Words on image: 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.

The Saralee Negro Doll was created by Sara Lee Creech of Belle Glade, Florida. Creech felt Black children should have Black dolls with features like their own.

The doll was manufactured and sold by the Ideal toy company between 1951-1953. This doll is an 18-inch vinyl doll with cloth body, modeled after the likeness of African American children.

This doll was promoted with the phrase, "More Than Just a Doll... An Ambassador of Good Will."
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Note: We are adding two different articles about the Saralee Negro Doll.
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The Saralee Negro Doll

By Patricia Hogan, Curator at the Strong National Museum Of Play

A doll that was so important to American social history, the Saralee doll, an early mass-produced play doll that depicted an African American infant before the civil rights movement had achieved much success in creating racial equality in America.

In 1949 white American Sara Lee Creech, a businesswoman and social activist of Belle Glade, Florida, observed two African American girls playing with white skin dolls.

Creech thought it was wrong that the girls had no dolls to play with that looked like them, and she became determined to provide an “anthropologically correct” doll for Black children. When she began her quest, Creech may have not known how truly important her doll idea would turn out be.

In the 1930s and 1940s, child psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark studied young children’s preferences for light and dark complexioned dolls. Black children often choose to play with the lighter dolls, suggesting that by the time they had reached nursery school, these youngsters had already accepted society’s prejudices about their own race.
(The Clarks’ findings applied especially to Black children attending segregated schools in the South, and these studies played an important role in the NAACP’s battle in the 1950s to end segregation in public schools.)

Creech came to believe that a well-made doll that accurately reflected the beauty of African American children might help them overcome the self-rejection resulting from what one historian called a “corrosive awareness of color.”

As Gordon Patterson observed in his article about the SaraLee doll for The Florida Historical Quarterly, “This was about using popular culture as a means of social and political reform.”

Sara Lee Creech began her crusade by approaching noted sculptor Sheila Burlingame to mold the doll head.
Creech showed prototypes to African American novelist Zora Neale Hurston and a New York friend with ties to former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

Mrs. Roosevelt took an interest in the project and wrote in a letter of support, “I like them particularly because they can be made and sold on an equal basis with white dolls. There is nothing to be ashamed of. They are attractive and reproduced well with careful study of the anthropological background of the race. I think they are a lesson in equality for little children, and we will find that many a child will cherish a charming black doll as easily as it [sic] will a charming white doll.”

With the help of Black leaders including Ralph Bunche, Mary McLeod Bethune, and the presidents of Howard University and Morehouse College, Creech convinced the Ideal Toy Company to manufacture the dolls. She asked for guidance from leaders of the white American community too. Mrs. Roosevelt helped out a second time, hosting a tea in New York City for African American leaders and Ideal executives when the firm delayed production on the doll in 1951. News of the first lady’s reception and doll’s availability appeared in Time, Newsweek, Life, Ebony, and Independent Woman, in addition to city and regional newspapers.

The SaraLee doll never sold in the quantities that Creech, her supporters, or Ideal had hoped, in part because the vinyl used to make the doll hardened, lost its initial color, and seeped its dyes onto the doll’s clothing. Ideal cancelled plans to make other African American dolls with a range of lighter and darker complexions reflecting a similar range in the Black population that might have broadened the dolls’ appeal.

The toy world waited until 1968 before releasing another mass-market Black doll, Barbie’s friend Christie. Meanwhile, Sara Lee Creech continued working for interracial harmony, establishing daycare centers in the 1950s and 1960s for the children of migrant workers and testifying before the White House Conference on Day Care in 1965.

Her doll may not have become a commercial success, but as Gordon Patterson put it, “The creation of the SaraLee doll said Black children are to be taken seriously. It said that toys do matter.”
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Second article:

Ideal's Saralee Negro Doll 1951-1953 "An Ambassador of Goodwill"

by Blackdoll Collecting Blog / Originally published in Vol. 1, Issue 1 of Black Doll-Ezine Archives in February 2002.

In 1951, when the Saralee Negro doll entered the market, this historical doll, created by white American Sara Lee Creech of Belle Glade, Florida, manufactured by Ideal Toy Corporation, would be the first play doll of its kind. It was designed specifically to be a "quality doll" with true-to-life Black features, not just a white doll colored brown. Not only does the Saralee doll possess a unique history of what sparked its creation, but its marketing campaign is also quite interesting.

According to the book, Florida Pathfinders, after witnessing two little Black girls playing with white dolls outside a Florida post office as they waited for their mother, Sara Lee Creech was forced to wonder why these girls and others like them did not have quality dolls in their likeness.

In chapter 3 of Virginia Lynn Moylan's book, Zora Neale Hurston's Final Decade (University Press of Florida, 2011), she provides more details about Saralee's creation, which was conveyed by Sara Lee Creech.

The idea for the doll sprang from an epiphany following a conversation [Creech] had with Louise Taylor, a Black mother, who complained that the only quality dolls available for her daughters were white. A few days later, Creech noticed two Black girls playing with white dolls and was struck by the contrast.

Convinced that Black children needed and deserved a doll that would reflect the physical beauty of their own race, she decided to look into the matter.

"In 1949, she launched a campaign to create what her friend, Zora Neale Hurston (writer, folklorist, and anthropologist) described as an 'anthropologically correct' doll."
[Florida Pathfinders]

According to Moylan, Hurston suggested to Mrs. Creech to name the doll Saralee. Ms. Creech initially conducted a one-woman mission to create the Saralee doll. Later, with the help of several prominent community leaders on the local and national level (former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and political scientist Ralph Bunche, college founder and president, Mary Bethune Cookman just to name a few), her mission was set in motion.

Ms. Creech was also graciously assisted by Mrs. Roosevelt's speech coach, Maxeda von Hess, who was able to persuade Shelia Burlingame, a sculptor, to assist in the Saralee Negro doll-creation project.

Zora Neale Hurston was one of the biggest supporters of this doll project. According to Moylan's book, "After seeing the photos [of the doll head castings], Hurston suggested a name for the doll, Saralee, after its creator, and advised Creech to show the models to 'well-known and influential Negroes' who could help the project along."

Hurston went on to introduced Creech to several of her "illustrious friends and acquaintances." It was Hurston's friend and poet, Georgia Douglas Johnson, who dubbed the doll "a little ambassador of peace."

The following quote (circa 1950/1951), included in Moylan's book, is from a letter of praise Hurston wrote to Creech after viewing photographs of castings created for the doll:

"Please allow me to say how pleased I am that you let me see pictures of the Negro dolls that you plan to put on the market... The thing that pleased me most... was that you, a white girl, should have seen into our hearts so clearly, and sought to meet our longing for understanding of us as we really are, and not as some would have us. That you have not insulted us by a grotesque caricature of Negro children, but conceived something of real Negro beauty."
—Zora Neale Hurston

Several different head molds were created. The other head sculpts were created for two reasons: 1) to determine the doll's complexion and 2) to create siblings for Saralee.
A big brother, a big sister, and a little brother were planned.

Chestnut brown was the color chosen for Saralee's complexion. Unfortunately, only a little brother has been documented. The fate of the other ethnically correct sculpted heads is uncertain. In addition to receiving promotional backing from prominent African Americans and other prestigious individuals who realized the doll's importance to the African American community and to the doll world at large, Saralee Negro Doll was advertised in major publications.

Saralee's debut was published in a full spread in the December 17, 1951, issue of Life magazine, and several toy catalogs also featured the Saralee doll. In 2002, the little doll with a proud history was reproduced by the Ashton-Drake Galleries of Niles, Illinois. The new, 17-inch Saralee was reproduced in porcelain from sculptor Sheila Burlingame's original mold.

"Just like the original doll, Saralee's adorable face was specially sculpted to look like a real African American baby with brown eyes, an open/closed mouth, and molded, painted black hair. The reproduction Saralee is wearing a replica of her original, yellow-ribbon-trimmed white organdy dress with matching bonnet and panties. Little white lace-up shoes and white socks accent her outfit."

The reproduction Saralee retailed for $99.99. (Reproduction description, courtesy of Davis Enterprises.)