When I saw Greta Gerwig’s enormous hit film “Barbie” in last year, I instantly noticed how racially diverse the Barbie (and Ken) characters in the film are. We now take that for granted, but Netflix documentary film “Black Barbie: A Documentary”, which was released a few weeks ago, reminds us that there have actually been lots of efforts for that during several decades, and those hidden African American female figures behind these important efforts surely have interesting stories to tell for us.

The origin of the documentary is Beulah Mae Mitchell, who is an aunt of director/writer/co-producer Lagueria Davis and was also a key figure behind the first black dolls from Mattel. After coming to learn about her aunt’s very interesting professional career, Davis decided to delve more into her aunt’s considerable but rather overlooked contribution, and her aunt gladly put herself in front of the camera just like many different figures interviewed for the documentary.

At first, Mitchell and several other older African American interviewees including US Representative Maxine Waters reminisce about the serious absence of black dolls during their childhood mainly due to racial prejudice. During that time, many of toy companies in US only cared about their majority white customers, and we see a number of raggedy homemade black dolls which were the only alternatives for those little black kids during that time.

When Ruth Hadler, the co-founder of Mattel, presented the first Barbie doll in the late 1950s, it was surely regarded as an industrial breakthrough besides becoming a sort of role model for many white kids out there, and many other Barbie dolls naturally followed during next several years, but, alas, there was not still any doll for black kids. As they were often stuck with white dolls, many black kids came to have a serious problem of low self-esteem, and that was eventually proven by Dr. Kenneth and Mamie Clark, an African American psychologist couple who brought more public awareness to this glaring social issue via their alarming research result from black kids.

Fortunately, Hadler was quite open-minded about any new business opportunity. She often came to her company factories where Mitchell and numerous African American employees busily work, and she gladly took their advice while also getting some of them promoted. Mitchell was one of such fortunate employees, and, though she was well aware of the main reason of her unlikely promotion (She was one of a very few black persons at her new workplace, you know), she was determined to do her best for the company as well as many black kids out there, and her diligent efforts eventually led to the production of black dolls.

However, that was not enough at all, because there was still no black Barbie doll. While they were indeed a breakthrough for black kids ready to buy dolls just looking like themselves, those manufactured black dolls were just presented as Barbie’s black friends, and one of them was even presented as Barbie’s nanny who is also incidentally her best friend (Please don’t ask me how the hell that is possible).

Nevertheless, Mitchell’s efforts opened the door for another notable African American female figure to enter Mattel. Right from her first day at Mattel, Kitty Black Perkins was determined to make a Black Barbie, and she and Mitchell instantly bonded with each other. Eventually, the first black Barbie doll came out in the early 1980s, but, as Mattel frankly admits to Davis, there was not enough promotional effort for this supposedly revolutionary doll, which was quickly forgotten as the time passed.

At least, the progress was done bit by bit during next 40 years, and the efforts of Mitchell and Perkins were passed to their junior Stacey McBride-Irby. As McBride-Irby and other African American employees of Mattel tried harder, Mattel came to embrace more racial diversity in their products than before, though, as pointed out by several experts interviewed in the documentary, there are still some problems to be resolved sooner or later.

However, black and other colored Barbie dolls have become more common than before, and a group of famous figures ranging from Shonda Rhimes, who incidentally serves as one of the executive producers of the documentary, to Ibtihaj Muhammad willingly tell us about how much they feel honored about being the models for new black Barbie dolls. As the women who have showed that black girls can do anything, these remarkable ladies are inarguably the ideal inspirations for new black Barbie dolls, and Rhimes tells a little amusing episode about how the Barbie doll version of herself was made.

Under Davis’ competent direction, “Black Barbie: A Documentary” is both engaging and informative as illuminating the longtime efforts behind the racial diversity of Barbie dolls, and it is worthwhile to check out especially if you appreciated the considerable racial diversity shown in Gerwig’s movie. Yes, there should be more progress in the future, but the road to progress is being built and then continued even at this point, and I sincerely hope that my little niece, who is about to have her first birthday in this year, will have a lot more options for her future dolls when she grows up enough to be more aware of herself.