An enduring link to the past, paper dolls chronicle fashion trends as well as the history of illustration, graphic design and printing techniques. These fragile paper playthings accurately record social changes, illustrate attitudes and societal perceptions, and in the case of African Americans often depict the caricatures and racial stereotypes that defined their place, role and status in society. Paper dolls in comic strips, political cartoons, greeting cards, magazines, books and box sets, and as advertising premiums, particularly those produced in the mid-1800s through the mid-1900s, commonly depict people of African ancestry in subservient roles as content cooks, rotund mammies, fat-lipped butlers, wild savages, eye-popping sambos, grinning buffoons, and scary little picaninnies in tattered clothes. It wasn’t until the early 1960s, fueled by the power of the black pride movement and the sustained campaign for civil rights, that paper dolls began reflecting more realistic and varied images of African Americans.