“The Doll Test”, which found that given a choice between Black dolls and white dolls, most Black children preferred to play with white dolls and was later cited as a factor in the Brown v. Board of Education decision
In the landscape of American history, the struggle for civil rights has been a persistent battle fought on many fronts. Among the arsenal for change, one of the most poignant and revealing weapons was not a piece of legislation or a violent protest; it was a simple psychological experiment involving children and two dolls. This was the Doll Test, a study that laid bare the insidious impact of systemic racism on young minds and became a cornerstone in the historic Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case that desegregated American schools.
