The Three Golliwogs

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In The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier and Volume IV: The Tempest, Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill included Upton's original Golliwog with a slightly reimagined, alien past.

The Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia described the golliwog as "the least known of the major anti-black caricatures in the United States". Her stories were often either children's adventure and mystery stories, or fantasies involving magic. They were the second most popular children's toy in Europe in the first half of the 20th century, after the teddy bear.In 1964 they were removed from Nottingham libraries for not having a “sufficiently wide vocabulary”. Within the Florence Kate Upton books, the Gollywogg quickly took over the series and had some remarkable adventures involving the high technolgy of the time, travelling by both motor car and airship.

The golliwog is controversial, being widely considered a racist caricature of black people, [5] [6] alongside pickaninnies, minstrels, and mammy figures. Alternative names such as golly and golly doll have also been adopted due to association with the racial slur wog, which many dictionaries say may be derived from golliwog. I think (Artwell) was trying to make a point but on the wrong basis and I think it shows a lack of sensitivity to people who don’t like that image. The French publication, which showed a picture of Tsonga above a picture of a toy golliwog, claimed that Thatcher was "mortified" and that her comment was about the similarity of Tsonga's appearance to the doll that she had as a child.

The golliwog doll became a popular children's toy throughout most of the 20th century, and was incorporated into many aspects of British commerce and culture. In April 2023, the Essex Police removed several golliwog dolls displayed in the pub of the White Hart Inn in response to an alleged hate crime. Libraries removed her work from their shelves for her "political incorrectness" and alleged racism, classism and sexism. It’s a world that never existed and one that would exclude large swathes of society but it’s somewhere to hide when you’re the kind of person who harbours an innate fear of the other. A product of the blackface minstrel tradition, the Golliwogg had jet black skin; bright red lips; and wild woolly hair.