Aunt Jemima

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The Aunt Jemima brand of pancake mix and table syrup met the public in 1893 at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Beside a flour barrel twenty-four feet high, a woman named Nancy Green cooked pancakes and sang songs in the character's name. That name has since disappeared from the front of the box, replaced by another.

  Dozens of women played Aunt Jemima over the decades, yet the character herself never existed. Where did she come from? What did the women who played her actually earn and endure? And why did a company that held on to the name for more than a century finally let it go?

  12386465

• 2. A Glutted Flour Market

  ›

  In 1888, Chris L. Rutt and his friend Charles G. Underwood bought a small flour mill in St. Joseph, Missouri. Rutt edited the St. Joseph Gazette, and the mill stood at 214 North 2nd Street. They named the business the Pearl Milling Company, after the pearl milling process used to turn out wheat flour, cornmeal and similar goods. The flour market was glutted, so after a year of experiments the partners began selling their surplus in paper bags. The bags carried only a generic label, Self-Rising Pancake Flour. The product was later called the first ready-mix cooking product.

  Late in 1889, Rutt wanted something to set the pancake mix apart from every other bag on the shelf. He took the Aunt Jemima name and image from lithographed posters he had seen at a vaudeville house in St. Joseph.

  A 1915 trademark ruling built on the Aunt Jemima brand set a new precedent. Until then, American law protected a seller only against copycats offering the same kind of product. Under the Aunt Jemima Doctrine, the maker of pancake mix was also shielded from an unrelated seller of a related product, pancake syrup. Over time the brand became one of the longest continually running logos and trademarks in American advertising. Where that vaudeville house found its Aunt Jemima is a question with more than one answer.

  213171411

• 3. Minstrel Stage Roots

  ›

  The Library of Congress holds a British image that may date to as early as 1847. It shows a smiling Black woman named Miss Jim-Ima Crow, with a framed picture of James Crow hanging on the wall behind her.

  A character called Aunt Jemima was on the stage in Washington, D.C., as early as 1864. In 1875, Billy Kersands wrote a minstrel and vaudeville song titled "Old Aunt Jemima," and Rutt's inspiration is traced to it. According to Arthur F. Marquette, Rutt saw a minstrel show featuring that song in the fall of 1889. Marquette named the blackface performers as "Baker & Farrell" and said the actor playing Aunt Jemima wore an apron and a kerchief.

  Doris Witt of the University of Iowa could not confirm Marquette's account. She suggests Rutt may instead have watched Pete F. Baker, a vaudeville performer whom newspapers of the era described playing characters called "Ludwig" and "Aunt Jemima." The layers may have stacked up strangely. Baker's Aunt Jemima could have been a white man in blackface, posing as a German immigrant, imitating a Black minstrel who was parodying an imaginary enslaved cook.

  In the South, the titles "aunt" and "uncle" were forms of address for older enslaved people, who were denied honorifics such as "mistress" and "mister." The character belonged to the "Mammy" archetype, a plump woman in a headscarf who is a devoted and submissive servant, with dark skin and a pearly white smile. Rutt's borrowed figure had no history as a cook, so the company soon invented one.

  3637131429

• 4. Invented Plantation Legends

  ›

  The slogan "I's in Town, Honey" dates to 1893 and set the tone for the stories that followed. Marketers presented Aunt Jemima as the loyal cook of a fictional Colonel Higbee, who owned a plantation in Louisiana on the Mississippi River. She supposedly used a secret recipe from the South before the Civil War, giving her pancakes a "matchless plantation flavor" and making them the best in Dixie. Another tale had her keeping Union soldiers occupied with pancakes long enough for Higbee to escape. A third had her reviving shipwreck survivors with flapjacks.

  In 1894, the company added a paper doll family that customers could cut from the pancake box. Aunt Jemima had a husband, Uncle Rastus, later renamed Uncle Mose to avoid confusion with the Cream of Wheat character. Their children were named Abraham Lincoln, Dilsie, Zeb and Dinah. The dolls were posed dancing barefoot in tattered clothes, and the box was labeled "Before the Receipt was sold." Receipt is an old rural word for recipe. A second box held elegant clothing cut-outs, so the family could be changed "After the Receipt was sold." The scheme borrowed from the rags-to-riches myth associated with Horatio Alger.

  In 1909, rag doll versions were offered as a premium, with the Davis Milling Company named on the label. The children's names were changed to Diana and Wade. Early versions showed patched trousers and missing teeth, and oil-cloth versions from around the 1950s had cartoonish features.

  A typical magazine ad from the turn of the century was created by advertising executive James Webb Young and the illustrator N.C. Wyeth. It shows a heavyset Black cook talking happily while a white man takes notes. The copy reads, "After the Civil War, after her master's death, Aunt Jemima was finally persuaded to sell her famous pancake recipe to the representative of a northern milling company." Yet the Davis Milling Company was not in a northern state, because Missouri was a hotly contested border state during the Civil War. In truth, Aunt Jemima never existed. Marketers made her up to sell products.

  Black women organizing around the 1893 fair had already asked for a very different picture of Black life, and they were quick to say what they saw in this one.

  113294186

• 5. Critics at the Fair

  ›

  African American women formed the Women's Columbian Association and the Women's Columbian Auxiliary Association because Black Americans had been shut out of the World's Fair exhibitions. They asked that the fair reflect the achievements of African Americans after Emancipation. Instead, it included a miniature West African village whose people were portrayed as primitive savages. The so-called "Negro Day" was a picnic held off the fairgrounds. Ida B. Wells was incensed at the exclusion of African Americans from the main fair activities.

  Hallie Quinn Brown, Anna Julia Cooper and Fannie Barrier Williams, all Black scholars, used the fair to address the exploitation of African American women by white men. In her 1892 book A Voice from the South, Cooper had written that a fascination with "Southern influence, Southern ideas, and Southern ideals" had "dictated to and domineered over the brain and sinew of this nation."

  These educated, progressive women looked at Aunt Jemima and saw "a mammy for the national household." The image rested on the belief that slavery had cultivated innate qualities in African Americans. The idea that they were natural servants fed a racist ideology that denied the reality of Black intellect.

  The character was not created until nearly 25 years after the end of the Civil War. Even so, her clothing, dancing, enslaved dialect and plantation songs sung at work all pointed back to a glorified "happy slave" view of antebellum plantation life. The legend of her secret recipe fed post-Civil War nostalgia for the South, in service of America's developing consumer culture, especially in the selling of kitchen goods. Aunt Jemima embodied a post-Reconstruction fantasy of idealized domesticity and revealed a deep need to redeem the antebellum South. Other food brands drew on the same fantasy.

  The women who actually wore the costume had histories of their own, and the first of them is the place to begin.

  4331153080

• 6. Women Behind the Name

  ›

  Nancy Green was born into slavery in Montgomery County, Kentucky, and became the first spokesperson hired by the R. T. Davis Milling Company for its Aunt Jemima mix. She appeared at fairs, festivals, flea markets, food shows and local grocery stores, where billboards announced her with the caption "I'se in town, honey." Her routine included romanticized stories about the Old South, presented as a happy place for Black and white people alike. When the company wanted a performer for the 1900 Paris exhibition, Green refused to cross the Atlantic Ocean. She died in 1923 and was buried in an unmarked pauper's grave in Chicago's Oak Woods Cemetery. A headstone was placed on the 5th of September 2020. The African American Registry of the United States marks her birth in 1834 and calls her a Black storyteller and one of the first Black corporate models in the country.

  Agnes Moody, aged 60, took Green's place in Paris in 1900 and was wrongly reported as the original Aunt Jemima. She was known around Chicago for her cornmeal bread and cakes. She died on the 9th of April 1903.

  After Green, very few performers became widely known. J. Walter Thompson, Lord and Thomas and other advertising agencies hired dozens of actors, often assigned to particular regions, in what has been described as the first organized sales promotion campaign. Quaker Oats ended local appearances for the character in 1965.

  Lillian Richard was hired to play Aunt Jemima in 1925 and kept the role for 23 years. She was born in 1891 in the tiny community of Fouke, 7 miles west of Hawkins in Wood County, Texas. In 1910 she moved to Dallas, where she first worked as a cook. Her job of "pitching pancakes" was based in Paris, Texas. After a stroke around 1947-1948, she returned to Fouke and lived there until she died in 1956. A Texas Historical Marker was dedicated in her name in her hometown on the 30th of June 2012. Hawkins, east of Mineola, is known as the "Pancake Capital of Texas" because of her. In 1995, State Senator David Cain introduced Senate Resolution No. 73 to give the town that title. Richard's niece, Jewell Richard-McCalla, spearheaded the measure, and the local chamber of commerce hoped the connection would boost tourism.

  In 1927, Artie Belle McGinty debuted as the first radio voice of Aunt Jemima in advertisements. Edith Wilson, born in Louisville in 1896, was the face and voice of the character on radio, television and in personal appearances from 1948 to 1966. She was the first Aunt Jemima to appear in television commercials. Wilson had been a classic blues singer and actress in Chicago, New York and London. She appeared on radio in The Great Gildersleeve, on radio and television in Amos 'n' Andy, and on film in To Have and Have Not in 1944. On the 25th of January 1964, Wilson, in character, received the Key to the City of Albion, Michigan. Actresses playing Aunt Jemima visited Albion, Battle Creek and other Michigan cities many times over three decades. Wilson died in Chicago on the 31st of March 1981.

  In 1933, Anna Robinson answered an open audition and won the role of Aunt Jemima at the Century of Progress Chicago World's Fair. Born around 1899 in Kentucky, she was widowed, in her thirties, and had eight years of schooling. Lord and Thomas sent her to New York City to be photographed. Haddon Sundblom, a nationally known commercial artist, painted her portrait, and the Aunt Jemima packaging was redesigned in her likeness. She was then pictured making pancakes at El Morocco, the Stork Club, "21" and the Waldorf-Astoria, for stars of Broadway, radio and motion pictures. Advertising built from those photographs ranked among the highest read of its time.

  Robinson reportedly worked for the company until she died in 1951. The work was sporadic, lasting mere weeks in a year, and it could not lift her out of the hard life she was born into. Her total payment of $1,200 in 1939 was almost the whole annual income of her household. The company's official Aunt Jemima timeline told a different story. It said Robinson earned enough to provide for her children and to buy a 22-room house where she rented rooms to boarders. The same claim was made for Anna Short Harrington.

  Anna Short Harrington was born in 1897 in Marlboro County, South Carolina. The Short family were sharecroppers on the Pegues Place plantation. In 1927 she moved to Syracuse, New York, and in 1935 Quaker Oats discovered her cooking pancakes at the New York State Fair. She played Aunt Jemima from 1935 until 1954. The 1940 census shows her renting an apartment in a four-flat in Washington Park, sharing it with her daughter, son-in-law and two grandchildren. She died in Syracuse in 1955.

  Rosa Washington Riles, born in 1901 near Red Oak in Brown County, Ohio, became the third face on Aunt Jemima packaging in the 1930s and held that place until 1948. She was a cook in the home of a Quaker Oats executive and began giving pancake demonstrations at her employer's request. She died in 1969 and is buried near her parents and grandparents in the Red Oak Presbyterian Church cemetery in Ripley. The cemetery has long held an annual Aunt Jemima breakfast as a fundraiser, and the church keeps a collection of Aunt Jemima memorabilia.

  Ethel Ernestine Harper was born on the 17th of September 1903 in Greensboro, Alabama. She graduated from college at 17, taught elementary school for 2 years and then taught high school mathematics for 10. In New York City she performed in The Hot Mikado in 1939 and in Harlem Cavalcade in 1942. She also toured Europe during and after World War II as one of the Ginger Snaps. Harper portrayed Aunt Jemima in the 1950s and was the last individual model for the character's logo. She died in Morristown, New Jersey, on the 31st of March 1979.

  Rosie Lee Moore Hall, born on the 22nd of June 1899 in Robertson County, Texas, is remembered as the last "living" Aunt Jemima. She was working in the Quaker Oats advertising department in Oklahoma when the company went looking for a new Aunt Jemima. She played the role from 1950 until a heart attack killed her on the 12th of February 1967, on her way to church. She was buried in the family plot in Colony Cemetery near Wheelock, and her grave was declared a historical landmark on the 7th of May 1988.

  3864535758

• 7. Culture and Protest

  ›

  In the 1960s, the artist Betye Saar began collecting images of Aunt Jemima, Uncle Tom, Little Black Sambo and other stereotyped figures from Jim Crow-era advertising and folk culture. She worked them into collages and assemblages that became statements of political and social protest. One of her best-known works from the period is The Liberation of Aunt Jemima, a mixed-media piece that turns the mammy figure against traditional notions of race and gender. In 1983, Faith Ringgold's first quilt story, Who's Afraid of Aunt Jemima?, recast the caricature as a matriarch who runs a restaurant, an entrepreneur rather than a servant.

  On the 17th of January 1929, a minstrel-type variety radio program called Aunt Jemima went on the air. It ran until the 5th of June 1953, at times on CBS and at other times on the Blue Network, with several breaks along the way. In Fannie Hurst's 1933 novel Imitation of Life, a maid named Delilah struggles beside her widowed employer, Bea. Their fortunes change when Bea turns Delilah's family pancake recipe into a restaurant, and then into a boxed product called Aunt Delilah's Pancake Mix, with Delilah's picture on the box. The 1934 film keeps that plot. The 1959 remake cuts it.

  Aunt Jemima's Kitchen, which began operating in 1955 as Aunt Jemima's Pancake House, was the official Aunt Jemima restaurant at Disneyland. Aylene Lewis played the character there from 1957 until her death in 1964. She posed for pictures with visitors and served pancakes to dignitaries, among them India's prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. She also developed a close relationship with Walt Disney. The restaurant closed in July 1970, after Quaker Oats withdrew its sponsorship following a dispute with The Walt Disney Company over control. The chain had other locations across the United States, 21 in all. The one in Grand Rapids was changed to Colonial Kitchen in 1968.

  Frank Zappa put a song called "Electric Aunt Jemima" on his 1969 album Uncle Meat, named after the nickname of his Standel guitar amplifier. On Public Enemy's 1990 album Fear of a Black Planet, Big Daddy Kane uses the track "Burn Hollywood Burn" to comment on how Hollywood keeps handing Black women servant roles. Spike Lee's 2000 film Bamboozled has Aunt Jemima, played by Tyheesha Collins, as one of the dancers in a deliberately racist TV show. In the 2003 film Bringing Down the House, Missi Pyle's character disrespectfully calls Queen Latifah's character "Jemima." In the South Park episode "Gluten Free Ebola" in 2014, Aunt Jemima appears in Eric Cartman's delirious dream to tell him the food pyramid is upside down.

  The name has also lived on as an insult. As slang, "Aunt Jemima" is a female counterpart to "Uncle Tom," aimed at a friendly Black woman seen as servile toward white interests. In Luray, Virginia, the town council censured its 77-year-old mayor, Barry Presgraves, by a vote of 5 to 1 for using it about Kamala Harris after Joe Biden chose her as his running mate.

  On the 7th of November 2020, Saturday Night Live aired a sketch in which Aunt Jemima was fired, along with Uncle Ben, with their roles played by "Count Chocula" and the "Allstate Guy." In the 2021 film Judas and the Black Messiah, a police officer sneers at a passing Black woman by comparing her to Aunt Jemima, as Chicago police surround the Black Panther Party headquarters. The sketch landed months after the company itself had already made its decision.

  7885814648

• 8. The Retirement

  ›

  The face on the package had changed many times, just as the formula had. In 1968, the image became a composite creation, slimmer and described as more "svelte," with a white collar and a geometric print "headband" that still resembled her old kerchief. James J. Jaffee, a freelance artist from the Bronx, had also designed one of the images Quaker Oats used into the middle of the 20th century. In 1989, marking the brand's 100th anniversary, all head covering was removed. The new image showed wavy, gray-streaked hair, gold-trimmed pearl earrings and a lace collar. It was described as more "sophisticated," and Quaker marketed it as "a more contemporary look." It stayed on the products until early 2021.

  On the 17th of June 2020, Quaker Oats announced that the brand would be discontinued and replaced with a new name and image "to make progress toward racial equality." The image left the packaging in the fall of 2020, and the name change was set for a later date. Within a day, other brands announced similar rebrandings or reviews. Uncle Ben's rice was renamed Ben's Original. Mrs. Butterworth's pancake syrup faced a review of its brand and bottle shape. Cream of Wheat reviewed its "Rastus" Black chef logo.

  Descendants of two of the women who played Aunt Jemima objected. Vera Harris, a family historian for Lillian Richard's family, said, "I wish we would take a breath and not just get rid of everything. Because good or bad, it is our history." She added, "Erasing my Aunt Lillian Richard would erase a part of history." Larnell Evans, great-grandson of Anna Short Harrington, said, "This is an injustice for me and my family. This is part of my history." Evans had lost a lawsuit against Quaker Oats and others in 2015 in which he sought billions of dollars.

  On the 9th of February 2021, PepsiCo announced that the replacement name would be Pearl Milling Company. It had bought that name for the purpose on the 1st of February 2021. The new branding launched in June, a year after the first announcement. For at least six months afterward, PepsiCo still referred to Aunt Jemima in logotype on the front of the packaging. The company then said trademark law kept it from abandoning the old brand completely, because a third party could otherwise obtain and use it. The old name survives in the tagline, "Same great taste as Aunt Jemima," printed beside the name that Rutt and Underwood chose for their mill in 1888.

  22225267