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Who Owns the Shelf
The Doll Test, Self Representation, and What We Forgot to Keep
Doll at the Store
A young Black Queen walks into the store with her mother and father. We’ll show mercy that the store isn’t Black owned, for the sake of context. They begin to gather groceries, and she points at a Barbie doll showcased on the end cap, attempting to place it in the buggy. She does not ask who made it, who owns the store, or who got paid. Momma politely pushes it back and heads toward the toy section. There, even the dolls that represent her are few, and they have long, slick hair that matches the other dolls, not Afrocentric, of course. Father refuses and encourages his daughter. They will find her a special doll and order it. Reluctantly, the child agrees.
At home, they search the internet. Frustrated, Father asks, “Why is it so hard to find a doll? Where are all the Black dolls that look like us?”
Today, few of our young ladies even play with dolls before they pick up a tablet or a computerized game. But even in those, how do the characters look? What is the subconscious mindset of a child who begins to adopt the idea that she will go through life knowing there will be little or no representation of her, other than in her dreams, where she can only envision herself in someone else’s shoes, dreaming to be like them?
This is the case today in the experiences of our young Black girls and, beyond dolls, our boys, who lack superheroes when it comes to representation. The excessive push to include all has once again placed Black representation in the back of the bus. In media, schools, and life itself, this has actually meant exclusion from any authentic Blackness. The fight for excessive inclusion has overshadowed the value of self representation. While they urge us to accept everyone, we in part forget about ourselves. Many of us don’t know what we have forgotten, and to see it, we have to go back to what we’ve already built.
The Doll Test
These observations are not new. They are well documented yet rarely shared. Go back to the Brown v. Board of Education case, where several cases collectively advocated that racial segregation itself was unconstitutional. In that argument, they referenced research begun in 1939 by psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Phipps Clark, which showed how youth reacted to a lack of representation. Seeing the results of desegregation today, we can see the test may have been a warning sign.
Kenneth and Mamie Phipps Clark organized a test that included four dolls and 253 Black children ages 3 to 7, about half in segregated Arkansas and the rest in integrated Springfield, Massachusetts. After a series of questions, about two thirds preferred to play with the white doll. About 60 percent said the white doll looked nice, and about 60 percent said the Black doll looked bad.
The Clarks’ test was cited in Brown v. Board of Education, footnote 11. It was used in court to win the argument for inclusion, and it did win in court. But observe what the test measured: a child’s feelings about themselves. The remedy became a seat in someone else’s room. No one put the other remedy in the footnote, which was building our own mirror. History highlights the push to integrate, which diluted the significance of what the Black collective achieved together. Many Black people did not want integration. They wanted to continue Black self sufficiency. On the contrary, rather than see Black people overachieve, they allowed integration with restraints and set us up to fail. The test has critics, but the questions it raised never went away.
We Already Were Building
But the test was not the beginning. Before the test, we were already building. If we had been given free rein to build as we pleased, the possibilities would have been endless. But today you see remnants and stories of burnt towns, like Greenwood in Tulsa in 1921, and of towns strategically stripped of their power, like Maryville, South Carolina, in 1936. You see destroyed infrastructure and deceased visionaries with dreams larger than their program.
Even so, the record of what we built is still there to see. The National Negro Doll Company in Nashville made its stance against racist caricature dolls by placing a dignified Black doll in a Black child’s hands. In its first holiday season, 1908 to 1909, it sold over 3,000 dolls, according to the Tennessee Historical Society. Another legacy is Berry and Ross in 1918. Evelyn Berry and Victoria Ross, of iconic Black Harlem, made dolls for Black children.
Creativity went beyond dolls with The Brownies’ Book, created by W. E. B. Du Bois and Jessie Fauset, which ran from January 1920 to December 1921. Its motto, “Designed for all children, but especially for ours,” is a mantra we can adopt today in the Bloodline’s children’s literacy. These were Black spaces that safely guarded Black confidence in our children. Confidence did not have to be viewed from a windowsill. It sat in our homes, on our bookshelves, in our daily life.
This was culture, and it is the culture we must spotlight today. The doll is just the product. The philosophy of self representation runs deep into the veins that keep a culture going. Look at Marcus Mosiah Garvey, who never asked to be included in someone’s doll factory. He built one.
The UNIA and its Negro Factories Corporation were the essential arm of what we should be doing now. Today, the means of production and establishments have diminished among Black representation itself, leaving Black entrepreneurs to find raw materials from outsiders or subcontract services they can’t find from their peers. Garvey and the UNIA established the manufacturing arm of Black production, with infrastructure like laundries, a printing station, and a doll factory, and with the Negro World as the newspaper that carried the message. These were early vestiges of product, payroll, and employment that existed in a time when resources and technology were not as accessible as today, yet were much more solidified inward than today’s reliance on ease rather than intention.
Today, it’s hard to visualize an example of the Black collective masses working together under one roof. Visually, it is not there, and this can draw a clear line on why self representation fades into a background of world inclusion where we have always sat in the back seat.
One Tool, Many Hands
If we could come to common ground work wise, beyond beliefs, faith, political affiliation, even God himself, we could get to the root work. No pun intended. Because when we refer back to the people who established the legacy here, they all had their differences. R. H. Boyd was a Baptist minister and publisher when he built the National Negro Doll Company. Du Bois and Fauset, at times, were NAACP integrationists. Du Bois is still referenced today as a cornerstone Pan Africanist. The Brownies’ Book still stands as a blueprint of Black self representation. Marcus Garvey and Henrietta Vinton Davis show the variance of Black nationalism, which today should still be here and not cradled into one box. Even Black filmmakers and producers, such as William Greaves and Tony Brown with Black Journal, have their place in the structure of Black representation.
Thus, the point is, if we all look to the duty itself, the differences have small value as to why this cannot be accomplished. The excuses fade, because people cannot stand on them as strongly as they do now. Yet the reliance to retreat back into our individualistic corners, named the Church and the comrade, rationalizes the effort being done on small scales, in our very corner.
Today we say “Pro Black” like a team jersey. In their day, it was a job description. The church man, the integrationist, the nationalist, and the revolutionary all picked up the same tool.
In truth, segregation forced us to build. No one should romanticize the reasons why, but we should honor the substance itself.
For a moment, close your eyes and visualize an ancestor at her workstation in the doll factory. The smile on her face. The tiredness in her day to meet quota. The pricks in her fingers from making Black beauty. When the doors of integration opened, the energy of this type of ambition followed the doors. No one should be faulted for walking through them.
Today, now, at this moment, I wish this pen would let that energy flow to the reader’s eye. To yours.
Black Dolls Today
Mind you, Black representation still stands strong in the art of Black dolls today. Maybe not amongst the mass markets in Target, but in places where you can spend your dollar and time with intention. Most of the time, it comes from a story of self discovery, a chase for connection to our ancestors. Many of us have witnessed this in ourselves, and those stories may be unfolding now.
Widline Pyrame's Fusion Dolls 
Genya Watson's Gullah Dolls
Genya Watson of Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, has enjoyed crafting faceless Gullah dolls since she was a child. She recalls her mother’s love for Pepsi, and how the Pepsi bottles shaped the bodies of her dolls, with grass and moss for hair and burlap scraps tied with rope for the dress. Today she hosts workshops and teaches classes across South Carolina. Many of them are held at plantations, and her dolls sell in their gift shops. The only criticism would be to gatekeep this art from places like plantations and their gift shops, but that is a conversation for another day. The art itself is ancestral.
Widline Pyrame brings a diasporic story with her dolls. Growing up in Haiti, she ironically had only white dolls to choose from. Her family moved to the States when she was a teenager. In graduate school, studying social work, she learned about the Clark Doll Test. She mentored other children who had self esteem issues about their hair, and that was her push to start. Her dolls come in different skin tones and hair textures. In her words, “We’re trying to preach that representation matters.”
Her company, Fusion Dolls, sells through her website and local boutiques. By June 2021, she had sold more than 2,000 dolls, hired a small staff, and opened a kiosk at Westgate Mall in Brockton, at the height of the pandemic. This shows that our visions are blessed with ancestral guidance when we show ambition itself.
So imagine the young Queen in the store reaching for one of these dolls. She still would not ask who made it, who owns it, or who got paid, because the answer would already be us. That spark alone could make sure there are dolls for young Queens like her decades from now. The heroes showcased in the Bloodline Tribune and Negro League Comics are created in hopes of the same. Art is not revolutionary. It is representing ourselves as who we are, unapologetically, and that remains the goal.
May the ancestors guide and protect you always.
Chuck King
Gullah Dolls (Genya Watson)
Facebook: Gullah Dolls of Charleston (facebook.com/originalgullahdollsofcharleston)
Fusion Dolls (Widline Pyrame)
Location: Westgate Mall, Brockton, Massachusetts
Website: fusiondolls.com
Facebook and Instagram: @fusiondolls
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