One Peanuts character seems to be a chameleon. In many of the specials, he’s pretty quiet. He’s more talkative in the comic strips, but still difficult to figure out. There is a reason for this. Most of Charles Schultz’ beloved characters were based on real people. Franklin, the first black kid in the Peanuts universe, was created out of whole cloth.

A school teacher wrote Charles Schultz a letter, in which she lamented that it was a shame there were no relatable characters for black children on television. He agreed, thus Franklin was born. Charlie Brown first meets him on vacation at the beach where he learns that Franklin’s father is overseas serving in Vietnam.

So Franklin was first much like Charlie Brown himself, probably an ISFJ. Later, as the character developed and became loved by both fans and Schultz himself, his personality changed. He was more outgoing. He became more like everyone’s best friend, Snoopy, an ESTP. This isn’t as evident in many of the TV shows, but is pretty plain in the comic strips and many Peanuts children’s books.

It can be argued that this character was the token minority. I don’t disagree, but it was brave of Schultz to create him at the time. This blog is apolitical. Feel free to think about this what you will. The point is that Franklin, while having different origins than the other characters, still developed an authentic, well developed personality that can be described by MBTI. This is a testament to good writing that makes for prolific, even iconic, material.