I first published this essay June 1, 2018, and reprint it today as a final musing on Black History Month.
My mother grew up in a neighborhood that was well below the poverty line and (in an era in which only very poor neighborhoods in Indianapolis were so) racially mixed. At the time, the phrase “colored” was commonly used; citizens would not be either “black” or “Black” or “Brown” or “POC/People of Color” or “African American” for another forty to sixty years.
Because of her family’s financial situation, if she wanted pocket money, Mom had to work. And so it was that, as a very young adolescent, she began babysitting for a “colored” family up the street, watching their infant after school and on Saturdays, so that the lady of the household could herself go out to work, doing laundry and ironing for more affluent (read: White) families. Years later, Mom would explain to me that it was because of this experience of caring for a Black infant that she came to understand that we are all, no matter our color, simply people. Our “race” is human.
Determined to bequeath that lesson to me, when I was about four years old, my mother sought out and gave me the gift of a Black baby doll—an “Amos and Andy Amosandra” doll, created by the Sun Rubber Company. The soft rubber doll, perhaps 8 or 10 inches long, was a rich chocolate brown, with painted black hair and eyes. It was just the right size for cuddling into a little girl’s willing arms. Amosandra—yes, that’s what my Dad told me to call her after reading it stamped on the back of the doll; Dad always thought his ideas were just hilarious!—was dressed in a yellow knit cap and jacket. She “drank” from a tiny plastic bottle and “wet”, so Mom made several extra little cloth diapers for her, triangle-style, gathered with a little gold safety pin.
Along with Lisa, my much larger White baby doll, Amosandra was laid to sleep every evening in the little wooden doll crib that had been passed down to me from Mom’s own childhood.
Years later, when I was in my 50s, my father found Amosandra stored in the attic. Being made of rubber, she had hardened and melted in that unforgiving environment; she was too far gone to be repaired. But how I wish I had her still, not because of her probable value, but because she was dear to me, and adorable, and because it was through Amosandra that I experienced first-hand the vile cruelty and wrongness of racial prejudice. It was a lesson that would stay with me my entire life.
Most of the children in the neighborhood where we lived in the little suburb of Beech Grove were older than I by two or three years—not a notable gap when one is grown, but an impassable chasm for a little child. Still, occasionally I was invited to play with Connie and Linda, girls who lived in nearby houses. On that particular day, I recall, they decided we should play on Connie’s long, shady front porch, pretending to be moms and neighbors. Each of us ran home to get a doll or two to be our play children.
I came back with Amosandra and all her accoutrements—diapers, dolly bottles, clothes. We each chose a corner of the porch to be our home, and I busied myself with setting up my area. But, after a few minutes, I noticed that Linda and Connie were giggling, looking at me over their shoulders and whispering together. My five-year-old self recognized that something was wrong, but I was totally at a loss to explain it. Finally, one of the girls spoke up, saying, “I guess Becky is a nigger momma!” and they burst out laughing, pointing at Amosandra and snickering.
I didn’t quite know what “nigger” meant, but I knew from their attitudes that it wasn’t good. I grabbed up my toys and stormed off the porch, hurrying home in tears to tell my mother the whole upsetting story.
She comforted me as I wept and tried to explain. I don’t recall much of that conversation except a sense of bewilderment. Amosandra was my favorite baby doll, and I loved her. Why was it wrong that she was brown? It made no sense.
In giving me Amosandra, my mother taught me a much larger lesson than she had actually planned, for I learned not only what she had intended—that we are all merely human—but the additional cruel lesson that Connie and Linda forced upon me that sad day about the evils of prejudice and bullying.
I never dared bring my beloved Amosandra outside my house again. Forever after that, she stayed, loved and well-cared for, but played with only in my bedroom.
But there was one thing that I could do to honor the lingering, painful memory of that day, and when I became a young mother myself, I actually did so: When my own daughter was just three, following the heart of that long-ago lesson, I gave her a Black baby doll.
Speaking to the Heart of Many Matters 
My mother was the opposite of yours in that she was very prejudice. I remember when I was 5 years old, we took the bus somewhere. I made a comment that the bus driver’s skin was different than mine (not worse or better, just different). I remember my mother telling me “Those people only know how to drive buses or clean houses.” Even back then, that made no sense to me.
Another time, when I was a teen, my mother hired a cleaning woman to clean the house. The cleaning woman was on her knees scrubbing the kitchen floor. I came in to get something, saw the woman, and said “Hi” to her. Well, you’d think I committed some kind of felony the way my mother laid into me! “I’m paying her to do WORK! Not to lollygag around!”
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It’s a credit to you then that you grew up with different attitudes than hers.
For all her mental health problems that caused me so much distress and pain, that is one of the gifts that my mother gave me: a true lack of racial prejudice.
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