American Girl has added another addition to the family and she’s our new fave!
Released last week, the Melody Ellison American Girl Doll was created in the likeness of a 9-year-old Black girl growing up in Detroit during the Civil Rights and Motown era. Charles H. Right Museum of African-American History President Juanita Moore pointed out several reasons why the Motor City was the perfect choice as the hometown for American Girl’s newest little lady.
According to the Detroit Free Press:
“Detroit was progressive in that it had one of the nation’s largest NAACP branches and it had the most black-owned businesses in the country along with a growing black middle class, but ‘there were still these significant issues around race and discrimination, even in Detroit, with all of that progressiveness that was happening here,’” Moore said.
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Moore said Melody’s backstory also shines a light on the discrimination and racism that was very prevalent in the 1960s.
“The truth about the civil rights movement is that all of those individuals, they were not rich, they were not powerful, but they created change that changed the way every single person in this country lives today, and impacted human rights movements worldwide,” Moore said. “Just to think about that young girl Melody, although a fictional character, it says any one of us can do that, even a young girl.”
The Melody doll and accessories are currently available for purchase via the American Girl website. Melody is the second African-American doll in the American Girl line-up, following escaped slave Addy Walker.