversation with Jim Henson changed her life.

Carmen Osbahr: I walk in and I saw the puppeteers there with Bert and Ernie. I couldn’t believe it. It was just so magical. It was magical to see them working together. They were so much fun and they make these characters. Then Jim Henson invited me to be part of a workshop. I thought, “Oh, you know what, maybe they need a bilingual character. I don’t know.”

Carmen Osbahr: Yes, I was part of that workshop for two weeks and it was so much fun. I was just about to go to Mexico. We were in the studio and he called me. He was on the other side of the room and he called me. I just walked to him and he said, “Hey, Carmen. After the workshop, I just wanted to ask you if you want to be part of my Muppet family.” He really gave me a family because I left country, and I left my home and everybody, and I came here all by myself. He gave me all the Muppeteers and everybody’s been wonderful. Now I’ve just been here for 30 years.

Joanne Freeman: You describe wonderfully the characteristics you wanted. You wanted her to be able to hug. What were some of the aspects that you thought she was bringing to the show that maybe weren’t there before her character was there?

Carmen Osbahr: Well, first of all, she was going through the struggles that I was going, and that being new in a new country, and she was new in a new street. It was very natural for her to be doing what I was doing.

Carmen Osbahr: I remember right at the beginning, Rosita was struggling with her words and her accent, and she was the only one that was feeling bad about what was happening, but everybody else was saying, “Absolutely no. You don’t have to feel bad. You speak two languages. None of us speak two languages. On the contrary, it’s great that you’re able to speak two languages.”

Carmen Osbahr: I think it’s great that there’s one more character in a rainbow of characters on Sesame Street because I think Sesame Street has always been so important. You see the cast in 1969, you have Roscoe there, you have Gordon, you have Maria and Louis. In those days, you didn’t have people of color on a TV show. The kids finally were able to identify. It’s like, “Oh, there’s somebody that looks like me on TV.” With Rosita, I think they continue what they started in 1969, just adding another color in the rainbow.

Joanne Freeman: What was response when her character first appeared and added that color to the rainbow? How did people respond to her character?

Carmen Osbahr: Oh, it was great. Oh, gosh, I had a lot of letters. Everybody was really happy that there was a bilingual monster. It still is overwhelming. I’m honored to represent my people.

Carmen Osbahr: The other day, we were performing at the Lincoln Center with Wynton Marsalis, with all the celebrations of the 50th Anniversary. It was amazing experience to sing live. At the end, we went through the audience and there were little kids that were trying to talk to Rosita in Spanish, the little words that they knew. They all say hello, they say, “Hola,” and they tell her, her name in Spanish. It’s just adorable.

Joanne Freeman: Now has there been, have you noticed in the time that you’ve been Rosita, has there been a change in the way that people respond to her character at all?

Carmen Osbahr: Well, now they know her better. There’s so many characters on Sesame Street, but they definitely know and identify her as she plays the guitar, and she speaks Spanish. That is really good.

Carmen Osbahr: Also, Rosita has been part of a lot of the outreach projects that Sesame Workshop has. Rosita has been part of videos for the military families for the last 10 years. The audience too is not just the people that they see me through the show, but they see Rosita now in videos that are specific for dealing with changes for the military, or losing somebody, or incarceration and all this wonderful work that the Sesame Workshop has for communities.

Carmen Osbahr: Actually, I have to say in the outreach, Rosita’s dad is in a wheelchair. I was able to go to Walter Reed visiting some families there. But I was able to go to the preschool that they have there. It was really special moment because Rosita came in, and I did some songs with them and Rosita sang.

Carmen Osbahr: But then a little girl came really quietly and gave her a hug, and she told her, “I know that you are dealing with a lot at home because your daddy is in a wheelchair. My daddy is in a wheelchair too, but everything is going to be okay. You will see.” I really … That completely … The kids are amazing with the characters because they know them. They share things and they’re their friends, but it was just so special to have that moment with that little girl.

Joanne Freeman: The most rewarding thing in the world, right? That kid just said to you, “I learned what I was suppose to learn and now I’m going to give it to someone else.”

Carmen Osbahr: Yes. Yes.

Joanne Freeman: Now, you talked about originally being really taken with just puppets and puppeteering generally, but thinking back to when you were a kid, what do you think it would have meant if there had been some kind of a Rosita puppet character that you could have gotten to know as a kid?

Carmen Osbahr: Well, that would be great. Absolutely. But you know, I’m a mom and I have to tell you that these videos help me as mom with my kid. Actually, in my family, we were going through changes when I was doing the video of changes. I didn’t know how to talk to my kid about it. We’re not in the military or anything, but any regular family goes through a lot of health issues and stuff, and I was going through changes at home. Thank god I had the help of Sesame Street because I was able to talk to my kid in a way that we both were understanding what was happening. Thank god for that, really, seriously.

Joanne Freeman: Related to that questions then, how do you feel that it’s important for kids, whether it’s your kids or someone else’s kids? Why do you feel it’s important for kids to be able to see themselves in Muppet form, whether or not it’s a hugging monster or some other kind of creature?

Carmen Osbahr: I think it’s very important and I hope they really get the message that we’re trying to send them. Sometimes I think about Oscar the Grouch. Oscar the Grouch is just a wonderful character that he is who he is. He is a grouch, he likes trash and he’s fine about it. It’s like, “This is who I am and this is what you get when you see me.”

Carmen Osbahr: I think that it’s very important for the kids to know that no matter how you look, no matter what is your color, no matter where you come from, you are who you are and you’re special, and also that kids should be allowed to have fun, and to be goofy, and to make mistakes and learn from them, and just talk to your friends and have a community.

“D is for Diversity”

Sesame Street has been at the forefront of diversity ever since the first episode aired in 1969. Kathryn Ostrofsky, co-host of the podcast Everything Happens Here: A Half Century of Sesame Street, brings us an interview with Emily Perl Kingsley, a former Sesame Street writer who advocated for disability representation throughout her 45 years on the show.

Music:

Happytime by Podington Bear

Way to Success by Mikael Manvelyan

Sesame Street; children’s entertainment; disability rights; diversity

00:00:00 / 00:00:00

View Transcript

Brian Balogh: As we just heard, Rosita the bilingual Muppet has given voice to an often under represented demographic in America. In fact, the turquoise monster is a perfect example of one of the enduring themes of Sesame Street, diversity. The show itself was established to appeal to a diverse audience, and address deep seeded issues like poverty and racial injustice.

Kathryn O.: Being a historian of Sesame Street is really being a historian of all kinds of different things. It’s being a historian of social justice, it’s being a historian of race in America, it’s being a historian of media and popular culture. Sesame Street provides this wonderful lens through which we can examine all sorts of different trends that are happening in American history.

Brian Balogh: That’s Kathryn Ostrofsky. When Sesame Street first aired in 1969, she says it was an immediate hit. But while the show was experiencing early success, the country was grappling with civil rights and the Vietnam War. I asked Kathryn why Sesame Street chose to promote diversity during this turbulent time in American history.

Kathryn O.: Well, you’re right. There is a lot of things going on in 1969. They were actually planning the show for a couple of years prior to that. Through 1967 and ’68, they are talking about what can we do to fix some of the problems in society, what can we do to address some of these major issues that we have as a country. They were particularly interested in addressing poverty and racial intolerance. In 1967, you have all those urban uprising. In 1968, you have the assassination of Martin Luther King. These are things that are on everybody’s mind.

Kathryn O.: When they start the show, they planned the curriculum around cognitive goals, around things that you would think of as basically academic. Those, however, are just tools. They’re means to an end. They’re thinking about how are we going to help kids feel comfortable in school and feel comfortable learning, and particularly how we’re going to help inner city African-American kids.

Kathryn O.: Sesame Street consciously had a racially integrated cast. The first four cast members, the hosts of the show were Gordon and Susan, an African-American couple, and Bob and Mr. Hooper, two white guys who lived in the neighborhood too.

Brian Balogh: How did conceptions of diversity change over time? How were they reflected in the show?

Kathryn O.: Well, once you get to the 1970s, there are a lot of different groups who are looking at what happened with the African-American civil rights movement and saying, “We should learn some lessons from that and work towards social justice for our communities too.” You’ve got the women’s movement, you’ve got Latino civil rights and pride movements, you’ve got the American Indian movement, and you’ve got disability rights activists beginning to work toward laws helping their community.

Brian Balogh: How did that show up on the screen?

Kathryn O.: Sesame Street was a show on public broadcasting and it always conceived of itself as a show for the public. Because of that, the public understood this as their show, the public understood that this was a show that they could be a part of.

Kathryn O.: Audience members, people who were activists in other areas of society started looking at Sesame Street and started saying, “Well, why can’t somebody like us be on that show too?” Sesame Street listened to them. They looked to people on their staff, people in the cast, and audience members who are writing in to their suggestions about how to make the show more reflective of what American society really was and what American society really should be.

Brian Balogh: You’re working on a podcast with cohost Sherman Dorn about Sesame Street. I understand that we have a clip cued up here. I’d like you to set it up for us. What are we going to hear?

Kathryn O.: Our podcast is called Everything Happens Here, Half A Century of Sesame Street. We are exploring all the things that people have learned from Sesame Street over the years, beyond the alphabet and numbers. We’re going to talk to scholars who have studied Sesame Street, as well as the people who actually were involved in working on Sesame Street and creating it.

Brian Balogh: Tell me a little bit about Emily Perl Kingsley.

Kathryn O.: Emily Perl Kingsley was a writer on Sesame Street for 45 years. She started in Season Two, in 1970. Disability issues became very important to her personally outside of the show and she realized that working on a show like Sesame Street was an opportunity for her to bring these issues to a broad audience. We’re going to hear her talk about how she wrote for a deaf character, played by deaf actress Linda Bove, and how she wrote for her own son Jason, who had down syndrome and was featured on the show as well.

Emily Perl K.: In Season Two, I was assigned to go out and check out a thing called the Little Theater of the Deaf, had to go all the way out on Long Island to where they were performing. I was absolutely enchanted with them. They were imaginative and creative, and gave the audience a simultaneous experience that hearing people and non-hearing people would both be experiencing the same thing, was the signing and the not signing was going on at the same time. It was fascinating.

Emily Perl K.: I came back from checking these people out. I said, “They’re wonderful. We really need to have them on the show.” I started writing segments for them. They had a fabulous response, fabulous. In the process of writing the stuff for the Little Theater of the Deaf, I decided I should learn how to sign. So I started socializing with these people, and we would get together on Wednesday nights, and we would communicate, we would play games, we would just chat and so on.

Emily Perl K.: It was a very, very opening up experience for me because in addition to learning to sign and having all these new friends, I was getting a little politicized about disability issues. It was interesting to be able to see things from their point of view, which I had never been exposed to before. Then Linda Bove came and Linda was a character who became a regular. She lived on the street. She was deaf and not only were we learning some sign language with Linda, but we did segments with Linda on how do you wake up in the morning, what kind of an alarm clock do you use if you can’t hear, how do you know when somebody’s ringing your doorbell.

Emily Perl K.: We were answering kids’ real questions right there on the show. I don’t think there was any show up to that time that had dealt with that subject matter right straight head on, asking questions and answering them, plus showing that Linda was a full-fledge ordinary member of the community. She just lived there, she was the librarian, she had a dog. She was just a person who happened to live there. Then every once in a while, you would deal with a deaf issue.

Kathryn O.: When Emily started writing for the show in 1970, she said she wasn’t thinking about disability as a part of diversity. Would that have been normal in 1970?

Sherman Dorn: It would have been entirely normal for adults in 1970 who in most cases would not have grown up around peers and classmates, and gone to school with individuals who were labeled as having disabilities. It would have been a mostly new experience to see individuals with disabilities on television. Linda’s an example of an adult character who appeared on the show and represented people with disabilities. What about children with disabilities on the show?

Kathryn O.: Well, the first child with a disability to be featured on Sesame Street was Jason Kingsley, Emily’s son.

Emily Perl K.: In 1974, I had my son Jason, who was born with down syndrome. That was a very shocking experience to say the least. Personally, we were given very, very horrible advice from the obstetrician, but this was the advice of the day. You were told when a baby like this was born that you did not have to bring the baby home if you didn’t want to. Baby could be placed in a nice clean institution, and you could go home and tell your family that the baby had died in childbirth because the expectation was that this child would never accomplish anything.

Emily Perl K.: But when he was about three, he was starting to read. He was putting letters together, Scrabble tiles, he was putting together and making little words. It was blowing our minds. He was doing all this stuff that the doctors had said was impossible by definition. I realized I had this venue, this format, not really at my disposal but it was a possibility. I went to the producers and I said, “Look, I’ve got this three-year-old kid with down syndrome who’s starting to read. Can we put him on the show? Can we show people that kids with this kind of a disability can learn more than anybody thought?” They said, “Sure, let’s try it.”

Sherman Dorn: It wasn’t until 1975 that there was a federal law requiring that public schools accept all children, regardless of the nature or degree of disability that public schools around the country were required to consider and start planning for the education of children with learning disabilities, with down syndrome and other developmental disabilities.

Sherman Dorn: In many cases where children with disabilities were educated in public schools, they were segregated in separate classrooms, in separate schools. Starting in the late 1970s, schools, and parents, and classmates faced an entirely new world. The representation of individuals with disabilities on a television show was probably the first exposure on media to the concept of disability for young children.

Emily Perl K.: They put Jason on the show and we did a whole bunch of short little segments with him that are so fabulous. He was doing letter identification and he was making little words together. He was so cute. We put them on the show and the response was absolutely phenomenal. The mail that we got just blew us away. It was amazing. People would say, “I have a kid like that and I didn’t know that these kids were capable of learning anything. I’m going to work harder with my kid.” People said, “I’ve never even seen a child with this condition on any show ever. It’s so wonderful just to see him there, just having a regular life.”

Emily Perl K.: That’s what inspired me to start thinking about, “Well, if we could do down syndrome, why can’t we do other things? Why can’t we do wheelchair stuff? Why can’t we do cerebral palsy? Why can’t we do spina bifida? Why can’t we do helmets, and braces, and crutches and all kinds of stuff?” That’s what sent me off in my career of advocacy on the show.

Kathryn O.: If children with disabilities are really only being included in classrooms in the late 1970s, it’s really early for Sesame Street to be including those children in their televised classroom of the air nationwide in the early ’70s.

Sherman Dorn: My question for someone who wrote for the show for 45 years and shaped it in so many different ways, what in the end was her view of what the show was about?

Emily Perl K.: I did a show once called the Furry Little Red Monster Parade. The idea of that show is like a condensation of what Sesame Street is all about. Elmo wants to make a parade and he’s banging his drum, and he’s saying, “Come one, come all. Hurray, hurray, it’s the furry little red monster parade.” Then Zoe says, “Oh, can I watch with you?” “Sure. Here’s the song.” She says, “Wait a minute. I’m not red, I’m orange.” Elmo says, “Well, we’ll change the song. We’ll make it hurray for the furry little red and orange monster parade.” Then somebody else comes along, wants to join in the parade, who is not a monster, or who is not little. Each time the song changes to accommodate different people.

Emily Perl K.: At the end, it turns out that it’s just become unwieldy, it’s just ridiculous to be singing this stupid song that’s getting longer and longer. They finally, at the end, change it to, “Hurray for the anybody who likes to be in a parade, parade.” The idea being that the message that it’s okay to be whoever you are. It’s got to be okay to be whoever you are.

Brian Balogh: Kathryn Ostrofsky is a Sesame Street scholar and independent historian. Her forthcoming podcast is called Everything Happens Here, Half A Century of Sesame Street. To listen, you’ll find a link on our website at www.backstoryradio.org.

Brian Balogh: That’s going to do it for us today, but you can keep the conversation going online. Let us know what you thought of the episode or ask us your questions about history. You’ll find us at backstoryradio.org, or send us an email at BackStory@virginia.edu. We’re also on Facebook and Twitter, @BackStoryRadio. Whatever you do, don’t be a stranger.

Joanne Freeman: Special thanks this week to Kathryn Ostrofsky.

Ed Ayers: BackStory is produced at Virginia Humanities. Major support is provided by an anonymous donor, the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, the Johns Hopkins University and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this podcast do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Additional support is provided by The Tomato Fund, cultivating fresh ideas in the arts, and humanities, and the environment.

Speaker 14: Brian Balogh is Professor of History at the University of Virginia. Ed Ayers is Professor the Humanities and President Emeritus at the University of Richmond. Joanne Freeman is Professor of History and American Studies at Yale University. Nathan Connolly is the Herbert Baxter Adams Associate Professor of History at the Johns Hopkins University. BackStory was created Andrew Windham for Virginia Humanities.