Before Betty there was Aunt Jemima

Goodbye, Aunt Jemima! 

When I was on my book tour for Betty Crocker a lot of people asked me about Aunt Jemima - who proceeded Betty and was even more controversial.

Aunt Jemima is such a huge topic that shouldn't be shoehorned into Betty's story, so I always referred people to this book by M.M. Manring:

Here is a review of Slave in a Box: The Strange Career of Aunt Jemima from Amazon:

The figure of the mammy occupies a central place in the lore of the Old South and has long been used to illustrate distinct social phenomena, including racial oppression and class identity. In the early twentieth century, the mammy became immortalized as Aunt Jemima, the spokesperson for a line of ready-mixed breakfast products. Although Aunt Jemima has undergone many makeovers over the years, she apparently has not lost her commercial appeal; her face graces more than forty food products nationwide and she still resonates in some form for millions of Americans.

In Slave in a Box, M.M. Manring addresses the vexing question of why the troubling figure of Aunt Jemima has endured in American culture. Manring traces the evolution of the mammy from her roots in the Old South slave reality and mythology, through reinterpretations during Reconstruction and in minstrel shows and turn-of-the-century advertisements, to Aunt Jemima's symbolic role in the Civil Rights movement and her present incarnation as a "working grandmother." We learn how advertising entrepreneur James Webb Young, aided by celebrated illustrator N.C. Wyeth, skillfully tapped into nostalgic 1920s perceptions of the South as a culture of white leisure and black labor. Aunt Jemima's ready-mixed products offered middle-class housewives the next best thing to a black servant: a "slave in a box" that conjured up romantic images of not only the food but also the social hierarchy of the plantation South.

The initial success of the Aunt Jemima brand, Manring reveals, was based on a variety of factors, from lingering attempts to reunite the country after the Civil War to marketing strategies around World War I. Her continued appeal in the late twentieth century is a more complex and disturbing phenomenon we may never fully understand. Manring suggests that by documenting Aunt Jemima's fascinating evolution, however, we can learn important lessons about our collective cultural identity.

Today is was officially announced that Aunt Jemima is no more. Check out this article, including some history

From NPR: Quaker Oats will replace the 130-year-old Aunt Jemima brand and logo in June, one year after it announced plans to do so.

Quaker Oats cooked up a new image for an old offensive brand. PepsiCo Inc. the parent company for Quaker Oats, announced rebranding Aunt Jemima, retiring a racist stereotype used for the product's image.

PepsiCo will replace Aunt Jemima with the Pearl Milling Company in June — one full year after the company first announced plans to do away with the Aunt Jemima brand.

Aunt Jemima and other food brands, including Uncle Ben's, Cream of Wheat, and Mrs. Butterworth's, announced redesigns amid protests against systemic racism and police brutality in the U.S. last summer. But calls to remove the Aunt Jemima imagery, and others like it, were made long before companies acquiesced to public pressure last year.

Both Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben's have been criticized for relying on the titles aunt and uncle, which historically were used by people who resisted applying the honorific Mr. or Ms. to a Black person.Aunt Jemima has been criticized as an image harkening back to slavery. Old Aunt Jemima originated as a song of field slaves that was later performed at minstrel shows. The original Aunt Jemima character was portrayed by Nancy Green, who was born into slavery. Quaker Oats paid Green to travel and promote Aunt Jemima products in costume.

The Uncle Ben's logo was of an elderly Back man, who originally wore a bow fie evocative of a servant. Mars, Incorporated announced in September it would remove the name and logo of Uncle Ben's and rename the rice brand as Ben's Original. 

Origin of Pearl Milling Company

Pearl Milling Company was founded in 1888 in St. Joseph, Missouri, and according to a PepsiCo statement, it created the self-rising pancake mix that became known as Aunt Jemima. Quaker Oats purchased the Aunt Jemima brand in 1925.

The company said Pearl Milling Company will also announce details of a $1 million commitment to empower and uplift Black girls and women in the coming weeks. The investment is in addition to PepsiCo's $400 million, five-year commitment to advance and uplift Black businesses and communities, the company said.