It was originally published in the premiere issue of this magazine.
See the date, right above the bar code?!? Wow! I was 21 then, just hired at a daily newspaper, a ghetto Jimmy Olsen. Post-reading, I was doomed thereafter to roam the post-modern American wilderness looking for this kind of adventure and glossy chronicling opportunity, wishing to become either scribe, ready at any moment to greedily take either role, either side of the Ziegiest mirror. As I got older (note that I’m not writing “more mature”), that role/goal became my criteria to be involved with pretty much anything. Is this where my lifelong obsession with the lives of Black writers started? Hmmm…..
I’ve been laughing all week at how this article–a remembered and reconstructed momentary snapshot of place, person and circumstance, filled with 20th-century American post-rebel historic residue–has defined pretty much my entire life, while for its author, it was just an interesting part of a journalism career that loooong ago ended (he’s now a family therapist and adjunct professor at Antioch University, where he retired from as a pretty popular, multifaceted guy). He traveled light years from the experience, and I didn’t! Maybe I should call him so he can talk me down from the ledge? 🙂
Too long times ago. Two long times ago.
Be careful reading this. The truth moment, reprinted in the latest issue of The James Baldwin Review, is below.
Imprisoned Black Panther activist speaks to student encampment by speakerphone
Incarcerated Black Panther activist Mumia Abu-Jamal told USA TODAY he supports “anti-imperialist” student encampments spreading across the country to protest the war in Gaza. He has been in prison for over 40 years after being convicted for the 1981 murder of a Philadelphia police officer. Abu-Jamal’s death sentence was overturned by a federal court. He has maintained his innocence.
Today’s activism on college campuses reminds 70-year-old Abu-Jamal of his youth during protests against the war in Vietnam and the civil rights movement for Black Americans, he said in a brief phone call from Mahanoy state prison in Pennsylvania. He compared the protests to people once holding up lighters at concerts. Today, people tend to use cell phones.
“These are flickers of light in an anti-imperialist movement,” he said. “It’s remarkable to see.”
Abu-Jamal was set to speak Friday afternoon to the City College of New York student encampment in West Harlem, but Muslim students were in prayer on the campus lawn, so his call would be rescheduled for the evening. On Thursday, he spoke to Columbia University’s student encampment via speakerphone. A microphone amplified his voice.
− Eduardo Cuevas
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How it happened, according to the Mumia Abu-Jamal Listserv:
Johanna Fernandez via FreeMumia Unsubscribe 5:33 PM (2 hours ago)
to Free
Folks, I was being interviewed by USA Today at the City College encampment and Mumia called and I thought to pass him over to the journalist. Mumia’s remarks made it to this long list of updates. Hurray. Very positive intro to his remarks.
Sent from my iPhone To unsubscribe send email to: FreeMumia-unsubscribe@lists.people-link.net
APRIL 27th UPDATE:
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“Brothers and sisters and students at City College, it is not enough to demand ceasefire. How about this? Make your demand cease occupation!” says still incarcerated Black Panther and journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal from a timed prison call that was amplified from someone’s phone. pic.twitter.com/ScH8q4js0H
This is truly sad news. He was the artist for Icon, who, despite being a conservative in his first incarnation, was perhaps my favorite Milestone superhero!
I remember so clearly when this was “sneak-peek”ed in the fall 1992. It feels like a lifetime ago: I had just started grad school. It was on #FoxKids, home of #BatmanTheAnimatedSeries. I hadn’t read a X-Men comic since 1985 so I didn’t know half the team’s members. I quickly learned and for much of the ’90s dopamine instantly flooded my insides whenever I heard the words, “Previously, on ‘X-Men’….” So, #MarvelEntertainment #MarvelEnterprises, please air these *in order* this time? An advance THANKS!
Generative AI is experimental. Learn more Marvel Studios announced the cast for The Fantastic Four on Valentine’s Day, 2024, with a Valentine’s Day-themed art on Instagram: Pedro Pascal: Plays Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic Vanessa Kirby: Plays Sue Storm Ebon Moss-Bachrach: Plays Ben Grimm Joseph Quinn: Plays Johnny Storm
Forgotten Black-Power-TV icon Roosevelt Franklin, teaching his fellow inner-city Muppets on PBS’ “Sesame Street,” circa early 1970s
February 1, 2024
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Todd Steven Burroughs (toddpanther@gmail.com/@ToddStevenBurr1)
NEW, FREE ONLINE NOVEL ON MEDIUM.COM TELLS THE STORY OF HOW AMERICA’S FIRST BLACK MUPPET, A SYMBOL OF THE BLACK POWER MOVEMENT, WAS EVICTED FROM “SESAME STREET”
“The more I read about Roosevelt, the more I realize that a puppet actually went through the Black Power experience,” said Burroughs, who, at 56, was part of the first generation of American toddlers to watch the then-brand-new “Sesame Street” on PBS. So it was clear to him that Roosevelt’s “life” had to be explored in-depth.
“Originally I was going to write an article, but that had been done to death already,” said Burroughs, a freelance writer and public historian. “I was going to make it a little different by doing one of those long magazine pieces that would have allowed Roosevelt his first-person segment—a mini-platform to tell his own story—and that idea expanded into this attempt at fan fiction.”
Roosevelt Franklin was created by Matt Robinson, the show’s first “Gordon” (pictured, along with Loretta Long, still the show’s “Susan” in 2024). Decades before “Elmo’s World,” he was the first character to get his own “Sesame Street” segment named after him, “Roosevelt Franklin Elementary School,” a series of skits that had Franklin work as a student teacher at a vibrant, noisy, inner-city school.
A mainstay from 1970, the year after Sesame Street began, to 1975, he was even one of the show’s first toys.
So what happened?
“Roosevelt was a victim, ultimately, of middle-class Black respectability politics,” said Burroughs. “Once I saw his arc and how it intersected, and even mirrored, the Black Power Movement and the problems and paradoxes of racial integration and cultural nationalism, I knew I had to do something a little different, to tell the story I began to see in my own mind—basically write the last Black Power memoir about someone who, pun intended, wasn’t going to be The Man’s puppet.”
Published in full and for free on Medium.com,At The Dark End of Sesame Street fills in significant gaps in Roosevelt’s story, giving him friends and mentors—some of whom are very well-known in New York’s Black communities in the early 1970s—and, by doing that, tells fun and interesting tales about television, music, and finding a sense of purpose. Along the way, it exposes the internal tensions that are inevitable when a young Black man tries to balance the demands of white liberalism and Black radicalism during the Black Power era.
“The weirdest part for me was writing a story that mentioned both pioneering New York Congresswoman Shirley Chisolm and Big Bird,” said Burroughs, a lifetime student of New York’s Black public affairs television programming and Black radio history. “TV has always created strange bedfellows, and this novel is no different.”
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Roosevelt and the class,keeping the beat
DISCLAIMER:A PEOPLE’S NOVEL: At The Dark End of Sesame Street: The Autobiography of Roosevelt Franklin (OR Coup Tube: The Prose Ballad of Roosevelt Franklin) is a nonprofit work of fanfiction written and posted for free online consumption, and hopefully enjoyment, under Fair Use. Roosevelt Franklin is a fantasy puppet character created by a real Black man, Matt Robinson, for use by the Children’s Television Workshop (CTW), now known as the Sesame Workshop. Sesame Street is a creation of the Children’s Television Workshop for the Public Broadcasting Service and HBO and is trademarked by Sesame Workshop. The Muppets were created by Jim Henson and the CTW. All Sesame Street Muppet characters are trademarked and copyrighted by the Sesame Workshop. All images, names and likenesses of Sesame Street characters, puppets and PBS actors used in this promotional material and in the novel are done under Fair Use. No copyright nor trademark infringement is intended.
