As founder of Action for Children’s Television, Peggy Charren balanced the need for quality children’s programming with a commitment to free speech for broadcasters. As a mother of two young children in the 1960s, Charren was dismayed by children’s television at the time: mainly violent cartoons, with twice the commercials of adult shows. She lobbied the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission for reduced advertisements and greater support of educational programming, ultimately leading to the passage of the Children’s Television Act of 1990. Shaped by her memories of her uncle, a Hollywood writer blacklisted in the McCarthy Era, Charren did not aim to censor children’s television. Instead, she believed that a wider selection of programs would give parents more choices and offer children a broader picture of the world. For her efforts, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1995, as well as the Peabody Award.

A founding board member of the Jewish Women’s Archive, Peggy Charren was honored at the 2001 Women Who Dared event in Boston.