The History of Negative Black Stereotypes, The Brute Caricature (Warning LONG ASS READ!)

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The Tragic Mulatto Myth

http://www.ferris.edu/htmls/news/jimcrow/mulatto/

Lydia Maria Child introduced the literary character that we call the tragic mulatto (1) in two short stories: "The Quadroons" (1842) and "Slavery's Pleasant Homes" (1843). She portrayed this light skinned woman as the offspring of a white slaveholder and his black female slave. This mulatto's life was indeed tragic. She was ignorant of both her mother's race and her own. She believed herself to be white and free. Her heart was pure, her manners impeccable, her language polished, and her face beautiful. Her father died; her "negro blood" discovered, she was remanded to slavery, deserted by her white lover, and died a victim of slavery and white male violence. A similar portrayal of the near-white mulatto appeared in Clotel (1853), a novel written by black abolitionist William Wells Brown.

A century later literary and cinematic portrayals of the tragic mulatto emphasized her personal pathologies: self-hatred, depression, alcoholism, sexual perversion, and suicide attempts being the most common. If light enough to "pass" as white, she did, but passing led to deeper self-loathing. She pitied or despised blacks and the "blackness" in herself; she hated or feared whites yet desperately sought their approval. In a race-based society, the tragic mulatto found peace only in death. She evoked pity or scorn, not sympathy. Sterling Brown summarized the treatment of the tragic mulatto by white writers:

White writers insist upon the mulatto's unhappiness for other reasons. To them he is the anguished victim of divided inheritance. Mathematically they work it out that his intellectual strivings and self-control come from his white blood, and his emotional urgings, indolence and potential savagery come from his Negro blood. Their favorite character, the octoroon, wretched because of the "single drop of midnight in her veins," desires a white lover above all else, and must therefore go down to a tragic end. (Brown, 1969, p. 145)

Vara Caspary's novel The White Girl (1929) told the story of Solaria, a beautiful mulatto who passes for white. Her secret is revealed by the appearance of her brown-skinned brother. Depressed, and believing that her skin is becoming darker, Solaria drinks poison. A more realistic but equally depressing mulatto character is found in Geoffrey Barnes' novel Dark Lustre (1932). Alpine, the light-skinned "heroine," dies in childbirth, but her white baby lives to continue "a cycle of pain." Both Solaria and Alpine are repulsed by blacks, especially black suitors.

Most tragic mulattoes were women, although the self-loathing Sergeant Waters in A Soldier's Story (Jewison, 1984) clearly fits the tragic mulatto stereotype. The troubled mulatto is portrayed as a selfish woman who will give up all, including her black family, in order to live as a white person. These words are illustrative:

Don't come for me. If you see me in the street, don't speak to me. From this moment on I'm White. I am not colored. You have to give me up.

These words were spoken by Peola, a tortured, self-hating black girl in the movie Imitation of Life (Laemmle & Stahl, 1934). Peola, played adeptly by Fredi Washington, had skin that looked white. But she was not socially white. She was a mulatto. Peola was tired of being treated as a second-class citizen; tired, that is, of being treated like a 1930s black American. She passed for white and begged her mother to understand.

Imitation of Life, based on Fannie Hurst's best selling novel, traces the lives of two widows, one white and the employer, the other black and the servant. Each woman has one daughter. The white woman, Beatrice Pullman (played by Claudette Colbert), hires the black woman, Delilah, (played by Louise Beavers) as a live-in cook and housekeeper. It is the depression, and the two women and their daughters live in poverty -- even a financially struggling white woman can afford a mammy. Their economic salvation comes when Delilah shares a secret pancake recipe with her boss. Beatrice opens a restaurant, markets the recipe, and soon becomes wealthy. She offers Delilah, the restaurant's cook, a twenty percent share of the profits. Regarding the recipe, Delilah, a true cinematic mammy, delivers two of the most pathetic lines ever from a black character: "I gives it to you, honey. I makes you a present of it." While Delilah is keeping her mistress's family intact, her relationship with Peola, her daughter, disintegrates.

Peola is the antithesis of the mammy caricature. Delilah knows her place in the Jim Crow hierarchy: the bottom rung. Hers is an accommodating resignation, bordering on contentment. Peola hates her life, wants more, wants to live as a white person, to have the opportunities that whites enjoy. Delilah hopes that her daughter will accept her racial heritage. "He [God] made you black, honey. Don't be telling Him his business. Accept it, honey." Peola wants to be loved by a white man, to marry a white man. She is beautiful, sensual, a potential wife to any white man who does not know her secret. Peola wants to live without the stigma of being black -- and in the 1930s that stigma was real and measurable. Ultimately and inevitably, Peola rejects her mother, runs away, and passes for white. Delilah dies of a broken heart. A repentant and tearful Peola returns to her mother's funeral.

Audiences, black and white (and they were separate), hated what Peola did to her mother -- and they hated Peola. She is often portrayed as the epitome of selfishness. In many academic discussions about tragic mulattoes the name Peola is included. From the mid-1930s through the late 1970s, Peola was an epithet used by blacks against light-skinned black women who identified with mainstream white society. A Peola looked white and wanted to be white. During the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Movement, the name Peola was an insult comparable to Uncle Tom, albeit a light-skinned female version.

Fredi Washington, the black actress who played Peola, was light enough to pass for white. Rumor has it that in later movies makeup was used to "blacken" her skin so white audiences would know her race. She had sharply defined features; long, dark, and straight hair, and green eyes; this limited the roles she was offered. She could not play mammy roles, and though she looked white, no acknowledged black was allowed to play a white person from the 1930's through the 1950's.

1. A mulatto is defined as: the first general offspring of a black and white parent; or, an individual with both white and black ancestors. Generally, mulattoes are light-skinned, though dark enough to be excluded from the white race.

 

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Imitation of Life was remade in 1959 (Hunter & Sirk). The plot is essentially the same; however, Peola is called Sara Jane, and she is played by Susan Kohner, a white actress. Delilah is now Annie Johnson. The pancake storyline is gone. Instead, the white mistress is a struggling actress. The crux of the story remains the light-skinned girl's attempts to pass for white. She runs away and becomes a chorus girl in a sleazy nightclub. Her dark skinned mother (played by Juanita Moore) follows her. She begs her mother to leave her alone. Sara Jane does not want to marry a "colored chauffeur"; she wants a white boyfriend. She gets a white boyfriend, but, when he discovers her secret, he savagely beats her and leaves her in a gutter. As in the original, Sara Jane's mother dies from a broken heart, and the repentant child tearfully returns to the funeral.

Peola and Sara Jane were cinematic tragic mulattoes. They were big screen testaments to the commonly held belief that "mixed blood" brought sorrow. If only they did not have a "drop of Negro blood." Many audience members nodded agreement when Annie Johnson asked rhetorically, "How do you explain to your daughter that she was born to hurt?"

Were real mulattoes born to hurt? All racial minorities in the United States have been victimized by the dominant group, although the expressions of that oppression vary. Mulattoes were considered black; therefore, they were slaves along with their darker kinsmen. All slaves were "born to hurt," but some writers have argued that mulattoes were privileged, relative to dark-skinned blacks. E.B. Reuter (1919), a historian, wrote:

In slavery days, they were most frequently the trained servants and had the advantages of daily contact with cultured men and women. Many of them were free and so enjoyed whatever advantages went with that superior status. They were considered by the white people to be superior in intelligence to the black Negroes, and came to take great pride in the fact of their white blood....When possible, they formed a sort of mixed-blood caste and held themselves aloof from the black Negroes and the slaves of lower status. (p. 378)

Reuter's claim that mulattoes were held in higher regard and treated better than "pure blacks" must be examined closely. American slavery lasted for more than two centuries; therefore, it is difficult to generalize about the institution. The interactions between slaveholder and slaves varied across decades--and from plantation to plantation. Nevertheless, there are clues regarding the status of mulattoes. In a variety of public statements and laws, the offspring of white-black sexual relations were referred to as "mongrels" or "spurious" (Nash, 1974, p. 287). Also, these interracial children were always legally defined as pure blacks, which was different from how they were handled in other New World countries. A slaveholder claimed that there was "not an old plantation in which the grandchildren of the owner [therefore mulattos] are not whipped in the field by his overseer" (Furnas, 1956, p. 142). Further, it seems that mulatto women were sometimes targeted for sexual abuse.

According to the historian J. C. Furnas (1956), in some slave markets, mulattoes and quadroons brought higher prices, because of their use as sexual objects (p. 149). Some slavers found dark skin vulgar and repulsive. The mulatto approximated the white ideal of female attractiveness. All slave women (and men and children) were vulnerable to being raped, but the mulatto afforded the slave owner the opportunity to rape, with impunity, a woman who was physically white (or near-white) but legally black. A greater likelihood of being raped is certainly not an indication of favored status.

The mulatto woman was depicted as a seductress whose beauty drove white men to rape her. This is an obvious and flawed attempt to reconcile the prohibitions against miscegenation (interracial sexual relations) with the reality that whites routinely used blacks as sexual objects. One slaver noted, "There is not a likely looking girl in this State that is not the concubine of a White man..." (Furnas, 1956, p. 142). Every mulatto was proof that the color line had been crossed. In this regard, mulattoes were symbols of rape and concubinage. Gary B. Nash (1974) summarized the slavery-era relationship between the rape of black women, the handling of mulattoes, and white dominance:

 

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Though skin color came to assume importance through generations of association with slavery, white colonists developed few qualms about intimate contact with black women. But raising the social status of those who labored at the bottom of society and who were defined as abysmally inferior was a matter of serious concern. It was resolved by insuring that the mulatto would not occupy a position midway between white and black. Any black blood classified a person as black; and to be black was to be a slave.... By prohibiting racial intermarriage, winking at interracial sex, and defining all mixed offspring as black, white society found the ideal answer to its labor needs, its extracurricular and inadmissible sexual desires, its compulsion to maintain its culture purebred, and the problem of maintaining, at least in theory, absolute social control. (pp. 289-290)

George M. Fredrickson (1971), author of The Black Image in the White Mind, claimed that many white Americans believed that mulattoes were a degenerate race because they had "White blood" which made them ambitious and power hungry combined with "Black blood" which made them animalistic and savage. The attributing of personality and morality traits to "blood" seems foolish today, but it was taken seriously in the past. Charles Carroll, author of The Negro a Beast (1900), described blacks as apelike. Regarding mulattoes, the offspring of "unnatural relationships," they did not have "the right to live," because, Carroll said, they were the majority of rapists and killers (Fredrickson, 1971, p. 277). His claim was untrue but widely believed. In 1899 a southern white woman, L. H. Harris, wrote to the editor of the Independent that the "negro brute" who rapes white women was "nearly always a mulatto," with "enough white blood in him to replace native humility and cowardice with Caucasian audacity" (Fredrickson, 1971, p. 277). Mulatto women were depicted as emotionally troubled seducers and mulatto men as power hungry criminals. Nowhere are these depictions more evident than in D. W. Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation (1915).

The Birth of a Nation is arguably the most racist mainstream movie produced in the United States. This melodrama of the Civil War and Reconstruction justified and glorified the Ku Klux Klan. Indeed, the Klan of the 1920s owes its existence to William Joseph Simmons, an itinerant Methodist preacher who watched the film a dozen times, then felt divinely inspired to resurrect the Klan which had been dormant since 1871. D. W. Griffith based the film on Thomas Dixon's anti-black novel The Clansman (1905) (also the original title of the movie). Griffith, following Dixon's lead, depicted his black characters as either "loyal darkies" or brutes and beasts lusting for power and, worse yet, lusting for white women.

The Birth of a Nation tells the story of two families, the Stonemans of Pennsylvania, and the Camerons of South Carolina. The Stonemans, headed by politician Austin Stoneman, and the Camerons, headed by slaveholder "Little Colonel" Ben Cameron, have their longtime friendship divided by the Civil War. The Civil War exacts a terrible toll on both families: both have sons die in the war. The Camerons, like many slaveholders, suffer "ruin, devastation, rapine, and pillage." The Birth of a Nation depicts Radical Reconstruction as a time when blacks dominate and oppress whites. The film shows blacks pushing whites off sidewalks, snatching the possessions of whites, attempting to rape a white teenager, and killing blacks who are loyal to whites (Leab, 1976, p. 28). Stoneman, a carpetbagger, moves his family to the South. He falls under the influence of Lydia, his mulatto housekeeper and mistress.

Austin Stoneman is portrayed as a naive politician who betrays his people: whites. Lydia, his lover, is described in a subtitle as the "weakness that is to blight a nation." Stoneman sends another mulatto, Silas Lynch, to "aid the carpetbaggers in organizing and wielding the power of the vote." Lynch, owing to his "white blood," becomes ambitious. He and his agents rile the local blacks. They attack whites and pillage. Lynch becomes lieutenant governor, and his black co-conspirators are voted into statewide political offices. The Birth of a Nation shows black legislators debating a bill to legalize interracial marriage -- their legs propped on tables, eating chicken, and drinking whiskey.

Silas Lynch proposes marriage to Stoneman's daughter, Elsie. He says, "I will build a black empire and you as my queen shall rule by my side." When she refuses, he binds her and decides on a "forced marriage." Lynch informs Stoneman that he wants to marry a white woman. Stoneman approves until he discovers that the white woman is his daughter. While this drama unfolds, blacks attack whites. [It looks hopeless until the newly formed Ku Klux Klan arrives to reestablish white rule.

The Birth of a Nation set the standard for cinematic technical innovation -- the imaginative use of cross-cutting, lighting, editing, and close-ups. It also set the standard for cinematic anti-black images. All of the major black caricatures are in the movie, including, mammies, sambos, toms, picaninnies, coons, beasts, and tragic mulattoes. The depictions of Lydia -- a cold-hearted, hateful seductress -- and Silas Lynch -- a power hungry, sex-obsessed criminal -- were early examples of the pathologies supposedly inherent in the tragic mulatto stereotype.

Mulattoes did not fare better in other books and movies, especially those who passed for white. In Nella Larsen's novel Passing (1929), Clare, a mulatto passing for white, frequently is drawn to blacks in Harlem. Her bigoted white husband finds her there. Her problems are solved when she falls to her death from a sixth story window. In the movie Show Boat (Laemmle & Whale, 1936), a beautiful young entertainer, Julie, discovers that she has "Negro blood." Existing laws held that "one drop of Negro blood makes you a Negro." Her husband (and the movie's writers and producer) take this "one drop rule" literally. The husband cuts her hand with a knife and sucks her blood. This supposedly makes him a Negro. Afterward Julie and her newly-mulattoed husband walk hand-in-hand. Nevertheless, she is a screen mulatto, so the movie ends with this one-time cheerful "white" woman, now a Negro alcoholic.

Lost Boundaries is a book by William L. White (1948), made into a movie in 1949 (de Rochemont & Werker). It tells the story of a troubled mulatto couple, the Johnsons. The husband is a physician, but he cannot get a job in a southern black hospital because he "looks white," and no southern white hospital will hire him. The Johnsons move to New England and pass for white. They become pillars of their local community -- all the while terrified of being discredited. Years later, when their secret is discovered, the townspeople turn against them. The town's white minister delivers a sermon on racial tolerance which leads the locals, shamefaced and guilt-ridden, to befriend again the mulatto couple. Lost Boundaries, despite the white minister's sermon, blames the mulatto couple, not a racist culture, for the discrimination and personal conflicts faced by the Johnsons.

 

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In 1958 Natalie Wood starred in Kings Go Forth (Ross & Daves), the story of a young French mulatto who passes for white. She becomes involved with two American soldiers on leave from World War II. They are both infatuated with her until they discover that her father is black. Both men desert her. She attempts suicide unsuccessfully. Given another chance to live, she turns her family's large home into a hostel for war orphans, "those just as deprived of love as herself" (Bogle, 1994, p. 192). At the movie's end, one of the soldiers is dead; the other, missing an arm, returns to the mulatto woman. They are comparable, both damaged, and it is implied that they will marry.

The mulatto women portrayed in Show Boat, Lost Boundaries, and Kings Go Forth were portrayed by white actresses. It was a common practice. Producers felt that white audiences would feel sympathy for a tortured white woman, even if she was portraying a mulatto character. The audience knew she was really white. In Pinky (Zanuck & Kazan, 1949), Jeanne Crain, a well-known actress, played the role of the troubled mulatto. Her dark-skinned grandmother was played by Ethel Waters. When audiences saw Ethel Waters doing menial labor, it was consistent with their understanding of a mammy's life, but when Jeanne Crain was shown washing other people's clothes audiences cried.

Even black filmmakers like Oscar Micheaux made movies with tragic mulattoes. [ii]Within Our Gates[/i] (Micheaux, 1920) tells the story of a mulatto woman who is hit by a car, menaced by a con man, nearly raped by a white man, and witnesses the lynching of her entire family. God's Step Children (Micheaux, 1938) tells the story of Naomi, a mulatto who leaves her black husband and child and passes for white. Later, consumed by guilt, she commits suicide. Mulatto actresses played these roles.

Fredi Washington, the star of Imitation of Life, was one of the first cinematic tragic mulattoes. She was followed by women like Dorothy Dandridge and Nina Mae McKinney. Dandridge deserves special attention because she not only portrayed doomed, unfulfilled women, but she was the embodiment of the tragic mulatto in real life. Her role as the lead character in Carmen Jones (Preminger, 1954) helped make her a star. She was the first black featured on the cover of Life magazine. In Island in the Sun (Zanuck & Rossen, 1957) she was the first black woman to be held -- lovingly -- in the arms of a white man in an American movie. She was a beautiful and talented actress, but Hollywood was not ready for a black leading lady; the only roles offered to her were variants of the tragic mulatto theme. Her personal life was filled with failed relationships. Disillusioned by roles that limited her to exotic, self-destructive mulatto types, she went to Europe, where she fared worse. She died in 1965, at the age of forty-two, from an overdose of anti-depressants.

Today's successful mulatto actresses -- for example, Halle Berry, Lisa Bonet and Jasmine Guy -- owe a debt to the pioneering efforts of Dandridge. These women have great wealth and fame. They are bi-racial, but their statuses and circumstances are not tragic. They are not marginalized; they are mainstream celebrities. Dark-skinned actress -- Whoopi Goldberg, Angela Bassett, Alfre Woodard, and Joie Lee -- have enjoyed comparable success. They, too, benefit from Dandridge's path clearing.

The tragic mulatto was more myth than reality; Dandridge was an exception. The mulatto was made tragic in the minds of whites who reasoned that the greatest tragedy was to be near-white: so close, yet a racial gulf away. The near-white was to be pitied -- and shunned. There were undoubtedly light skinned blacks, male and female, who felt marginalized in this race conscious culture. This was true for many people of color, including dark skinned blacks. Self-hatred and intraracial hatred are not limited to light skinned blacks. There is evidence that all racial minorities in the United States have battled feelings of inferiority and in-group animosity; those are, unfortunately, the costs of being a minority.

The tragic mulatto stereotype claims that mulattoes occupy the margins of two worlds, fitting into neither, accepted by neither. This is not true of real life mulattoes. Historically, mulattoes were not only accepted into the black community, but were often its leaders and spokespersons, both nationally and at neighborhood levels. Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington, Elizabeth Ross Hayes, (2) Mary Church Terrell, (3) Thurgood Marshall, Malcolm X, and Louis Farrakhan were all mulattoes. Walter White, the former head of the NAACP, and Adam Clayton Powell, an outspoken Congressman, were both light enough to pass for white. Other notable mulattoes include Langston Hughes, Billie Holiday, and Jean Toomer, author of Cane (1923), and the grandson of mulatto Reconstruction politician P.B.S. Pinchback.

There was tragedy in the lives of light skinned black women -- there was also tragedy in the lives of most dark skinned black women -- and men and children. The tragedy was not that they were black, or had a drop of "Negro blood," although whites saw that as a tragedy. Rather, the real tragedy was the way race was used to limit the chances of people of color. The 21st century finds an America increasingly more tolerant of interracial unions and the resulting offspring.

© Dr. David Pilgrim, Professor of Sociology

Ferris State University

Nov., 2000

Edited 2012

2. Elizabeth Ross Hayes was a social worker, sociologist, and a pioneer in the YWCA movement.

3. Mary Church Terrell was a feminist, civil rights activist, and the first president of the National Association of Colored Women.

 

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The Golliwog Caricature

http://www.ferris.edu/htmls/news/jimcrow/golliwog/

The Golliwog (originally spelled Golliwogg) is the least known of the major anti-black caricatures in the United States. Golliwogs are grotesque creatures, (1) with very dark, often jet black skin, large white-rimmed eyes, red or white clown lips, and wild, frizzy hair. (2) Typically, it's a male dressed in a jacket, trousers, bow tie, and stand-up collar in a combination of red, white, blue, and occasionally yellow colors. The golliwog image, popular in England and other European countries, is found on a variety of items, including postcards, jam jars, paperweights, brooches, wallets, perfume bottles, wooden puzzles, sheet music, wall paper, pottery, jewelry, greeting cards, clocks, and dolls. For the past four decades Europeans have debated whether the Golliwog is a lovable icon or a racist symbol.

The Golliwog began life as a story book character created by Florence Kate Upton. Upton was born in 1873 in Flushing, New York, to English parents who had emigrated to the United States in 1870. She was the second of four children. When Upton was fourteen, her father died and, shortly thereafter, the family returned to England. For several years she honed her skills as an artist. Unable to afford art school, Upton illustrated her own children's book in the hope of raising tuition money.

In 1895, her book, entitled The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls, was published in London. Upton drew the illustrations, and her mother, Bertha Upton, wrote the accompanying verse. The book's main characters were two Dutch dolls, Peg and Sarah Jane, and the Golliwogg. The story begins with Peg and Sara Jane, on the loose in a toy shop, encountering "a horrid sight, the blackest gnome." The little black "gnome" wore bright red trousers, a red bow tie on a high collared white shirt, and a blue swallow-tailed coat. He was a caricature of American black faced minstrels -- in effect, the caricature of a caricature. She named him Golliwogg.

The Golliwogg was based on a Black minstrel doll that Upton had played with as a small child in New York. The then-nameless "Negro minstrel doll" was treated roughly by the Upton children. Upton reminiscenced: "Seated upon a flowerpot in the garden, his kindly face was a target for rubber balls..., the game being to knock him over backwards. It pains me now to think of those little rag legs flying ignominiously over his head, yet that was a long time ago, and before he had become a personality.... We knew he was ugly!" (Johnson).

Upton's Golliwogg character, like the rag doll which inspired it, was ugly. He was often drawn with paws instead of hands and feet. He had a coal black face, thick lips, wide eyes, and a mass of long unruly hair. (3) He was a cross between a dwarf-sized black minstrel and an animal. The appearance was distorted and frightening

(MacGregor, p. 125).

Florence Upton's ugly little creation was embraced by the English public. The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls was immensely popular in England, and Golliwogg became a national star. The second printing of the book was retitled The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls and a Golliwogg. For the next fourteen years, Bertha and Florence Upton created twelve more books featuring the Golliwogg and his adventures, traveling to such "exotic" places as Africa and the North Pole, accompanied by his friends, the Dutch Dolls ("Golliwog History", n.d.). In those books the Uptons put the Golliwogg first in every title.

The Uptons did not copyright the Golliwogg, and the image entered into public domain. The Golliwogg name was changed to Golliwog, and he became a common toyland character in children's books. The Upton Golliwogg was adventurous and sometimes silly, but, in the main, gallant and "lovable," albeit, unsightly. Later Golliwogs were often unkind, mean-spirited, and even more visually hideous.

The earliest Golliwog dolls were rag dolls made by parents for their children. Many thousands were made. During the early twentieth century, many prominent doll manufacturers began producing Golliwog dolls. The major Golliwog producers were Steiff, Schuco, and Levin, all three Germany companies, and Merrythought and Deans, both from Great Britain. The Steiff Company is the most notable maker of Golliwog dolls. In 1908 Steiff became the first company to mass produce and distribute Golliwog dolls. Today, these early Steiff dolls sell for $10,000 to $15,000 each, making them the most expensive Golliwog collectibles. Some Steiff Golliwogs have been especially offensive, for example, in the 1970s they produced a Golliwog who looked like a wooly haired gorilla. In 1995, on the 100th anniversary of the Golliwog creation, Steiff produced two Golliwog dolls, including the company's first girl Golliwog.

James Robertson & Sons, a British manufacturer of jams and preserves, began using the Golliwog as its trademark in the early 1900s. According to the company's promotional literature, it was in the United States, just before World War I, that John Robertson (the owner's son) first encountered the Golly doll. He saw rural children playing with little black rag dolls with white eyes. The children's mothers made the dolls from discarded black skirts and blouses. John Robertson claimed that the children called the dolls "Golly" as a mispronunciation of "Dolly." He returned to England with the Golly name and image.

By 1910 the Golly appeared on Robertson's product labels, price lists, and advertising material. Its appeal led to an enormously popular mail-away campaign: in return for coupons from their marmalade, Robertson's sent brooches (also called pins or badges) of Gollies playing various sports. The first brooch was the Golly Golfer in 1928 ("Gollies Through History," n.d.). In 1932 a series of fruit badges (with Golly heads superimposed onto the berries) were distributed. In 1939 the popular brooch series was discontinued because the metal was needed for the war effort, (4) but by 1946 the Golly returned. In 1999 a Robertson spokesperson said, "He's still very popular. Each year we get more than 340,000 requests for Golly badges. Since 1910 we have sent out more than 20 million" (Clark). The Robertson Golly has also appeared on pencils, knitting patterns, playing cards, aprons, and children's silverware sets.

Robertson pendant chains were introduced in 1956, and, soon after, the design of all Robertson Gollies changed from the Old Golly with pop eyes to the present Golly with eyes looking to the left. The words "Golden Shred" were removed from his waistcoat, his eyes were straightened, and his smile was broadened ("And There's Even More: history", n.d.).

1. The adjective grotesque reflects, of course, a subjective judgement; however, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2011) defines Golliwog as a "doll fashioned in grotesque caricature of a black male."

2. Langenscheidt's New College German Dictionary (Brough & Messinger, 1995, p. 283) has this citation for golliwog: gol-li-wog (g) 1. gro'teske schwarze Puppe; 2. fig. Vogelscheuche' f (Person). The English translation is: 1. grotesque black doll; 2. fig. scarecrow' (person). Thanks to Maryanne Heidemann for translating the definition.

3.This description is taken from MacGregor (1992, p. 124). MacGregor is one of the few scholars to offer a thorough examination of Golliwogs.

4. Florence Upton donated her original Golliwoggs drawings for public auction to support the WW II British war effort.

 

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During the first half of the twentieth century, the Golliwog doll was a favorite children's soft toy in Europe. Only the Teddy Bear exceeded the Golliwog in popularity. Small children slept with their black dolls. Many white Europeans still speak with nostalgic sentiment about their childhood gollies. Sir Kenneth Clark, the noted art historian, claimed that the Golliwogs of his childhood were, "examples of chivalry, far more persuasive than the unconvincing Knights of the Arthurian legend" (Johnson, n.d., p. 3). The French composer Claude Debussy was so enthralled by the Golliwogs in his daughter's books that one movement of his Children's Corner Suite is entitled "The Golliwog's Cakewalk" (Johnson, n.d., p. 3). The Golliwog was a mixture of bravery, adventurousness, and love -- for white children.

In the 1960s relations between blacks and whites in England were often characterized by conflict. This racial antagonism resulted from many factors, including: the arrival of increasing numbers of colored immigrants; minorities' unwillingness to accommodate themselves to old patterns of racial and ethnic subordination; and, the fear among many whites that England was losing its national character. British culture was also influenced by images -- often brutal -- of racial conflict occurring in the United States.

In this climate the Golliwog doll and other Golliwog emblems were seen as symbols of racial insensitivity. Many books containing Golliwogs were withdrawn from public libraries, and the manufacturing of Golliwog dolls dwindled as the demand for Golliwogs decreased. Many items with Golliwog images were destroyed. Despite much criticism, James Robertson & Sons did not discontinue its use of the Golliwog as a mascot. The Camden Committee for Community Relations led a petition drive for signatures to send to the Robertson Company. The National Committee on Racism in Children's Books also publicly criticized Robertson's use of the Golly in its advertising. Other organizations called for a boycott of Robertson's products; nevertheless, the company has continued to use the Golliwog as its trademark in many countries, including the United Kingdom, although it was removed from Robertson's packaging in the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong.

In many ways the campaign to ban Golliwogs was similar to the American campaign against Little Black Sambo. In both cases racial minorities and sympathetic whites argued that these images demeaned blacks and hurt the psyches of minority children. Civil rights organizations led both campaigns, and white civic and political leaders eventually joined the effort to ban the offensive caricatures. In the anti-Golliwog campaign, numerous British parliamentarians publicly lambasted the Golliwog image as racist, including, Tony Benn, Shirley Williams, and David Owen (MacGregor, 1992, p. 29).

The claim that Golliwogs are racist is supported by literary depictions by writers such as Enid Blyton. Unlike Florence Upton's, Blyton's Golliwogs were often rude, mischievous, elfin villains. In Blyton's book, Here Comes Noddy Again (1951), a Golliwog asks the hero for help, then steals his car. Blyton, one of the most prolific European writers, included the Golliwogs in many stories, but she only wrote three books primarily about Golliwogs: The Three Golliwogs (1944), The Proud Golliwog (1951), and The Golliwog Grumbled (1955). Her depictions of Golliwogs are, by contemporary standards, racially insensitive. An excerpt from The Three Golliwogs is illustrative:

Once the three bold golliwogs, Golly, Woggie, and Nigger, decided to go for a walk to Bumble-Bee Common. Golly wasn't quite ready so Woggie and Nigger said they would start off without him, and Golly would catch them up as soon as he could. So off went Woogie and Nigger, arm-in-arm, singing merrily their favourite song -- which, as you may guess, was Ten Little Nigger Boys.(p. 51)

Ten Little Niggers is the name of a children's poem, sometimes set to music, which celebrates the deaths of ten Black children, one-by-one. The Three Golliwogs was reprinted as recently as 1968, and it still contained the above passage. Ten Little Niggers (5) was also the name of a 1939 Agatha Christie novel, whose cover showed a Golliwog lynched, hanging from a noose.

 

[Maximus Rex]

The Golliwog's reputation and popularity were also hurt by the association with the word wog. Apparently derived from the word Golliwog, (6) wog is an English slur against dark-skinned people, especially Middle or Far East foreigners. During World War II the word wog was used by the British Army in North Africa, mainly as a slur against dark-skinned Arabs. In the 1960s the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, one of the most noted regiments in the British Army, wore a Robertson's golly brooch for each Arab they had killed ("And There's Even More: Golly", n.d.) After the war, wog became a more general slur against brown-skinned people. As a racial epithet, it is comparable to nigger or spic, though its usage extends beyond any single ethnic group. Dark-skinned people in England, Germany, and Australia are derisively called wogs. (7) In the year 2000, a British police officer was fired for referring to an Asian colleague as a wog ("British policeman", 2000). The association of wog with racial minorities is also seen with the word wog-box, which is slang for a large portable music box, the European counterpart of the ghetto blaster. The wog-box is also called a "Third World briefcase" (Green, 1984, p. 309).

Some Golliwog supporters tried to distance themselves from the wog slur by dropping it from the word golliwog. James Robertson & Sons, for example, has always referred to its golliwog as "Golly. In the late 1980s, when the anti-Golliwog campaign reached its height, many small manufacturers of the golliwogs began using the names Golly or Golli, instead of Golliwog. Not surprisingly, the words Golliwog, Golly, and Golli are now all used as racially descriptive terms, although they are not as demeaning as wog.

Golliwog is a racial slur in Germany, England, Ireland, Greece, and Australia. Interestingly, it is sometimes applied to dark-skinned whites, as well as brown-skinned persons. Golliwog is also a common name for black pets, especially dogs, in European countries -- much as nigger was once popular as a pet name. Golliwog was also the original name of the rock band Credence Clearwater Revival. They sometimes performed the song "Brown-Eyed Girl" (not the Van Morrison tune), dressed in white afros. This is not to suggest that they were racists, only to show that golliwogs were a part -- albeit, a small one -- in American culture ("Brief History", n.d.).

The Golliwog celebrated its 100 year anniversary in 1995. Golliwog collectibles, which always had a loyal following, again boomed on the secondary market. This popularity continues today and is evidenced by numerous eBay and Yahoo internet auctions and the presence of several international Golliwog organizations. A pro-Golliwog viewpoint can be found at the International Golliwog Collectors Club's website:http://www.teddybears.com/golliwog/direct.html. Many collectors, primarily though not exclusively whites, contend that the anti-Golliwog movement represents political correctness at its worst. They argue that the Golliwog is just a doll, and that the original Florence Upton creation was not racist, intentionally or unintentionally -- this is reminiscent of the claims about Helen Bannerman's Little Black Sambo (Read the Picaninny Caricature essay on this website for a more in-depth discussion of Little Black Sambo).

Critics of the Golliwog have launched a new attack. They are trying to get the image removed from all newly published children's books, and they are trying to force businesses to not use the Golliwog as a trademark. The black Trinidadian writer, Darcus Howe, said, "English [white] people never give up. Golliwogs have gone and should stay gone. They appeal to White English sentiment and will do so until the end of time." Gerry German, of the Working Group Against Racism in Children's Resources, was quoted in The Voice, a black newspaper, as saying: "I find it appalling that any organization in this day and age can produce anything which would commemorate the golliwog. It is an offensive caricature of Black people" (Clark, 1999).

The Golliwog was created during a racist era. He was drawn as a caricature of a minstrel -- which itself represented a demeaning image of blacks. There is racial stereotyping of black people in Florence Upton's books, including The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls -- such as the black minstrel playing a banjo on page 45. It appears that the Golliwog was another expression of Upton's racial insensitivity. Certainly later Golliwogs often reflected negative beliefs about blacks -- thieves, miscreants, incompetents. There is little doubt that the words associated with Golliwog -- Golly, Golli, Wog, and Golliwog, itself -- are often used as racial slurs. Finally, the resurgence of interest in the Golliwog is not found primarily among children, but instead is found among adults, some nostalgic, others with financial interests.

© Dr. David Pilgrim, Professor of Sociology

Ferris State University

Nov., 2000

Edited 2012

 

[janklow]

The Golliwog Caricature

i am really, really resisting the urge to go into a Scientology-related tangent at this point

 

[onthafly]

A 1916 magazine advertisement, copyrighted by Morris & Bendien, showed a black child drinking ink. The caption read, "Nigger Milk."

Having a 2 year old son and seeing this shit makes me sad.

 

[D0wn]

I'm Messican and that shit ain't even right at all. That was mad disgusting and pitiful. Them craKKKaz are some devilz

Your ppl do the same to afro mexicans in the 2000'S

 

[Maximus Rex]

Bump.

 

[jetlifebih]

You got me on this one Rex, I said I was gonna stop saying nigga , then thought it wasn't a big deal and kept saying it until I read the reasons why it shouldn't be used as a term of endearment in this read ....

Good read, good knowledge, keep it up