10/07/2026
Eleven days after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., America was in mourning.
Cities were engulfed in unrest, television screens were filled with scenes of grief, and many people wondered what, if anything, one person could do to make a difference.
Harriet Glickman, a 42-year-old schoolteacher and mother of three living in California's San Fernando Valley, asked herself that very question.
She wasn't a politician or a public figure. She had no influence beyond her own home. But she had a typewriter, a conviction, and the courage to act.
So she wrote a letter.
The recipient was Charles M. Schulz, creator of the beloved Peanuts comic strip. Every week, Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Lucy, and Linus appeared in nearly a thousand newspapers, reaching almost 100 million readers. Yet in its 18-year history, not a single Black child had ever appeared in the strip.
Harriet urged Schulz to change that.
She wrote that after Dr. King's death, she had been searching for a meaningful way to fight the fear, hatred, and division spreading across the country. Children, she believed, learn who belongs by seeing who is included. A Black child in Peanuts could quietly help shape a more inclusive world.
To her surprise, Schulz replied.
He admitted he had considered the idea but feared getting it wrong. He didn't want the character to feel forced or patronizing, and he wasn't sure how to introduce one respectfully.
Rather than giving up, Harriet asked if she could share his letter with several of her Black friends so they could respond directly.
Schulz agreed.
Among those who wrote back was Kenneth Kelly, an engineer whose work contributed to America's space program. Kelly assured Schulz that most Black families would welcome the gesture. His advice was simple: don't make the new character a symbol or a lesson—just make him an ordinary child who naturally belonged alongside the others.
Those words stayed with Schulz.
That summer, he sent Harriet a brief note telling her to watch the comic strip during the week of July 29, 1968.
On July 31, readers met a new character.
Charlie Brown had lost his beach ball in the ocean. A Black boy retrieved it, returned it with a smile, and the two spent the afternoon building a sandcastle together.
His name was Franklin.
There were no speeches, no dramatic declarations, and no grand lesson—just two children enjoying a summer day together.
It was a quiet moment, but its impact reached millions.
Not everyone approved.
When Franklin was later shown sitting beside Peppermint Patty in a classroom, one Southern newspaper editor objected, asking Schulz not to depict Black and white children sitting together at school.
Schulz never argued.
Years later, when asked how he responded, he simply said:
"I didn't even answer him."
He kept drawing Franklin exactly where he belonged.
Meanwhile, hundreds of miles away in Philadelphia, a six-year-old boy named Robb Armstrong was grieving the loss of his older brother.
As he read Peanuts, he noticed Franklin.
For the first time, he saw a child who looked like him in one of his favorite comic strips.
That single image stayed with him.
Robb grew up to become the creator of JumpStart, one of America's most successful syndicated comic strips featuring a Black family.
Decades later, when a television special required Franklin to have a last name, Charles Schulz personally called Robb Armstrong and asked if Franklin could share his surname.
Robb happily agreed.
From that day forward, the beloved Peanuts character became Franklin Armstrong.
Harriet Glickman lived to the age of 93. She passed away in 2020, in the same home where she had typed the letter that helped change comic-strip history.
Today, her original letter is preserved in the Charles M. Schulz Museum.
It serves as a reminder that lasting change doesn't always begin with power or fame.
Sometimes it begins with one ordinary person, one simple letter, and the belief that even the smallest act of courage can change how millions of children see the world.
