Barbie releases Rosa Parks doll to honour Mother of Civil Rights

Civil rights activist Rosa Parks is being honoured with her own Barbie doll.

The toy company Mattel unveiled the new doll for Women’s Equality Day on August 26 as part of a range dedicated to celebrating inspiring women.

According to the toy company, the series “pays tribute to incredible heroines of their time; courageous women who took risks, changed rules and paved the way for generations of girls to dream bigger than ever before.

We’re adding two courageous women to the #Barbie Inspiring Women Series – Civil Rights activist, Rosa Parks, and the first American woman to fly in space, Sally Ride.

Barbie Sally Ride doll: @Target
Barbie Rosa Parks doll: @Walmart
Or pre-order now: https://t.co/mnRXP0Sro3 pic.twitter.com/hZIdchCV1p

— Barbie (@Barbie) August 26, 2019

Also honoured are astronaut Sally Ride, the first American woman to go to space and artist Frida Kahlo and NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson and Amelia Earhart – the first female aviator to ever fly over the Atlantic.

The Rosa Parks doll honours the woman who has been called the “mother of the modern (American) civil rights movement” for starting the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott in Alabama after she refused to give up her bus seat to a white man in Alabama. Her arrest in 1955 started the Montgomery Bus Boycott which led to the desegregation of the transport system.

Her Barbie shows a young Parks in classic 1950s style, wearing a floral dress, coat, pillbox hat, glasses and gloves.

Sally Ride’s doll celebrates the first American woman to fly in space, a feat she accomplished in 1977 aboard the space shuttle Challenger. Naturally, she wears a blue flight suit and comes with a removable helmet and headset.