Exhibit of Black dolls offers lesson in legacy of slavery, racism

An upstate New York museum is featuring homemade dolls depicting African American life as an homage to their makers and as a jumping off point into the history of oppression faced by the Black community.

Black Dolls, produced by the New-York Historical Society, is on view through Jan. 7 at The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York.

“These dolls were made between the 1850s and the 1940s,” Allison Robinson, associate curator of exhibitions for the New-York Historical Society, told ABC News. “It allows you to relate to people who really went through overt oppression and racism within their lifetime, from the height of American slavery to the early years of the American Civil Rights Movement. And how these dolls proved to be a way to counter that, and resist that.”

The exhibition celebrates Black dolls and their makers, but “also includes items with racist imagery and language to underscore the challenging circumstances in which the dolls were created,” according to the museum’s website.

Michelle Parnett-Dwyer, a curator at the museum, said these dolls were “made by women who were very isolated from society and may not have been very supported.”

“So this was really a form for them to be creative and to embrace their culture and to share that with their children, to have pride and see themselves in their own toys,” Parnett-Dwyer said.

One part of the exhibit features dolls made by Harriet Jacobs, author of “Life of a Slave Girl,” which is “one of the most important slavery narratives in American history,” Robinson said.

After escaping slavery, Jacobs found her way to New York City and worked for the Willis family, who had three little girls. While working for the family, she began writing her autobiography and also made three dolls for the little girls, Parnett-Dwyer said.

The dolls in the exhibit were created using whatever materials were available at the time, such as coconut shells, flower sacks and scraps of fabric, along with seed bags, socks and silk and leather, according to the curators.

Robinson calls the exhibit an “archive” that allows people “to understand the inner world of these women and also appreciate the ways that children would have navigated this challenging period through play.”

The Strong National Museum of Play is the only museum that focuses on preserving the history of play and studying its importance, according to Steve Dubnik, president and CEO of the museum.

“Black history is our history, so having an exhibit that combined history of play for the Black population and for dolls was very important to us and gave us a unique opportunity,” Dubnik said.