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The Andy Griffith Show, 1960-1968

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One of the most notable cases of the omission of African Americans in sitcoms occurred on The Andy Griffith Show. Although the program was set in Mayberry, a fictional town in North Carolina, black people and racial issues were seldom mentioned on the show. Episode one premiered on October 3, 1960, mere months following massive civil rights protests in North Carolina. Starting in February until late July 1960, African American student activists in Greensboro, North Carolina, engaged in sit-in protests at segregated Woolworth's department store lunch counters. There North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University students Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair Jr., and David Richmond, refused to leave the “whites only” counter, and subsequently ignited other sit-in movements all over North Carolina and other parts of the south. The principal character of the show was Andy Griffith, the Sheriff of Mayberry, who was presented as a fatherly, law-abiding, and voice of reason, policeman and statesman. This contradicted the reality of the Southern Sheriff and politician of the 1950s and 1960s seen most notably in the violent segregationist acts of Birmingham Commissioner of Public Safety Bull Connor, George Wallace, Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett, Dallas County (in Alabama) Sheriff Jim Clark, and countless others. 

This page has paths:

  1. Blinding Race: Television in the Civil Rights Era, 1948-1965 Phil Ethington
  2. Television Timeline Leonard Butingan

This page has tags:

  1. 1960s Phil Ethington