Almost everyone (of a certain age) remembers the Raggedy Ann and Andy characters. This week, I learned that they had a mammy: Beloved Belindy. Like her young charges, she had her own book and was an actual doll.
More images of Beloved Belindy (Google Images)
There are a few mentions of Belindy on Raggedy Ann fan sites–one fan points out that, even though Beloved Belindy obviously looked like a stereotypical black mammy, in the books she never spoke in dialect/slang. Take a peak inside the book.
What ever happened to Beloved Belindy? According to Mammy: A Century of Race, Gender, and Southern Memory by by Kimberly Wallace-Sanders:
In 1950, after a twenty four year life span, Beloved Belindy was taken off the market as a direct result of protests from civil rights activists. Interestingly, her later appearance as a black version of Raggedy Ann, without her mammy paraphernalia, is an excellent example of revisionist history.
Tawanna Sullivan 