The family was supposed to move to Mississippi to join him where he had moved for a job. At their going away party they received a telegram that he had died in a car accident.
That’s it! Thanks! So sad.
The new shows without James were pretty bad, IMO.
One of the things I liked about Good Times was that Thelma was highly intelligent and a hard worker. I think this portrayal of a teenaged African American girl helped me, as a teenager, to see African American classmates as equals and not harbor any kind of prejudice against them.
I know that sounds awful, but back when I was a teenager, our attitudes towards race were often taught to us by our parents. My parents were kind of on the fence, but even if they talked bad in private, in public they did the right thing. My dad was the first man in our city to rent apartments on the EAST side to black families, and he received threatening phone calls and death threats for doing it. But he laughed it off and stuck to his guns.
And my mother had grown up poor white trash in the South and lived with black people throughout her childhood and teenaged years, so she had no prejudice at all. In fact, she told us that the first time she went back down South to visit her family, she went downtown (very small town!) with one of her black friends, and she wanted to go into a restaurant, and the friend told her, “I can’t go in there!” and my mother said it was the first time she realized that discrimination against black people was real–she had gotten used to seeing black people treated better up North (the factories needed workers BAD and they didn’t care what color people were, as long as they were willing to work and get a paycheck!).
So I was lucky to grow up with fairly good teaching from my parents about prejudice. But others aren’t so blessed.
