CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 2/26/2018

Black History as told through 'Black Dolls'

"Woman with Pink Pocket," by an unknown artist circa 1870-90, is reproduced from Radius Books' outstanding and beautifully produced Black Dolls: Unique African American Dolls, 1850–1930. Pulitzer Prize-winning essayist Margo Jefferson writes, "They induce a rapture in this viewer. They say: I am black and comely in all conceivable ways. I am varying shades of black, brown and beige. I am decorous, impish, fearsome and wise. They say: I have my vanity. (Gaze on my dark, lustrous eyelashes and smartly-coiffed hair.) They say: I have my griefs. (Count the tears on my cheeks.)"