Dick and Jane in the 1960s

Jane and her little sister, Sally, are blonde and blue-eyed: much like Shirley Temple, whom Pecola and Frieda idolize in The Bluest Eye. Whereas the Dick and Jane textbooks from Frieda, Pecola, and Claudia's era featured white children not only as ideal, but also as the norm, the 1965 Dick and Jane reader introduced African American characters for the first time.

Having moved next door to Dick and Jane, the characters Mike and the identical twins Pam and Penny respond to a heightened concern to represent a broader range of the U.S. population. A more diverse book than its predecessors, 1960s-era Dick and Jane readers would nonetheless come to be criticized for their method of teaching reading and for depicting only traditional family structures and gender roles, middle-class protagonists, and ideally behaved children.

Image source: Fun with Dick and Jane: A Commemorative Collection of Stories. San Francisco: Collins Publishers, 1996.

Back to top page