If you’ve ever searched for a doll for a Black child, you know how overwhelming it can be. We’ve all been there before. Your favorite little person wants a doll, one that is a reflection of themself and you’re coming up short. For every Black woman who has struggled to find her foundation color, there is a Black child somewhere who has had to play with a white doll. Am I right? Children are naive but also very impressionable. They innocently play with whatever toys they have access to, and when it comes to dolls, they make do with what’s available as well. However, when it comes to the things that are important to a Black child’s identity—hair texture, skin tone, eye color and clothes—let’s face it, the pickings are slim. I hate to be redundant about the topic, but yes—BLACK DOLLS MATTER.
Thankfully, Black imaginations were considered. In 1968, Mattel, the producers of the ever popular Barbie, launched Christie, their first successful attempt at an African-American doll. Years before Mattel, Effenbee, a German company founded in 1912, sold a commercially available Black doll, with Black skin over white features and molded hair. However, before Effenbee and Mattel, there was Leo Moss, a Black doll maker from Macon, Georgia, who made dolls in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Leo Moss was a handyman by trade and part-time doll maker. According to a representative of the National Museum of Toys and Miniatures, friends and family members were inspiration for his dolls. Ever resourceful, Moss used tools and scraps from odd jobs and materials in his carpentry to make his dolls. Initially, he would simply paint white dolls Black but decided to make the dolls from scratch to create more realistically Black features. To form the heads the handyman used wallpaper scrapings that he boiled into a paste and shaped them individually.
He used dye from boots and soot from chimneys and stoves as the base color for the dolls, and a spray gun for killing flies to color their skin. The craftsman incorporated smooth pieces of glass to set their eyes, painting them black or brown to depict the eyes of his subjects. His wife, Lee Ann, a popular dress maker, made the dolls’ clothes and often made some of the bodies out of cloth as well. Moss produced the dolls by request and would barter his them for vegetables and poultry to feed his family. At some point, the Moss dolls, most notably known for their expressive faces, began to take on sad and tearful expressions. Rumor has it that Moss’ wife ran off with a toy supplier from New York, who would send Moss broken doll and toy parts. The tears on the dolls faces are said to represent his grief and longing for his wife. Others say the tears on many of the dolls faces represented the feelings of the black community, expressing the tears of a baby whose cries would not stop. Still some say if a child started crying while modeling, Moss would add tears to their doll’s face as punishment. The selection and creation of black dolls has come a long way since the days of Leo Moss’s rare papier-mache dolls. Today, although your average toy store may still be limited with a selection of Black dolls. However, a quick social media search will lead you down the right path. Orijin Bees, Babeez, Herstory Doll and Kay Customz are just a few companies that make dolls to reflect the diversity of African-American culture. Unfortunately, Leo Moss isn’t a household name in the doll making industry and likely died unaware his creations would be considered trailblazing. We remember him here, as a man with vision, who understood that Black children should play with Black toys and Black girls in our rainbow of beauty matter too.
Do you remember your first black doll? Did it resemble you at all? Was that important? Share your thoughts below.
