Porcelain doll head and dishes from 1222 Howard/LaSalle privy

During the Victorian era, porcelain dolls and toy tea services were thought to help instill proper morals and polite behavior in children, and such items served a dual role of entertainment and instruction into the twentieth century. But for an Black family in the era of segregation, the meanings behind white porcelain dolls are murkier and more problematic. Mass-produced fashionable Black dolls were still relatively rare, and porcelain dolls seemed to represent a standard of beauty based only in whiteness, naturalizing a two-tiered racial hierarchy marginalizing Blackness.