Norman Lear Eps. That Changed the World: 'Michael Gets Suspended'

[JamesG]

Good Times — Season 1, Ep. 5 — “Michael Gets Suspended”
Original Air Date: March 8, 1974


In the season one episode “Michael Gets Suspended,” the Evans family’s youngest and most politically engaged child, Michael (Ralph Carter), gets disciplined at school for saying that George Washington owned slaves and was a “white racist.”

Throughout the series, Michael’s activist streak would frustrate his pragmatic parents, and in this episode, his father, James (John Amos), calls him “the militant midget.”



But what stands out about the 1974 storyline is the timeliness of Michael’s critique of his school’s lessons.

Nearly 50 years before the state of Florida adopted a curriculum that says some Black people benefited from slavery, an 11-year-old on "Good Times" was calling out his school for its failure to tell an accurate story about race in U.S. history. – Rebecca Keegan

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv...ld-1235714838/