Interracial episode?

Season 3, episode 22 was called The Geisha Girl and it's about a doctor who is concerned his Japanese wife won't be accepted. I remember this episode somewhat. Fortunately season 3 goes on sale on 12/1!

The "Geisha Girl" episode featured Oscar-winner Miyoshi Umeki as the Japanese wife of one of the hospital doctors. Interracial marriage was a rather daring topic for 1961, when 14 or 15 states (mostly in the South) still had laws banning interracial marriage. Donna Reed was quite liberal politically, and founded an anti-war group after she ended the series in 1966, at which point she was free of sponsor controls.

In the episode, Umeki plays a rather subservient Japanese wife, who arouses resentment among the doctors' wives, because they fear that their husbands will start nagging them to be more like Umeki (the script is very careful to clarify that they have no issues with Umeki's race, only her subservience to her husband). The "problem" is solved as Donna Stone "Americanizes" Umeki by taking her on a shopping spree for a full set of American clothes. Until this shopping trip, she only wears Japanese-style clothing, such as kimonos.

More so than most tv programs of the era, the Donna Reed Show did tackle some social issues of the era, including race and alcoholism. Willie Mays was prominently featured as a guest on three different episodes. Although Don Drysdale also made a guest appearance, Willie Mays was the "favorite" recurring baseball guest star.

Given the control the sponsors wielded over show content, there was only so much they could do, but Donna Reed seems to have pushed the envelope better than anyone else from that era. Given that Donna Reed and then-husband Tony Owens were the show producers, it's reasonable to assume that the views expressed by these episodes reflected their own beliefs. The Brady Bunch was a full decade behind and virtually never took on sensitive social issues.