The Real Reason Franklin Didn’t Go Trick-or-Treating With Charlie Brown
Is that Charlie Brown was a Klansman.
Charlie led a cavalry through their neighborhood,
With nothing but white sheets covering all but the blacks
Of their eyes in search of their mystical, divine leader:
The Great Pumpkin.
(It is important to note, here, that Peppermint Patty and Marcie were given witches masks. I suppose they ran out of bed sheets in their sizes, or perhaps their pillow cases were satin, though I doubt it.)
No, Franklin is nowhere to be found in most images of Charlie Brown’s great quest to find the grand—
pardon—“Great” pumpkin,
And I can only assume Franklin’s parents,
Who came of age under the razor-sharp wings of ravenous crows themselves,
Warned him of becoming too familiar:
“Wah womp wah womp womp womp wah wah womp wah wah wah”
roughly translates to:
“All penfolk ain’t kinfolk, and…”
So that night, Franklin I’m sure stayed home, or perhaps he made his own costume, and learned to not be so charitable.
Franklin was born a child,
Eleven days after Martin Luther King was crucified
Then resurrected
To become, among other things, a cudgel for white folks
To bludgeon what was left of his dream, what they hadn’t left
in a splattered menagerie on a Tennessee balcony.
Franklin, actually, was ushered into our world at the written behest of a white woman who,
In 1958, allegedly,
“[Had been] asking [herself] what [she could] do to
Change those conditions
In our society.”
Charles Schulz, the cartoonist, replied to her letter shortly thereafter:
“You will be pleased to know that I have taken the first step
in doing something about presenting a Negro child in the comic
strip during the week of July 29.
I have drawn an episode which I think will please you."
And pleased, I’m sure that white woman was,
For Franklin appeared, violently summoned like his ancestors before him
From the ebb of the ocean,
Salt caking his tufts of curls, but nothing more visible than the
Pen marks that cocooned his outline
Making indistinguishable his difference.
He, unlike Pigpen, was the embodiment of those pen scratches,
Lest how would we marvel at our society’s changed conditions?
Charles Schultz, 1968
Out, from the mouth of
(probably) the Atlantic Ocean
Sprang Franklin, ready to be helpful:
“Is this your beach ball?”
He says to the klansman, who, in turn
Responds with kindness
Cartoonish for a white man like Charles.
Charles, for what it’s worth, is misunderstood.
Perhaps not a victim of economic anxiety—
He could always spare a nickel
To go to Lucy
For advice he would not follow—
But alas, Charlie’s plight
High-stepping tantalizingly close to his goal
Laces and leather square on his sole
His certainty of success
Ripped from beneath his sole
His world upended.
This could not stand, there need to be an
Other. Someone to put on the other side of the table
Someone to neglect to invite on your hayride,
Then with what little leftover kerosene power the gas stove
On which he casually heats up his day’s leftovers and did you know?
The first human to gaslight someone was also named Charles, and;
Did anyone ever ask him why he felt such goodness in grief?
