Loving Golly

The staff of the Jim Crow Museum receives dozens of letters and emails. Some of these communiques offer insight into race relations -- historically and in the present. While some are hateful, we have decided to share some of these letters and emails with our Internet visitors.

I just read your 2000 article regarding the golliwog doll. As a child in England in 1955, I had a golliwog doll, and I loved it fiercely. I was then, and am today, totally unaware of any racist significance attached to its face. In fact, I am now 55 and a lawyer in America, and Golly remains one of my fondest memories. I am sure the other little girls I knew, and our parents who gave them to us, felt the same way. I neither saw then, nor do I now, anything "grotesque" about its face. It is cute and loveable and I will not accept 21st Century experts telling me the golliwog was evil and unkind. The Golly was not an object of ridicule; on the contrary, it held a cherished place among English children's few possessions. Please don't transform history into something it was not.

Elaine Dwyer
-- Feb. 19, 2006

***The staff of the Jim Crow Museum receives dozens of letters and emails. Some of these communiques offer insight into race relations -- historically and in the present. While some are hateful, we have decided to share some of these letters and emails with our Internet visitors.***

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Jim Crow Museum

The staff of the Jim Crow Museum receives dozens of letters and emails. Some of these communiques offer insight into race relations -- historically and in the present. While some are hateful, we have decided to share some of these letters and emails with our Internet visitors.