The Forgotten Tale of How Black Psychiatrists Helped Make ‘Sesame Street’

Chester Pierce, however, never lost sight of the hidden curriculum that, for him, had always been at the heart of “Sesame Street.” “Early childhood specialists,” he reflected in 1972, “have a staggering responsibility … in producing planetary citizens whose geographic and intellectual provinces are as limitless as their all-embracing humanity.”

It seemed to Pierce, though, that the same technology that risked creating another generation of psychically damaged black children could also be used as a radical therapeutic intervention. As he told his colleagues within the Black Psychiatrists of America in 1970: “Many of you know that for years I have been convinced that our ultimate enemies an