Dolls are probably the oldest known toys in existence. Every human culture has some type of doll to represent the human form. Nashormeh Lindo talks about the exhibition she curated at the African American Art & Culture Complex in San Francisco.
Nashormeh Lindo is a doll collector and a fount of knowledge on the subject. According to this curator, artist, and educator, “A doll can be seen as an innocent plaything, a cultural marker, or a work of art. All children play (and some adults too!) To play is to learn. Childhood stories, songs, toys games, books, dolls and other visual media have a huge influence on our society.”
The human form is among the first play toys a child has to identify with; thus its aesthetic appearance has implications for how a child perceives his or her self image and what standards of beauty are adhered to in their society.
In the exhibition Dolls: Collections, Stories, Traditions, an issue that Lindo wanted to explore was the under-representation of positive images reflecting the Black experience in the mainstream toy and doll industry, as well as the socio-historical implications of that fact. The dolls and artifacts on display were assembled to celebrate the diversity and beauty of the people of the African Diaspora and their experiences manifested in dolls.
South African Ndebele Beaded Dolls, traditionally used in courtship rituals to ensure a strong marriage and fertility. In modern times they have become a way of honoring ancestral traditions and are a major export item for Ndebele women’s artists cooperatives. Lindo Collection. Inset top left: Dancing Girl doll, Martinique, Lindo collection. Below left: Aborted Dreams, Mixed Media, Karen Seneferu.
Aside from being children’s playthings, dolls also serve as power objects, representing ancestral figures and are therefore carriers of culture. Often thought to possess magical powers, in some cultures dolls are used in spiritual rituals and rites of passage. For example, the disk-shaped head Aku’aba dolls of the Ashanti people of Ghana in West Africa are worn by women to insure fertility and a beautiful healthy baby. They also become playthings for the children when they are born. In Nigeria, the Yoruba create Ibeji dolls. The word “ibeji” means twins. These carved wooden dolls come in twos and are made to house the souls of the twins and to ensure that if one twin dies, the other will survive and thrive.
A disk-headed Ashanti Aku’aba fertility doll from Ghana, West Africa. Bottom left: Topsy,
an early paper doll from Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Bottom right: Yoruba Ibeji (twin) dolls from Nigeria.
During the Great Enslavement of Africans in the Americas, dolls were made of rags, nuts, tobacco leaves and corn husks for the enslaved children to play with. Ironically, slave artisans made dolls and other toys for the master’s children as well. The first Black paper doll was produced in 1863 and depicts the figure of Topsy, a “pickaninny” character in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s best-selling novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The paper doll was used to promote book sales and was part of a trend in popular culture that included stereotyped negative images of African Americans on sheet music, household items, children’s books and toys that continued well into the 20th century.
Clockwise from bottom left: Hattie doll made in New Orleans, hand-made doll by Andrea Lewis, hand-painted Topsy-turvy doll, Antique whisk broom Mammy doll, souvenir Mammy figure. These dolls represent 19th and early 20th century Black women who were in service. Inset top right: illustration from the 19th century book The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls, featuring the “golliwog” character.
Black dolls became very popular in 19th century Europe and spawned an industry of papier mâché and bisque-headed dolls by French and German manufacturers. These dolls were mass produced and often advertised as Black or Mulatto. Some of these dolls have become collectibles and can be quite valuable.
The “golliwog”, a character in a popular 19th century British children’s book, The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls, by Florence K. Upton, is a type of rag doll with red pants, a bow tie, wild hair and caricatured features, reminiscent of grotesque minstrel figures. Even though it had racist connotations, the “golly doll” was very popular with children in Europe, Australia and North America until the early 1960s. The image itself was valuable enough to become the trademark for several products, including postcards, jars of jam, and even jewelry. There was a piece of ragtime music by celebrated composer Claude Debussy, who wrote the suite Golliwogs’s Cakewalk for his daughter.
In the early 20th century, American companies began including Black dolls in their lines. Many African-American parents continued to make “folk” dolls for their children, to combat the negative imagery in commercially-produced dolls. After WW1, dolls began to be made of more durable materials such as rubber and children could treat them as real babies, bathing them without damaging them. The first Black rubber doll was named Amosandra and was supposed to be the daughter of Amos from the Amos and Andy radio show. Black kewpie dolls from this era were referred to as “hottentot” dolls. By the 1950s and 60s, African-American toy companies began to manufacture Black dolls. These include the B. Wright Toy Co., Inc., Gold Ribbon, Inc., Olmec Toys and Shindana Toys, among others, all of whom produced ethnically correct dolls with realistic African-American facial features and hair.
Assortment of stuffed dolls including Rasta souvenir dolls from Jamaica, an original Nguzo Xaba doll by Nerissa Karen Williams, a cheerleader doll, a brown Raggedy Andy, an Aiki doll and a carved wooden Colonia marionette from Ghana. Inset: Brazilian Yoruba doll.
Dolls have also been used in social experimentation and to effect political change. For example the groundbreaking studies and “doll” experiments, conducted in the 1940s by psychologists, Drs Kenneth and Mamie Clark, played a pivotal role in Thurgood Marshall’s arguments during the famous Brown vs The Board of Education Supreme Court decision that led to the legal desegregation of America’s public schools in 1954. The experiments, designed to study children’s attitudes about race, clearly showed that when given a choice between dolls identical apart from their color, the majority of children chose the White dolls and shunned the Black ones. These studies helped to prove the damaging effects of institutionalized segregation on the self-image and educational progress of African-American children.
Nowadays ethnically-correct dolls with realistic African-American features are widely available, whether as play dolls or fashion dolls (top row), or action figures in the likeness of famous personalities (bottom row).
The experiment was repeated recently by documentary film maker Kiri Davis, in her 2006 award-winning film, A Girl Like Me. Sadly, it revealed that many attitudes have remained the same. The majority of the subjects in her film still chose the White dolls over the Black ones. The reasons they cited, again, are the associations of White dolls being “pretty” or “good” and the Black dolls “ugly” or “bad.” The continuous onslaught of negative imagery in popular visual culture has further cemented these attitudes about standards of beauty and self-worth for African-American children. This calls to mind the character of Pecola Breedlove in Toni Morrison’s novel, The Bluest Eye. Pecola so wanted to be loved that she thought if only her eyes were blue she would be accepted. She eventually went mad.
Super heroes, First Lady, Michele Obama, and miniature DJ. Inset: The Earth Friends, eco-friendly dolls sustainably made in the USA.
Unfortunately until the mid-1960s, it was rare for Black parents to find affordable, positive Black dolls for their children’s special Christmas presents. The manufacturers then began to introduce Black versions of Barbie, Chatty Cathy and Patty Play Pal. Black action figures also became available around the same time, such as G.I. Joe, sports stars and super heroes.
Further information
From African Aku’aba dolls and beaded Ndebele babies to the creations of contemporary doll-makers and artists, like Kimberly Camp and Karen Seneferu, African-inspired dolls are collected and exhibited all over the world.
The Philadelphia Doll museum, founded in 1988, is an educational and cultural resource center dedicated to the preservation of doll history. It houses a collection of over 300 Black dolls and a library that highlights the story of how African people have been perceived throughout the world, through the representation of dolls. The Kimbrough family collection of Afro-Americana, located in Los Angeles, also includes a doll collection; and the Arabella Grayson Collection features 200 years of Black paper dolls, which have been exhibited at the Smithsonian Institute. There are a number of books on the subject including Collectible Black Dolls, by John Axe; Collector’s Encyclopedia of Black Dolls, by Patiki Gibbs; The Definitive Guide to Collecting Black Dolls, by Debbie B. Garrett and Black Dolls: Proud, Bold and Beautiful, by Nayda Rondon.
Visitors to San Francisco should seek out the Sargent Johnson Gallery, a hidden gem within the African American Art & Culture Complex, which is itself in a residential area not far from City Hall. Melorra Green, Visual Arts Coordinator, explains, “The doll exhibition is one that will certainly leave its mark at the African American Art & Culture Complex. Through the guidance and vision of curator Nashormeh Lindo, we were able to provide both educational and creative opportunities for people of various cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds to learn about themselves and dolls of the African Diaspora. For that, I will say this exhibition has certainly placed the Sargent Johnson Gallery on the map.” For more information and to find out about the latest exhibitions go to www.aaacc.org
Whack-it dolls, hand-painted wood and cloth doll, by Mari Norris. Jointed, posable Dancer Doll by Mary Porter Vaughan. Artist combined traditional African fabrics with contemporary prints, beads and shells.
Small simple human form doll with sewn facial features fabric and leather from Ethiopia; hand-painted cloth and wooden doll with matching box, from Indonesia.
This feature is from a feature published in Doll News magazine, Fall 2012, based on the research of Nashormeh Lindo and is the result of an interview with her as well as published work created for the exhibition. This article is published with her permission and she retains the intellectual property rights for the information printed here.