A Black Doll in a Blue Gown Helped Me Believe I Was Beautiful, Too

One of the few Christmases I remember in my youth was the last one before my mother moved to New York to look for work. I must have been about 6 or 7. I had only seen white dolls, but my sister and I awoke to find two beautiful Black dolls, dressed as though they were going to a ball. If I am right, my doll wore a blue gown, and my sister’s doll wore a pink gown.

They had long curly hair and wore little heels. I love combing the doll’s hair, which was very different from my more kinky hair. I envied the doll because I wanted hair that didn’t hurt to comb and plait. I also liked that the doll was a dark brown, even darker than I was. But she was simply the prettiest doll I had ever seen, including white ones, probably because of her dark skin. Her features were white, but I didn’t care.

Nearly everything considered beautiful was white. This would have been 1957 or 1958, when the majority of television characters were white, and all of the dolls in commercials were white. Black women were often seen as maids or as domestics. There were no Black people in westerns, on shows like Father Knows Best, or in the soap operas my aunts loved. So, having a gorgeous Black doll was exciting for me. It made me feel beautiful, too. It made me feel that my brown skin was pretty, and that Blacks were just as human as whites.

I will never forget when, in 1968, Diahann Carroll starred in her own show, Julia, and she was drop-dead gorgeous and was a nurse, not a maid. That was a milestone for me as a Black giel, to know that I could be more than a maid or a domestic.

My sister and I moved houses three times in about five years, and somewhere along the way, I lost my Black doll. I don’t remember ever getting another one. But as a mother, I bought my daughters Black dolls, even though Barbie was the doll that most girls craved and wanted to be. In 1968, there was a black doll named Christie, molded with Black features, a short curly Afro, and a figure shaped like a real black woman. That was exciting, too, and I wanted my girls to know that they were pretty and smart. But that first doll was such a wonderful gift that I wish I still had her, although I believe I combed her hair so much that she was almost bald by the time I lost her.

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