WEST ADAMS, Calif. – Black History Month isn't just a chance to acknowledge the past. It is also an opportunity to incorporate it into modern day.

At the 39th Annual Black Doll Show children in the community are learning about Black history and seeing themselves in a positive light through dolls.

Nine year old and Ndaajaya DjeDje is making a doll from scratch along with a few dozen other children and a workshop that is part of the Black Doll Show, which is held every year at the William Grant Still Arts Center.

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“I like coming here because I like play with dolls and the dolls here are interesting and they're made of all types of things,” said Ndaajaya DjeDje.

She and her mother, Dominique, are walking through the various rooms filled with dolls of every shape, size, design, and color that are a part of this exhibit of dolls from Black artists and collectors.  

“A lot of dolls don't necessarily represent us. And so being able to come here and see the history of dolls and how much our culture actually has dolls is really great for her to experience,” said Dominique DjeDje.

The Black Doll Show is held every February at the William Grant Still Arts Center in the West Adams area. Originally built as a fire station in 1926, it became a community Art Center in 1977 and was named after the late Dr. William Grant Still who was a highly acclaimed African American composer that lived in the West Adams neighborhood.

The Black Doll Show was started in 1980 by the Friends of William Grant Still Arts Center, with artist Cecil Fergerson as its first curator. The event was inspired by the “Black Doll Test” conducted in the 1940s by pioneering psychologists Mamie and Kenneth Clark that concluded that many African-American children preferred playing with white dolls over black dolls. The Black Doll Show at the Center is the longest-running display of black dolls in Los Angeles.

Collectors and doll artists return time and time again to offer dolls from their collections that fit with the year’s theme. At its root, it is a time for community to come together to celebrate the collections and contributions each individual has made to doll making and collecting over the years.

“This year's theme is Psychedollia. Everything is psychedelic. It’s is really fun. We came up with it as a staff, lots of colors or themes, love, joy, happiness, peace, all things of that nature,” said the Education Coordinator for the center, Monica Bailey.

The exhibition features full-scale installations by artists within an overall design and curatorial effort by the house staff at the William Grant Still Arts Center. The galleries also feature an installation by renowned artist, Pat Shivers and her Raggnation Dolls, a psychedelic altar by Dr. Cynthia Davis and pop-futurist artist Adah Glenn’s Triflin’ Toi Town room installation. Other artists and collectors in the exhibition Nneka Gigi, Emi Motokawa, Stacey McBride-Irby, C. Jerome Woods, Joann Kimble, Pamela Boddie, Liz Graves, Johann Hassan, Orit Corech, Dawn Spears, Cookie Keeling Patterson, Teresa Tolliver, Angela Briggs, Billie Green, Heather Hilliard Bonds, Kimberly Sigman, Tamika Spencer, Van Young and others to be announced.

Most of the dolls that are being made here will go to the Dolls Of Hope project, an initiative that has distributed handmade dolls to over 6,000 children and women with HIV and AIDS in the U.S. and around the world for the past 22 years.

“It's nice to give things to other people like you don't actually always need them,” said Ndaajaya DjeDje.  

And all of this is a learning experience.

When asked, “Do you like being able to learn about black history and black culture,” Ndaajaya DjeDje replied with:

“Yeah. Because I am black history.”

All of the representative from the past and the present comes together to make something beautiful today.

The Black Doll Show at the Center is the longest-running display of black dolls in Los Angeles. The exhibit runs through February 15.  You can find out more about the show and about the William Grant Still Arts Center here.