Hurston moved to Belle Glade in the spring of 1950, and according to Patterson, “she and Creech met virtually every evening at Creech’s home.”Ĭreech remembers that during this period she began to doubt that the doll would ever become a reality. They would both be instrumental in getting the Sara Lee doll to production. In 1949, Creech and von Hesse went to New York City, where they met with one of von Hesse’s contacts-Eleanor Roosevelt-and one of Creech’s-Zora Neale Hurston. Their research confirmed Creech’s instincts: that racial prejudice could be subtly installed in children through their toys, and that a lack of representative playthings could effect children’s development and lower their self-esteem. Boyd had attempted the same thing before WWI, though the dolls were imported and mostly sold in black churches-and by 1948 there were a few options for older African American dolls, there were no baby dolls that had been expressly designed to reflect the black children who might play with them.Ĭreech enlisted her friend Maxeda von Hesse, and the two of them began to research toys and (since neither of them had any experience in it) toymaking. While a faithful African American doll wasn’t a new idea-as Patterson points out, Dr. Almost all of the African American dolls on the market were modeled after racist stereotypes, and those that weren’t were just white dolls that had been painted brown. Board of Education wouldn’t be argued until 1952, or decided until 1954.

Now, if that sounds a little white savior-y, well, I’m with you-but don’t forget that this was 1948, still the cusp of the American civil rights movement. She decided that she would create such a doll, one that “would represent the beauty and diversity of black children.” Creech was already involved in social justice-she had been active in women’s movements since the mid 1930s and in the spring of 1948 had helped form an Interracial Council in Belle Glade-and she realized that it was wrong that these black children did not have access to dolls that looked like them. But you know all that-so today, on Hurston’s birthday, here’s something you might not have known about her: that she had a hand in the creation of the Sara Lee doll, one of the first “quality” or “realistic”-that is, well-made, non-racist and non-stereotyped-African American baby dolls produced in the United States.Īccording to Gordon Patterson’s 1994 article “ Color Matters: the Creation of the Sara Lee Doll” (originally published in The Florida Historical Quarterly) it all began in December 1948, when a white woman named Sara Lee Creech noticed two black children playing with white dolls in a car outside of a post office in Belle Glade, Florida, where she lived. Zora Neale Hurston is one of America’s most beloved literary figures, an influential writer, anthropologist, and giant of the Harlem Renaissance her 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God is still ubiquitous more than 80 years later.

A black baby doll