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commUNITY spotlight: Black doll exhibit

Growing up many little girls in the 60s, 70s, and even the 90s rarely saw dolls that looked like them.

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Lisa Jacobs-Watson is a doll curator. She was on hand for a doll exhibit in Buffalo that showed the beauty and evolution of dolls.

"The rag dolls that are part of our exhibit are replicas of the original dolls that may have been made or were made by slaves, they were hand-sewn," Jacobs-Watson said.

"So this was prior to any technology or any machinery, and now we have manufacturers who are doing wonderful new and modern things, but they're doing it in ways where dolls are representative of the today woman."

RELATED ARTICLE: Black doll exhibit returns at Merriweather Library

Author Connie Porter, a Lackawanna native, is best known for her contribution to the American Girl Collection Series as the author of the Addy books.

"Addy represents our ancestors," Porter told 2 On Your Side. "She lets us know that no matter what, there's that chance to survive and to move on."

Erie County legislator chair April Baskin said "representation matters."

She pointed to the fact that there are too many young women in Buffalo who are not feeling valued or uplifted due to their economic status or their skin color. 

"If we can make sure that we are uplifting dolls in a young woman's life, where she's imaginative, she's playing and she's imagining what her life will be like, and teach her that that doll that she's playing with, while she's in that imaginative and creative space is beautiful, she will see herself as beautiful," Baskin told 2 On Your Side.

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