Interesting.

In the spring of 1960, four black students began protests at a lunch counter (Greensboro) and the Southern Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (Raleigh) began in North Carolina -- home of American Tobacco and other tobacco companies.

I find it difficult not to contemplate tobacco without the Black hands that picked it and processed it. Of course, I guess the story is where the money is, rather than where conflict is located.

So far, I am not excited by the one sided glorification of "whiteness." I would be interested in how the advertising from Madison Avenue impacted the growing of tobacco in the fields. I am sure there is enough dramatic conflict in sexual mores, clothing and music.

No, this series is not about race. It is about the United States in the 1960s. How can you tell this story without Black People?

I wonder what Mr. Eddie Anderson of the Jack Benny Show would have to say about the sponsorship of Lucky Strike?

Perhaps the series will be like the silent BUFFY episode....without a sound track.

It seems that Nat King Cole was right: "Madison Avenue is Afraid of the Dark."
International Movie Database (<link>)

There were two black characters. Both were service workers. A waiter who is not supposed to talk to the customers, but who has a helpful conversation with Dan about cigarettes. The other was, I believe, an elevator operator. Clearly the show is making a point about the "place" of black people in the WASP world of the 60's.

It's showing how shallow and creepy the world is, that a guy like Draper can seem like a hero in comparison to the norms back then, even though he's a cheating, lying, condescending anti-intellectual womanizer hawking death to the unsuspecting.

The show is not meant to preach, nor is it a documentary. It is however, much deeper than the surface. You won't like it if you want to be told what's going on at every scene, or have the "moral" handed to you on a platter. You'll have to work for this one.