Negroes Want Negro Dolls

From the Dec. 18, 1908, Nashville Globe

By By Dr. R.H. Boyd

The article [“‘Negro’ Dolls: New Phase of the Color Line”] by Mr. Dan W. Baird [reprinted in the December 2010 issue of The Nashville Retrospect] was clipped from the Nashville Banner of December 12th. [The author] Mr. Baird, I presume, is the Editor of the Southern Lumberman and is quite an intelligent but very elderly gentleman. He is possibly one of the best informed men on the lumber question that we have in this country, but when it comes to the sociological ideas and educational developments of the American Negro he is indeed like most of our white brethren, very poorly informed.

I suppose Mr. Baird, like many other gentlemen and ladies, became wonderfully excited last September when he learned that the Negro Baptists of this country had taken a long step in the right direction to develop the real, characteristic beauty and lovableness of Negro features and virtues for themselves as the Anglo-Saxon race has done for themselves. Of course, Mr. Baird set out to hunt down the fountain head, if possible, of this novelty enterprise and see what was at the bottom of it, but lacked a great deal of finding out everything. 

However as best as he understood it off-handed, he gave a truthful statement of conditions as he saw them. However, as he failed to locate the streets and get the name of the secretary and manager, it is but natural to suppose that he missed other things equally as far. 

It is not our custom to give out interviews for publication and we told Mr. Baird so at the time. We are not the competitors or rivals of any other institution. It was the humble purpose of the inexperienced secretary and manager of this institution in leaving his home in Texas and coming to Tennessee nearly thirteen years ago without money, friends, or a financial backing to build up a laudable enterprise and cater only for Negro trade and Negro patronage, and build up a lofty, wholesome, religious, intelligent, virtuous, industrial and moral institution that would stand the test. How well he has succeeded others may tell. Our ideas are to some extent misquoted by the honorable gentleman, but I suppose they are as he understood them. There are just two particular paragraphs in this article to which I wish to refer.

First, where he says: “The negro is invariably represented as a prisoner of war or a slave.”  Yes, this is true in pictures, in character sketches, in sculpture, and everything that the white man handles throughout all of his literature. It seems to be his purpose to teach the inferiority of the black and the superiority of the white throughout this country. He has even strained his grammatical construction of translated sentences of the Bible. He makes Solomon say of himself, “I am black but comely,” when in fact, every well-informed scholar knows that Solomon said, “I am black and comely.”

In fact, the white man has carried his color prejudice to such an extent not only in his social, political and civil life, but into his scientific, artistic, and mechanical constructions until there cannot be found to-day an artist or a sculptor, who can with his pen, brush, or chisel reproduce a respectably featured American Negro without having the exact photograph of a particular individual from which to work.

Notwithstanding he or she, the student, is associated with these beautiful, respectable, highly intelligent persons every day. We never see the picture of a respectable American Negro in the average magazine or newspaper. We can often find the photograph of a criminal, the orangutang, baboon, funny picture sketches drawn by a newspaper cartoonist, and occasionally and jumble, old-time Aunt Dinah or Uncle Sambo.

It is enough to make one tired to read after the lot of half-educated, half-witted, uninformed, newspaper reporters who are constantly attempting to write Negro dialect when quoting the words of a respectable Negro. When, in fact, there is not today one Negro out of every twenty-five who speaks any of this broken, characteristic, imaginable Negro dialect. The average Negro today speaks as good English as the average would-be newspaper dialect-writer reporter can if he would write or speak his best. Mr. Baird in the closing of his article betrays his animus when he refers to respectable Negro mothers and then chimes in with: “G’way f’um here wid yer old Dutch nigger doll. My chilluns’ jest as good as anybody’s and they are goin’ to have just as purty dolls and playthings as anybody’s.”

Mr. Baird is a gentleman possibly of seventy summers and I presume from conversing with him that he has lived quite a while in the South. If so he knows or ought to know if he ever met a respectable Negro mother that Negro mothers of today who are intelligent enough to be called respectable mothers use no such dialect.

However, if there is to be found a class of mothers ignorant enough to use such language I suppose that would be about what they would say. But for Mr. Baird’s information, permit me to state as President of the Negro Doll Company that such dolls as we have placed upon the market are sought for by all intelligent Negro mothers who have seen and a majority of those who have read of this beautiful toy.

If Mr. Baird will call at the office, 519 Second avenue, North, we will show him more than two thousand intelligent, legible, well-written, well-spelled, properly punctuated letters inquiring for prices, pictures, and other information concerning these Negro Dolls. If he will but take the pains to inquire of the L. & N., the N. C. & St. L., the T. C. Freight agents, the Adams, Southern, and American express companies, he will find possibly to his surprise that the Negro Doll Company is supplying orders, shipping these dolls to every cardinal point of the compass from San Francisco, Cal., to Springfield, Mass., from Detroit, Mich., to Key West, Fla., and that the Negro Doll Company is at this time unable to supply the demands, and that the holidays will possibly close with hundreds if not thousands of these orders unfilled.

The Negro Doll Company has money on deposit at the One Cent Savings Bank of this city held for the purpose of refunding every order that cannot be filled. He spoke of importing these dolls. Yes, the Negro Doll Company since last October has imported three cargoes of Negro dolls and has the fourth on the way. If it reaches Nashville before the close of the holidays it will be in sufficient quantities to supply the full demand. If it doesn’t reach Nashville in time, and the customer so desires it, his or her money will be refunded. I make this statement as President of the company with authority.

I might further state for Mr. Baird’s information that this Negro Doll idea has not only been endorsed by the Negro Baptists of this country, who outnumber all other religious denominations of Negroes put together, but the idea has been endorsed by the Negro Women’s Federation of Clubs of this country. If the company was prepared to do so it could have agencies and depositories in every state in the Union where there are Negroes. The leading and intelligent Negroes have found that this production can be made in a manner to portray the characteristic features of the refined gentlewoman of the race.

It will soon be a matter of historical recollection to see a little Negro girl born of a respectable family lugging a flaxen-haired, blue-eyed, rosy-cheeked white doll and calling it mamma’s baby. No sir, the Negroes of this country have decided that their own women are industrious, well-developed, pretty, lovable, pure and good. They honor them as highly as any other men on earth do theirs, and they intend that their wives and daughters shall teach this to the rising generation.

(Tennessee State Library and Archives)

Editor’s note: Today the R.H. Boyd company continues the religious publishing business of the company’s namesake. Boyd, who had been enslaved in Texas before coming to Nashville in 1896, co-found both the Nashville Globe and the National Negro Doll Company. This article appeared in the December 2010 issue of The Nashville Retrospect newspaper along with other stories from the city’s past, including: “Appeals To Old Kriss From Little Folks" (1908); “Youngster’s Heart Helps Ole Santa" (1957); and “1,000 Tots Enjoyed Santa’s Party at Paramount (1955).