A Museum, An Exhibit and The Doll

05.02.2010

My plans for today got altered at the last minute and a group of friends and I went to the last day of the “America I Am” exhibit at the Science Center. The exhibit was awesome and I’m so glad that we went. I always feel much more enriched visiting a museum and, when leaving, wonder why I don’t go more often.

The exhibit focused on the imprint that African Americans have had on America taking you from the depths of Africa to the US, how slaves adapted by forming their own culture and religion and how this permeated into American culture. One of the highlights was seeing Prince’s guitar as well as handwritten notes on Marvin Gaye’s compositions!

Anyway, one part of the exhibit really struck me. When you walked out of the dungeon part that was meant to replicate the conditions that Africans were kept in when stripped from their tribes and families and forced to wait for months until ships would come to pick them up and take them to the new worlds, you walked into a room which housed various artifacts of slaves or those pertaining to slaves. There were pieces of furniture, a whip, and even one of the oldest written autobiographies of a very educated African taken from his country and brought over to the States to be a slave. But the item that stuck out the most to me was a child’s doll. It was made by a mother in the 1700s, I believe, who took a black nylon, stuck a disc to give a face, sewed on eyes, nose and mouth with grey thread and the clothes were made out of cotton, I think. I wouldn’t necessarily call the doll cute, at least in the traditional sense of what we perceive dolls to be today, but I could easily envision a little girl taking it with her anywhere she goes because, after all, it was probably one of the few possessions she had. This doll somehow symbolized to me that even in the darkest of the dark the human spirit will always prevail. You may have nothing, but the human being’s will to live is so strong, for the most part, that it will make something out of nothing. A child is still a child regardless of societal status. A child is still going to want to play regardless of societal status. And a parent is still going to want to provide regardless of societal status. I wish that with all the intelligence that the human race supposedly has that we would be able to look beyond the surface of the skin, the face, and the body. When one hurts, we all hurt and it pains me so much knowing that there are parents out there teaching and spreading hate, and many in the name of religion.

I hope that somewhere deep inside her heart, the little girl who played with that doll whose path crossed with mine today, knew that not all people are monsters and that, even hundreds of years after her death, someone like me would come along and smile at the memories that she created with that doll.