Dolls are among the oldest known toys, present in nearly every human culture to represent the human form. They serve not only as playthings but also as cultural markers and works of art.
Nashormeh Lindo, a doll collector and expert, notes that dolls can be viewed in many ways. In the exhibition "Dolls: Collections, Stories, Traditions," Lindo explored the under-representation of positive images reflecting the Black experience in the mainstream toy and doll industry, and the socio-historical implications of this fact.
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.
Various African Dolls
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.
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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.
Early Representations and Stereotypes
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. These dolls represent 19th and early 20th century Black women who were in service.
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. 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.
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.
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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.
The Rise of Black-Owned Toy Companies
By the 1950s and 60s, African-American toy companies began to manufacture Black dolls. 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.
In 1968, just before the holiday season, the Shindana Toy Factory released its first doll, the Baby Nancy doll. This introduction to the market would be the start of something game-changing for the toy industry, the Black doll market and have tremendous impact on a tight-knit community in South Los Angles. In the succeeding years, the Shindana Toy Factory would go on to become the largest manufacturer of Black dolls and toys. It would be credited as the first company to mass-produce "ethnically correct" black dolls.
The company's unequivocal success exposed a long-standing demand for "ethnically correct" black dolls - dolls that authentically reflect the features, hair and skin color of black people - that had gone unheeded by the mainstream market. It wasn't the first to attempt the introduction of authentic black dolls, but it was by far the most successful.
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During the late 19th and early 20th century, many mass-produced black dolls were stereotypical, caricature-like and expressed racist undertones. Popular dolls included mammy, pickaninny and servant dolls. Some were made with exagger ated facial features and skin tone, while others were produced to act as servants to White dolls in children's imaginative play. For example, one popular doll was the Aunt Jemima rag doll, which was crafted as a marketing ploy to sell the pancake mix in the early 20th century. These dolls, often, did not garner the affections of black children and their families.
Of the few companies that did attempt to produce non-offensive black dolls, many were white dolls that were painted black or brown. On the surface, these dolls were black, but their features were Eurocentric. For companies that decided to include one or two black dolls to their line of dolls, choosing the right shade of brown complicated production as companies risked defining blackness in such narrow confines that would displease black customers.
White consumers made up a significant portion of the black doll market and had their own idea of what constituted a Black doll. A few manufacturers too considered the representation of blackness. Black dolls made up a small portion of the doll market, and manufacturers did not want to alienate White customers who made up the larger portion of the market.
In 1908, Richard Henry Boyd, a Baptist minister and businessman, founded the National Negro Doll Company after difficulty finding suitable black dolls for his children. Boyd was well versed in the ideology of "racial uplift" that had captured the political minds of the black middle class at that time and felt that Black dolls that were made with care and thoughtfulness could instill racial pride in black children. He understood the value of dolls as tools of socialization and utilized them to counter anti-black imagery for all children.
An early advertisement for the dolls stated, "These toys are not made of that disgraced and humiliating type that we have been accustomed to seeing black dolls made of. They represent the intelligent and refined Negro of today, rather that the type of toy that is usually given to the children, and as a rule, used as a scarecrow."
Originally, he convinced European doll makers to make quality black dolls which he would distribute. He provided them with photos of black children to model the dolls after. He debuted his first dolls in 1908, selling up to 3,000 in the first holiday season. He later opened his own manufacturing in Tennessee, but the company closed in 1915 due to financial issues.
In 1948, Sara Lee Creech, a white woman from Belle Glades, Florida, too, felt that the self-esteem of black children was built through their playthings. After watching two black girls play with a white doll, Creech went on a mission to produce a quality “anthropologically correct” black doll to aid the social-emotional development of black children. Creech, an activist in the Interracial and Women’s movements, felt that it was important for black children to have dolls that reflected their own heritage.
She was well aware of the Mamie and Kenneth Clark’s “doll test” conducted in the 1940s that concluded that Black children had a preference for White dolls and the impact of that finding on their self-esteem. The results of the test would go on to aid the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. Creech enlisted an interracial group of supporters to her cause, including Zora Neal Hurston, Ralph Bunche and Eleanor Roosevelt.
The Sara Lee Negro Doll debuted in 1951 and was manufactured and sold through the Ideal Toy Company, but was racked with challenges. Creech faced problems with materials and the color of the dolls and issues with lackluster distribution and marketing. The Ideal Toy Company stopped producing the Sara Lee Negro Doll in 1953.
There were other modest attempts to produce quality, authentic black dolls. The most hearty undertakings included: Marcus Garvey’s doll factory, Berry and Ross, through his Universal Negro Improvement Association in 1919; Beatrice Wright, an African American entrepreneur and educator, opened the B. Wright Toy Company in the 1950s and Jackie Ormes, the first African American cartoonist, produced the Patti-Jo Doll based on one of her cartoon characters.
Although the demand for Black dolls grew over time, each of the companies closed or phased out due to a variety of reasons, from technical production issues to distribution and financial reasons. In 1965, in the aftermath of the Watts Rebellion, activists Louis Smith and Robert Hall found Operation Bootstrap, a community based non-profit that offered employment training to address high unemployment in South Central Los Angeles.
Through their non-profit, Smith and Hall established Shindana Toy Factory. They too wished to fortify the self-esteem of Black children, but their efforts employed a dual mission of also providing an economic opportunity for an ignored black community in South Central Los Angeles.
In 1968, Smith and Hall opened the Shindana Toy Factory on 61st St. and Central Ave., a couple of miles south of their Bootstrap offices, to produce quality black dolls that promoted self-love in black children. Mattel helped financed and secure funds for their early vision.
Arthur Spear, who became president of Mattel in the ‘70s, also made available staff and tools of the trade, giving Smith and Hall an insider's view of the production process. This would later prove invaluable as they worked to ensure the integrity and authenticity of their products.
Their first doll, Baby Nancy, entered the marketplace in 1968 in time for the holiday season. She was born in the midst of Black Power, Black Capitalism, the Civil Rights, the Black Arts Movements, and the many regional iterations of the black aesthetic that emerged in localized responses to national issues of civil rights, inequality and liberation. Shindana's product and business model could definitely be viewed as an assemblage of political influences, but its singular mission was to serve its community.
Many of the staff, artists and personnel were African American and the company utilized this information in some of their advertising asserting their claim to authenticity. Baby Nancy was designed by African American sculptor Jim Toatley, who took great pains to ensure that the early face molds retained their Afrocentric features, even as parts of the production process were outsourced in the first year of business. This was key as some manufacturers, to reduce cost, would use the same production molds for both White and Black dolls.
The first Baby Nancy had straight pigtails with curls, but Shindana quickly shifted to a soft afro style in keeping with the political trends of the times. Over time, Shindana slowly added to their collection, with their Tamu doll, celebrity dolls, career dolls and action dolls for boys. By the mid-70s they had sales of $1.5 million, employed roughly 70 people and a product line that grew to 32 dolls and six games, becoming the largest producer of Black dolls and toys.
Shindana ceased production in 1983. It lost its visionaries with the death of Robert Hall in 1973 and Louis Smith in 1976. It continued under the leadership of other Bootstrap members but faced rising competition from mainstream companies who, due to Shindana's success, turned their attention to the ethnic doll market.
Today, the dolls are popular in the collectors' markets. What's often remembered of the Shindana Toy Factory are the dolls and the company's impact in shaping how the toy industry engages with the ethnic market, but equally significant was its impact on a community, shifting a narrative of "blighted" and disadvantaged to one of resource, productivity and beauty.
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.
The "Doll Test" and its Impact
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. 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.
Modern Era and the Black Dolls Matter Movement
African-American dolls have long been significant in representing and valuing Black communities’ cultural identity. From the 20th century to the present, their evolution mirrors more significant societal shifts in how Black identity is portrayed and valued.
Before movements like Black Dolls Matter®, African-American dolls were largely neglected in the toy industry. In the mid-20th century, most dolls were designed with white features, and when Black dolls were produced, they often reflected harmful stereotypes or were simply repainted versions of white dolls. These dolls frequently lacked natural hair textures, skin tones, and cultural accuracy.
Black Dolls Matter
The Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power era spurred a growing demand for more authentic representations of Black identity. During the 1960s and 1970s, small businesses and independent creators began producing dolls that better reflected the diversity and dignity of Black culture. Despite these efforts, mainstream toy manufacturers lagged in incorporating diverse dolls into their lines.
Black Dolls Matter® emerged as a crucial force in changing the narrative around African-American dolls. Founded to promote authenticity and self-love, the initiative advocated for the importance of Black dolls in shaping positive identity. Black Dolls Matter® emphasized that true diversity isn’t simply about representation but about fostering empowerment through authenticity. This movement sparked innovation, with dolls featuring a more comprehensive range of skin tones, natural hair textures, and culturally relevant clothing.
Mark Ruffin is a Daytime Emmy Award-winning artist, dollmaker, and storyteller whose work bridges the worlds of craft, culture, and community. For more than three decades, Mark has designed and crafted costumes, puppets, dolls, and props for beloved productions, including Sesame Street, The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss, Bear in the Big Blue House, and Apple TV+’s Servant. In 2020, inspired by the need for equity, inclusion, and representation in toys and storytelling, Mark launched Black Dolls Matter® - a global movement and brand dedicated to creating thoughtfully designed dolls, multicultural toys, and collectible art pieces.
Mark believes dolls are more than toys - they are mirrors of identity, keepers of memory, and vessels of healing. “Through dolls, we tell our stories."
In the years following the Black Dolls Matter® movement, African-American dolls have become symbols of pride and cultural resilience. They celebrate Black culture and foster a sense of belonging and empowerment. This shift has prompted greater inclusivity across the toy industry, with dolls now representing various ethnicities, abilities, and body types.
The evolution of African-American dolls-from exclusion to celebration-illustrates the profound effect that intentional representation can have on industry and community. While challenges remain, movements like Black Dolls Matter® show that positive change is possible.
Museums and Collections
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.
What Can Be Done as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Is Being Rolled Back in the USA?
As the current political climate sees the rollback of many Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives across the United States, it’s crucial to understand the ongoing need for representation in all forms of media, including toys.
