Artist Betye Saar has been collecting black dolls since the 1960s

You could say artist Betye Saar’s new suite of watercolors started in the 1960s, when the now 95-year-old artist began collecting black dolls in Los Angeles.

An exhibition view of “Black Dolls: The Deborah Neff Collection” at La Maison Rouge.
Photo: Marc Domage / Courtesy of La Maison Rouge

The Black Dolls on Showcase at a Parisian Gallery Have a Poignant Story to Tell

Narrative and owner of doll: Keith Stokes
Photographer: Frank Jackson

Thank you professional photographer Frank Jackson for this striking image of our 1830 slave doll.

Loretta Whitfield, Creator Of A Doll With A Difference, Dies At 79

Photo collage description:
Left image, 3 Baby Whitney Dolls standing side by side. They each have black curly hair, white socks and black pattern leather shoes. They each have brown skin with African American features. The first one is dressed in a white dress with little sail boats. The second one is dressed in a red dress. The third one is dressed in a light purple dress.

Mama dolls became quite popular in America during the 1920s. The initial mama dolls were made of composition with cloth bodies that contained a voice box which made the sound "ma-ma" when the doll's body was tilted forward or backward. Their voice boxes, also known as criers, are located either in the front or back of their torsos. When found today, most mama dolls' voice boxes are mute.

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Largest Black Doll Show to Open a Black Doll Museum in Shipping Containers - Monday, February 15, 2021- BlackNewsdotcom

Detroit, MI — Sandra Epps decided to turn her negative into a positive after surviving three near-death experiences due to lupus. In 2005, she established Sandy’s Land where the mission is to party with a purpose, to encourage women and girls to “Love the Skin They’re In!”

Zora Neale Hurston & Eleanor Roosevelt helped create the "Saralee Negro Doll", and it was
marketed as the first anthropologically-correct realistic Black doll in the United States

Los Angeles, California: 1974, A young girl brushing the hair of her new Shindana Kimmie doll.
Photograph sourced from: Underwood Archives/UIG / Bridgeman Images

What I Learned When I Recreated The Famous ‘doll test’ That Looked At How Black Kids See Race

By Toni Sturdivant / The Conversation - February 22, 2021 8.24am EST

Image description with article: What it means when Black children prefer white dolls. commerce and culture stock/Moment via Getty Images

Charles "Chuck" Harrison (September 23, 1931 — died at age 87 on November 29, 2018), was an African American industrial engineer, designer..

In 1958, Harrison oversaw the redesign of the View-Master, the 3D viewer that had spent its first couple of decades principally positioned as a device for grown-ups to look at photos of vacation destinations. Harrison’s slicker, svelter, more colorful version—and a bevy of reels based on TV shows and cartoons—pivoted the gadget to the kid audience.

MY PRETTY BROWN DOLL
CROCHET PATTERNS FOR A DOLL THAT LOOKS LIKE YOU
By Yolonda Jordan