With all the racial unrest that has been happening in our country over the past few weeks, one episode of the iconic sitcom “Bewitched” has been at the front of star Erin Murphy’s mind.

The episode “Sisters at Heart” originally aired on December 24, 1970, and it tells the story of the friendship between Tabitha Stephens (Murphy) and her friend Lisa Wilson (Venetta Rogers). The girls are so close that they want to be sisters, but they’re devastated when bullies start making fun of them for having different skin colors, according to Fox News.

Tabitha responds to this by casting a spell that leads to her having black polka dots on her face while Lisa has white polka dots. Thankfully, she is able to reverse the spell by the time Lisa’s parents come home to pick her up.

“I remember the entire process of that episode because it was completely different than usual,” Murphy recalled. “Typically we would have one of our regular ‘Bewitched’ writers write the episode, we’d do our weekly table read on Mondays and then film throughout the week. But this episode was written by a 10th grade English class from Thomas Jefferson High School, so for the table read they had the entire class and their teacher come to the set.”

“It was a great experience and it was Elizabeth Montgomery’s favorite episode so far,” she added. “I love the episode as well. I didn’t even realize all the political implications associated with the episode. When the Watts Riots happened in 1965, I was a baby. This episode was five years later.”

Murphy, 55, went on to add that the cast was very proud of the show’s storyline.

“Kids see differently than adults do, but I think Elizabeth Montgomery, William Asher and the other people in charge read the script and was compelled by it,” the former child star explained. “It’s definitely been one of the episodes that I’m asked about the most. And it even won a special Governor’s Emmy Award that year based on its impact.”

Murphy admitted that since she was so young at the time, she didn’t understand how important the episode was at first.

“Historically, those were tough times in America and it breaks my heart,” she added. “Now I’m having conversations with my kids about how much has changed and, unfortunately, how it’s stayed the same. The Watts Riots were the result of police brutality. So the fact is that we, as a sitcom, were willing to tackle such a sensitive subject and tried to explain it in terms that even children would understand.”

“That’s why my character wanted to be sisters with her friend who was African American and she came up with the polka dots,” Murphy continued. “But in the end, just the concept that we were sisters at heart, that we didn’t need to have the same color skin, that we were still sisters, was just a beautiful concept. There are a lot of underlying themes that kind of cross over to all different groups of people. I think Elizabeth Montgomery and her husband Bill Asher were political people and I don’t think they were afraid to kind of face the issues.”

It’s fun to see that an episode of “Bewitched” continues to be so relevant a half a century after it aired!