The dolls produced from the 1800s to the 1960s show black people in subservient roles. The mammies, the butlers, the pickaninnies in torn clothing, grinning with their paper-doll smiles.

Paper dolls, mass-produced in Europe and the United States, have entertained children for centuries. But in the case of dolls representing African Americans, writer Arabella Grayson sees not just ...

Beginning in the 1960s and '70s paper dolls became more integrated, and companies began producing more "black pride" paper dolls. There is Julia from the television series that ran from 1968 to ...

They asked black children about two dolls, one white and one black. The majority -- 63 percent of them -- said they'd rather play with the white doll.

Writer and actress Arabella Grayson has been collecting black paper dolls for more than 10 years. Now, more than 100 of them are on display at the Smithsonian's Anacostia Community Museum in ...

As a young girl in segregated Spartanburg, South Carolina, Kitty Black Perkins took a brown crayon to white paper dolls so their skin would match hers. “I seldom saw white people, and so it was ...

Interest in black cloth dolls from the Victorian era and early 20th century has grown in the past decade, she said. That’s because of a 2007 exhibit of dolls made from 1870 to 1930, from the ...

What would you do if you saw a babysitter insist a child get a same-race doll? March 25, 2011 — -- A landmark study from the 1940s, conducted by psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark, showed ...

A version of this story originally ran on Feb. 1, 2019, as part of our Black History Month Series. This year, because of how this subject played in the psyche and mental health of Black children ...

Last week, Asheria Brown’s eldest daughter saw a white Kid Connection doll set at Walmart.Brown, who lives in Florence Kentucky, “wants to teach her three children their African American ...

Meghan Markle once wrote about how her dad used a Barbie set to help her celebrate being biracial. Writing for Elle in 2016, Meghan said her dad made a custom Barbie set with Black and white dolls.