National Black Doll Museum Works to Recover from COVID-19 Closure

Kendall Guisto, 2022

The COVID-19 pandemic harmfully impacted many businesses and establishments.  Museums, which rely mostly on revenue from visitors, were one of the businesses to suffer the most as there were not many viable online alternatives as everyone was in lockdown.  This was the case for the National Black Doll Museum of History & Culture.  Once located in Mansfield, Massachusetts, the museum suffered without visitors or school trips, which brought most of their profits, and when the landlord upped rent, owners Debra Britt and Felicia Walker were forced to close the location in 2020.

The National Black Doll Museum of History & Culture is a collection of about 7000 dolls of color that was started from Britt and Walkers’ personal collections.  On the website, Britt recalls how hard it was for her to grow up without being able to see herself represented in the toys she played with.  Her first-ever black doll was actually a white doll that her grandmother dismantled and dyed black.  Britt recalls a moment of feeling defeated from the constant racism she faced at her nearly all-white school, and her grandmother responded by making her a doll of a princess captured by slave traders out of nothing.  She proceeded to collect dolls that looked like her, her loved ones, and were just important to her.  Britt never intended for her collection to become a full-on museum as initially she and Walker were just bringing their collection around to different events to share them with children.  In 2012, the two designated physical space for their collection, the National Black Doll Museum, as a learning center where children of color could finally see themselves.  As previously mentioned, 

schools would visit, and there would often be special events on holidays like Kwanzaa and Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

After the museum’s unfortunate closure, Britt and Walker moved online.  They revamped their website and would try to hold the same events through Zoom.  The dolls were all moved to various storage lockers and garages.  While these Zooms were able to still get across their message, it limited the community that the National Black Doll Museum provided.  Britt is based in Mansfield but has found that there is not a single building there in their budget to lease.  Walker, however, is based in Attleboro, and it seems that the future of the museum may be at the Country Club property in Attleboro.  There is a lot of money that will be needed to make that a possibility, about $100,000.  One of the visitors of the museum back when it was open in Mansfield adored it and lent the site they work for, Launch Good, to hold a fundraiser campaign for the museum.  It closed as of March 1st, 2022 and managed to make over half of its goal.  Britt and Walker have other fundraising plans to make the new museum a reality.  They both want the museum to get a physical space attached to it again and to have an opportunity to better display all of the dolls in the collection so that children of color can continue to see themselves in such formative toys.

Works Cited

• https://www.facebook.com/NationalBlackDollMuseum/ 

• https://nbdmhc.org/

• https://www.launchgood.com/campaign/help_the_national_black_doll_museum_to_reopen#!/ 

• https://www.wickedlocal.com/story/journal-news-independent/2022/02/23/national-black-doll-museum-eyes-attleboro-site-new-home/6845529001/

• https://www.tauntongazette.com/story/news/2020/06/18/pandemic-forces-national-black-doll-museum-in-mansfield-to-close/114527044/ 

What’s Going On in Ukraine? A Summation & Its Effects

Brian Molina

The news of tensions between Ukraine and Russia has been breaking headlines as of late.  Within the last few months, in particular, fears of a potential invasion of Ukraine, and of a potential war involving it and Russia, have been widely propagated.  The U.S. and many European allies, considering themselves allies to Ukraine, have heavily condemned and criticized Russia for its aggressive actions while Russia and its allies claim that the whole matter is only panic and hysteria.  Where did this all begin?

Tensions between Russia and Ukraine are not new.  Two former members of the Soviet Union, tensions between them flared in 2014 with the Ukraine overthrow of President Viktor Yanukovych, an ally to Russia.  Protests erupted in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital city and over a hundred people were killed.  Later that year, Russia invaded and annexed the peninsula of Crimea, a territory said to be part of Ukraine (but often the subject of disputes).  2014 and 2015 brought several ceasefire agreements- the Minsk Accords- but this did not stop hostilities.  The two countries would remain on edge for years to come.  Pro-Russian unrest in Ukraine in 2014 was followed by Crimea’s annexation into Russia as well as the emergence of partially recognized breakaway states from Ukraine supported by Russia.

2021 brought revived tensions between Russia and Ukraine when in January of that year, Volodymyr Zelensky, president of Ukraine, expressed his desire for his country to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which Russian President Vladimir Putin had opposed several times before.  By April, Russian forces began to accumulate at the Ukrainian border.  Putin seemed intent on forging unity, not division between Russia and Ukraine on his own terms; in July 2021, he published an essay proclaiming that Russians and Ukrainians were at heart a single people and reasoned that Ukraine should not be a separate country from “Mother Russia”.  In December, Russia published new “security guarantees”, including a request that NATO not admit Ukraine or effectively expand into Eastern Europe.  Paired with the previous accumulation of Russian forces, this began to cause world leaders and others to question Putin’s intentions.  Several analysts felt Russia may be attempting to get some degree of concessions and acceptance from the West; others felt Russia might already feel unlikely to be accepted, and might potentially have used the tall-order requests as grounds for an invasion or other military activity if they were not met.

By early 2022, tensions reached a high.  Two of Ukraine’s breakaway states, the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, were recognized by Russia since 2014 and claimed Ukraine was attacking them, and that they needed Russian military assistance.  On the 24th of February, a Russian invasion of Ukraine commenced, announced by Putin as a “special military operation”.  Ukraine was bombarded by airstrikes, even near its capital city of Kyiv.  Weapons and arms were stockpiled and within the next day, Ukrainian President Zelensky ordered that all Ukrainian males aged 18-60 were banned from leaving the country in order to serve.  In the weeks leading up to the invasion, Russia had conducted military exercises in the neighboring Belarus, which was one side from which the invasion was executed.

Following the invasion, sanctions were quickly levied against Russia by the United States and other allies.  Two of Russia’s important banks were cut off from doing business in the U.S. and its associated markets by President Biden.  Sanctions were also levied against the families of several Russian oligarchs.  The European Union also froze important assets belonging to Putin.  These combined efforts aim to punish Russia for its invasion, hurting them financially.  It was acknowledged that the invasion of Ukraine, however, might not only have served to hurt Russia alone; being a large oil and natural gas exporter and supplier to the world, President Biden also admitted that the sanctions on Russia could have ramifications to the U.S. and the world. Moreover, his administration would work to mitigate the effects of the conflict on American consumers.  The effects of the conflict on the economy are not fully able to be predicted yet; time will tell what they are.

Where there is war there is also inevitably, and tragically, human consequences.  Aside from its political and economic impacts, the invasion has displaced millions of Ukrainians (and counting).  Ukraine’s neighboring countries have started making preparations for a migrant crisis, such as Poland, which a month ago planned housing for up to a million refugees.  Estimates range from one to five million people being displaced as a result of the invasion.  Additionally, on the first day of the invasion alone, 130 people were reported dead.  Concern was expressed over the safety of civilians in the midst of the Russian invasion, as cities were being surrounded and buildings were rumored to be targeted.

The true nature of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine is yet to be known in full.  Innocent people’s lives are at risk; Ukraine is in serious trouble.  As of the time of writing this article, the invasion is still ongoing and new in the minds of many.