Here’s the story of a family named Brady, who tried to bring some diversity to their show…

Though the core cast of The Brady Bunch was all white, former star Barry Williams says the creators made genuine efforts to diversify the show.

“I know that we’re the whitest show on television, but I do think that there were very deliberate attempts to try and integrate the show,” Williams said on his recap podcast The Brady Bros. “There were a couple of episodes that specifically dealt with that, and we see this a lot, especially when there are crowds and then maybe there are two or three friends, we’ll see different ethnicities and et cetera.”

The conversation arose because Williams and his cohost and fellow Brady, Christopher Knight, were discussing the “Miss Popularity” episode of the ABC sitcom, the 13th episode of season 5 from December 1973. Williams singled out the episode for the introduction of a supporting character, Shirley, played by Black actress Jere Fields (then credited as Jerelyn Fields). Fields appears in the episode as a classmate of Jan Brady (Eve Plumb), though it marked her only appearance on the show.

“I thought this was nice because this is a young lady of color, and this didn’t happen a lot,” Williams said. “There was a lot of influence there by [producer] Lloyd [Schwartz] and Maureen Lee Lenker Sherwood [Schwartz] of making sure everyone was represented…. This is one of those cases, and she’s adorable, and it was fun to see.”

While Fields appearance is brief, another episode marked even more of a landmark moment. From the same season, “Kelly’s Kids” focuses on the Kelly family, Ken (Ken Berry) and Kelly (Brooke Bundy), friends of the Bradys.

The couple adopts three boys, one of whom is white, and the other two are Black and Asian. There were hopes the episode would result in a spinoff about the Kelly family, but that never materialized and this also ended up being the final season of The Brady Bunch.

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The Brady Bunch ran on ABC from 1969 to 1974, following the adventures of the blended Brady family, including the three sons of Mike (Robert Reed) and three daughters of Carol (Florence Henderson).

The series overlapped slightly with Norman Lear’s All in the Family and just preceded The Jeffersons, both of which launched a new era in American television of sitcoms that featured families of color and tackled contemporary social and cultural issues.