As the other comments suggest, the character of Freddie "Boom-Boom" Washington was intentionally African-American (obviously) but the reasoning was more of substance than tokenism. The multi-cultural cast made perfect since for the concept of "Welcome Back, Kotter", and the character didn't play second fiddle to the rest of the sweathogs. Lawrence-Hilton Jacobs was born September 4, 1953 in New York City.

No way! Freddie was an important part of welcome back kotter - not tokenism at all!

I don't think he was a token minority. The ethnic makeup of Brooklyn consists of lots of Jews and Puerto Ricans (Juan Epstein), Italians (Vinnie Barbarino), Blacks (Washington), and whatever Horshack was supposed to be. It would have been silly not to include a black student on the show. Maybe it was a little unrealistic (the Sweathogs were kind of a little multi-ethnic gang), but I doubt Washington was thrown in there to appeal to a wider demographic.