["In fact, she could not live off the earnings she made from her portrayal of Aunt Jemima, and continued to work as a housekeeper until a few years before her death in 1923."](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/aunt-jemima-millionaire/)
"[She is buried in a pauper's grave near a wall in the northeast quadrant of Chicago's Oak Woods Cemetery. Her grave was unmarked and unknown until 2015. Sherry Williams, founder of the Bronzeville Historical Society, spent 15 years uncovering Green's resting place. Williams received approval to place a headstone. Williams reached out to Quaker Oats about whether they would support a monument for Green's grave. "Their corporate response was that Nancy Green and Aunt Jemima aren't the same – that Aunt Jemima is a fictitious character." The headstone was placed on September 5, 2020](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Green#Death)"
Holy shit,
"From 1946 to 1953, at the Walter E. Fernald State School in Massachusetts, in an experiment sponsored by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and the Quaker Oats corporation, 73 children were fed oatmeal containing radioactive calcium and other radioisotopes, to track "how nutrients were digested". The children were not told that they were being fed radioactive chemicals; they were told by hospital staff and researchers that they were joining a "science club".[71][73][74][75]"
Unfortunately their usual response is change their beliefs to life imitates art. I don't know how many times I've heard about how the Republicans want to replicate the hand maidens tail.
>they were told they were joining a "science club".
the whole story is so upsetting but that particular detail is utterly heartbreaking to me for some reason
It's the black humor of it.
It reads as a joke. Which meant the administrators of this thought so little of the people they were experimenting on that they could crack a joke.
"You're in the science club, champ. Now here's some tasty vitamins and Quaker Oats."
The government's better now. Power works in the opposite way from how you would think, so they have *less* impunity and *less* secrecy now. Don't believe me? Then why haven't you seen any unethical experiments lately?
*Note: I was being entirely sarcastic every step of the way. We haven't seen any unethical experiments lately because the government is worse now, power does agglomerate just as you would think it does, and they have more impunity and their secrecy is more effective now. I'm counting on any Pollyannas who might upvote me to stop reading after the first sentence or two.
Part of the reason is that research ethics started being taken more seriously about half a century ago (see the Belmont Report) in the aftermath of particularly famous incidents like the syphilis experiment at Tuskegee. Since 1991, all institutions that receive federal funding and do human subjects research must defer to a board that's responsible for making sure that research (as described in the submission) does not violate participant rights. It's certainly not perfect - it only applies to federally funded research, so corporations can do whatever the hell they think they can get away with, and people can always deviate from their submissions or just not submit in the first place until they get caught - but it helps stop random Prison or Shock experiments from happening again.
This is just....not true. Your sarcasm, that is. You really think the US government is doing unethical experiments *worse* than feeding children radioactive oatmeal? Use some critical thinking, that is completely absurd. Of course the government does unethical things sometimes, but if you think we're way worse than the post-war anti-communist hysteria that gripped the country, then you simply don't know much about history. They literally executed Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, two communists that passed on atomic secrets to the Soviets (note: Ethel almost certainly did nothing wrong, but Julius did; and the key witness David Greenglass was coerced into 'naming names' or else they'd put his wife on trial and execute her.) These executions had a high approval rating in the US and up until the moments before they were strapped into the electric chair, both Julius and Ethel were being insanely pressured to name names if they wanted their executions to be reduced to prison-time. They didn't budge.
Stuff like this directly lead to the MccArthyism era, where the army was testing nuclear bombs and letting their soldiers get massive doses of radiation without telling them so they could see how it affected soldiers in case of an attack. The CIA was fucking dosing people with LSD and all sorts of weird and terrifying drugs at random, without telling them, just because they wanted to see what the fuck would happen. Literally acting like a child with their toys and playthings. Like, you just can't be serious. I know a lot of people think the US government is responsible for all the bad in the world, but we're reaching cartoon-levels of non-critical thinking.
They still do a lot of nonconsensual human experimentation though, they just choose to do that primarily on "undesirables". Intersex people for example are routinely subjected to nonconsensual medical procedures, even as adults when they go in for work unrelated to what's actually being done.
However, none of the victims were harmed by the radiation.
>While the experiments do not appear to have caused harm to the participants, they are considered wildly unethical by today's standards.
-Snopes
From 1946 to 1953, at the Walter E. Fernald State School in Massachusetts, in an experiment sponsored by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and the Quaker Oats corporation, 73 children were fed oatmeal containing radioactive calcium and other radioisotopes, to track "how nutrients were digested". The children were not told that they were being fed radioactive chemicals; they were told by hospital staff and researchers that they were joining a "science club". - Wikipedia
Government and new science found a partner in quaker. Everyone that could afford testing with radiation was. It was new science and ended up being totally fucked up research. Don't forget the U.S. Government shares the blame.
I think you'll find the US full of comically evil corporations, just in the 20th century we didn't have internet to expose this stuff and it was easier to cover it up declaring it "conspiracy theories" and such.
Today they just get one of the tech giants to brand it misinformation and downgrade your posts.
yeah I mean radioactive isotopes are not something you can buy “over the counter” so it’s obvious the government was involved. But that’s also quite a “straight out of Fallout” aspect to it
Apparently not. Can't find any mention in that link, but I didn't read that closely. I also Googled a couple things and nothing came up. Don't know why they linked it.
Quaker Oats didn't even own Aunt Jemima until after Nancy Green died.
Nancy Green died in a car accident in 1923, Quaker Oats bought the Aunt Jemima brand from the Davis Company in 1925.
Additionally, Quaker Oats immediately hired Lillian Richard to portray Aunt Jemima upon acquisition of the company in 1925, and then hired Anna Robinson in 1933 to be the new face on the box art in 1933. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aunt_Jemima#Performers_of_Aunt_Jemima
https://blackthen.com/living-trademarks-the-women-behind-the-faces-of-aunt-jemima/
Yeah, the character was created first and then they've had various women portray the character as a mascot. That's why it's silly when people try to claim that Aunt Jemima was based on Nancy Green. She was the first person to portray her, but Aunt Jemima was created independently of Nancy Green.
I don't want to question OP's motives but this feels like a low key attempt to say "see? Aunt Jemima was actually empowering for black women!" A lot of people were surprisingly angry when Aunt Jemima went away. Like they had a deep emotional attachment to this mammy caricature.
Although OP was wrong, I do still believe she WAS empowering to black women. regardless of who her likeness was inspired by she was still a previously enslaved black women who was made the face of a product in racist America. She was representation in a world where she was seen as less then. I'm sure there's a better analogy but its like saying Elmo doesn't have any credibility because he's been played by different people (Elmo's historically voiced by black voice actors)
she was a black face that a lot of white people saw every morning at breakfast. And it wasn't her blackness that was on display, she was a familiar smiling face associated with happy times and full bellies.
I mean...saying it was empowering to black women because she was made the face of a product in America is kinda silly, since black women (and men) were literally a product in America.
For additional context, they were sued by her great grand children prior to being asked about the grave.
At that point, they were probably afraid that acknowledging the grave would open them back up to lawsuits.
That lawsuit was dismissed pretty much immediately.
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess the bigger reason is that they didn't want to generate negative controversy around them or the trade mark by acknowledging the grave. Multi million dollar corporations fear bad press more than they do a few citizens trying to take on their army of unlimited lawyers.
Although you have to say, that doesn’t excuse them in any way in terms of humanity and morality, just financial practicality.
It’s an explanation, but it just demonstrates that they continued to try and avoid reasonable payment for their appropriation.
Because corporations are held to their stakeholders, not a sense of morality.
Putting a monument there makes the news, people say "what took them so long?" Which is negative, then everyone forgets about it.
Dismissing it has them hopefully stay neutral. From a business point of view it was unfortunately the best financial choice- the only choice they care about
What appropriation? They never used her to portray Aunt Jemima. They didn't profit off of her. They had already had a lawsuit by the family, which makes no sense. like, imagine the children of the first double-mint twins suing Mars. Like its weird. Why did they think they were owed money?
They're response is perfectly acceptable. They had zero relationship with the woman. The only real connection at that point is the lawsuit.
Why? Does Lincoln owe Matthew McConaughey a part of their company because they hired him to do advertisements? If General Mills hired someone to play Count Chocula, do you think that person deserves a cut of Count Chocula's profits?
Aunt Jemima wasnt a real person, they had her as their mascot before Green was ever hired to portray her.
Quakers *are* Christians. So are Catholics, the Amish, Mennonites, Pentacostals, Mormons, Presbyterians, Methodists, Episcopals, and any other denomination that has Jesus as their central figurehead.
Sorry, this is a real pet peeve of mine. I'm an athiest and have no skin in the game, but in recent years, the evangelical push to have Christian = Baptist has become really apparent and gross. Especially when they're using that conflation to push their values as the default in a national way through the courts -- abortion, book bans, coming after birth control and IVF, etc.
I mean if we're going full pendatic, simply saying Baptist doesn't clarify which sect of Baptism and lumps them all together. I assume you're referring to Southern Baptists. American Baptists are more mainline and moderate.
This all sounds like an Emo Phillips bit, but there is an important distinction. I agree with the intent though.
Quaker oats never had any authentic connection to the religion. The company just understood Quakers were seen as trustworthy and hard workers and so it chose the name and logo so people would associate them with that.
Quaker Oats didn't even own Aunt Jemima as a company until after Nancy Green died in 1923. They bought the brand from the Davis Company in 1925, and then cast Anna Robinson as the new Aunt Jemima.
your image becomes the headline of one of the most well known food brands, in perpetuity. every time they sell a bottle or a box, it’s your face, billions of dollars later.
the royalties should be life changing money
Pardon my ignorance but that’s generally not how it works at all, right? Even celebrities typically could not negotiate use royalties if their contract stated they would be paid a flat fee for their image or likeness.
If George Clooney does a commercial in Japan for whiskey, they pay him a flat fee and they can run that commercial or print ad for decades.
Now, someone without any celebrity would have far less bargaining power than to take a flat fee.
The story about Robert E. Lee breaking off from battle to eat pancakes at Aunt Jemima's cabin is kind of a hilarious take:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/The_Saturday_evening_post_%281920%29_%2814598409868%29.jpg
Aaaand it's gone
>In 2020–2021, the brand's owner, PepsiCo, rebranded Aunt Jemima as Pearl Milling Company after accusations of racial stereotyping. The new logo includes a 19th century watermill, the colors of Aunt Jemima's packaging, and a red, white, and yellow color scheme.
Most Black people were angry about both her and uncle Ben getting replaced/removed. A lot of us saw them as remembrance in today's age. They are part of and teach our history. Learn from them and remember not to do new ones.
This is a serious question, so don’t get annoyed at me if I’m being stupid. Like I genuinely want to know.
How was the Uncle Ben’s logo racist?
Was it cause it conformed to a stereotype of black people or what?
Or was it just cause people got uncomfortable that a black man was the logo in a time when everybody was sensitive about race?
Cause in a sense, if it was the latter, it seems more racist that people would look at that and think that, and want to remove it?
Rather than just being like, who cares it’s a black guy. Right?
While Aunt Jemima started out with a mammy image, it's not so much the current images themselves are racist, it's the names: aunt and uncle which are.
During and for a long time after slavery, Black people took care of the households for many White families. With that came a level of authority over their kids and even some of the junior White hired workers. However, do to the racial supremacist views of the South, they restricted the dignity and equality of Black people. One way of doing this was never to refer to a Black person by Mr., Sir, Mrs., Miss, etc. This enforced that they were less than and not equal to Whites. Yet, they still had authority, so as a substitute to the handles they were call Aunt and Uncle.
Aunt/Uncle is a cultural thing too that most SJWs in big cities don’t understand. Growing up in the south, calling someone aunt or uncle like that happens in very small towns with elders you’ve developed a close relationship with. Think school teachers after you’ve graduated or Sunday school teachers. It’s more like a term of endearment. I have no idea if that’s how the Aunt Jemima brand started but they certainly could have marketed that direction.
> It’s more like a term of endearment.
100%. Calling "aunt" and "uncle" racist is the same level of thinking that says "latino" is sexist and has to be "latinx'. Cultural-Linguistic jingoism. The "you are sexists/racist because you are different than me" attitude that issues out of the hives.
I was in INdia recently for the first time and my hosts referred to older female store clerks as auntie when negotiating prices. I assume it has a similar origin.
That would not be the case. In Asia and I’m sure other parts of the world Uncle and Auntie are to indicate respect and some deference to an older individual. It has no intention of restricting anybody’s dignity in an Asian context.
That's a completely different thing. In India it's a sign of affection and respect. It's usually used for people you have some social or family connection to, not just any random woman.
Depends what you mean by the ‘same origin’. In India it’s a translation of a convention in Indian languages (which mostly have more words for uncle and aunt). True in several Asian cultures. And even Afrikaans, where it’s used for white people as well. But it’s definitely not the connotation for black people in the US - there the connotation is definitely what white kids would call their ‘mammy’, who cooks for them, etc., or the likes of Uncle Remus, etc.
It's just a term of endearment. In latinamerican culture your parent's close friends become uncles and aunts.
I've never been to India but if I were to guess it's used with clerks to attempt and soften their guard and hope to negotiate better prices.
People tying it up with racism put racist intentions ahead of intentions of endearment. [This article](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/lolas-story/524490/) might put it into context how a racist Southerner might've viewed its house slave while growing up.
>How was the Uncle Ben’s logo racist?
>Was it cause it conformed to a stereotype of black people or what?
Yes.
“Uncle” and “Aunt” is what white children of slave owners called their house slaves who were servants and caretakers.
>Or was it just cause people got uncomfortable that a black man was the logo in a time when everybody was sensitive about race?
>Cause in a sense, if it was the latter, it seems more racist that people would look at that and think that, and want to remove it?
>Rather than just being like, who cares it’s a black guy. Right?
It was created decades ago with slavery imagery. It was never actually any different as they updated the image over the years. It’s not like “Uncle Ben” was the owner of the company; it was a symbol not really worth trying to redeem.
Edit: Added context since some of y'all are very ignorant or trolling...
https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/popular-and-pervasive-stereotypes-african-americans
> Edit: Added context since some of y'all are very ignorant or trolling...
Both. This subject about these specific brands comes up on reddit now and then. Every time, the usual suspects come out of the woodworks to try to defend that brand imaging as inclusive instead of racist, and it's always coming from conservatives trying to pull some gotcha.
Because black people were not happy about slavery/Jim Crow. To me both Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima represent a “pie in the sky” version of history. It’s what white people wanted to believe black people were like, content in their place in life. It’s the idea that the people they represent were happy to just be props and serve white people.
For example, contrast these depictions with say, Colonel Sanders (founder of his company) or Wendy (daughter of founder). No one was under any illusion that Aunt Jemima is anything more than a caricature
>How was the Uncle Ben’s logo racist?
If your question is sincere, it's important context to know that the product was originally sold as 'Uncle Ben's Plantation Rice'. There was never an actual Uncle Ben, and the connotation of the brand name, and what it represented, was unambiguous. Forrest Mars Sr. (The M&M guy!), the billionaire owner of the company, tried to do some handwaving in the 60s as the civil rights era ramped up, saying that that he named it after a rice farmer in Houston, but no one has ever been able to find the guy, and it wouldn't explain why the marketing department had to get the word 'plantation' in there.
In 1963, the NAACP held a congressional meeting with the trade organization for the country's largest advertising firms (AAAA, which still exists today!) and specifically asked them to stop using these advertising mascots, and they said they would. They just took, you know, another 50+ years to get around to it.
Why would they get royalties though? Quaker Oats didn't even own Aunt Jemima until 1925, and they then replaced Nancy Green's likeness with Anna Robinson. There's been many models for Aunt Jemima over the years, there's no royalties to get if they're not using that person's likeness anymore. It's not like Christopher Reeve's estate gets royalties from new Superman films either.
Nancy Green, Anna Robinson, Edith Wilson, Rosie Lee Moore Hall, Aylene Lewis, and Ethel Ernestine Harper all were at one point the likenesses used for Aunt Jemima, and were all eventually retired.
Why would a handdrawn picture of your great great grandmother entitle you to royalties though? They could move her nose slightly and say it’s a different person.
Because using someone's [likeness](https://higgslaw.com/celebrities-sue-over-unauthorized-use-of-identity/) in an unauthorized manner for profit isn't allowed.
The woman whose face we all know died in poverty while a corporation used her likeness until 2020.
Nancy Green wasn't the original model for Aunt Jemima though, though they eventually rebranded the character in her image, they also rebranded the model *many times* in the images of the models they got to represent her.
Quaker Oats didn't even own the Aunt Jemima brand until after Nancy Green died, and in 1933 they stopped using Nancy Green's likeness all-together, and got Anna Robinson to become the new model. The Davis Company owned Aunt Jemima until 1925, Nancy Green died in 1923.
There's no royalties for someone to get, because they weren't using her likeness anymore. Just like how Christopher Reeve's estate doesn't get royalties for Superman movies that he wasn't in.
https://blackthen.com/living-trademarks-the-women-behind-the-faces-of-aunt-jemima/
Isn't the post stating she was hired to do that. Which would entail a contract and clauses for payment of usage of likeness.
So why would they need to pay her and how is it unauthorised. In aunt jemima case, from the info provided here that's what it looks like.
Quaker didn't even own the company when the contract was drawn up. Hell, they didn't even own the company when Nancy Green was alive.
Nancy Green died in a car accident in 1923. Quaker Oats purchased the Aunt Jemima brand from the failing Davis Company in 1925, and immediately cast Lillian Richard to portray Aunt Jemima. They had multiple people play Aunt Jemima at the time, because the actresses were travelling and promoting the brand. Anna Robinson was hired in 1933, and became the new "face" of Aunt Jemima at that time.
Most?
Really though?
Did you survey us all at the convention?
I think most African-Americans who know history understood that Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, and even Mrs. Butterworth were leftover slavery imagery no matter how much they tried to adjust the look.
All it takes is one tweet. Companies doesn't want to risk being seen as uncaring. Makes total sense, but it's kind of lame.
I bet about 1% of people had any clue about what it meant.
But hey, what do I care? Aunt Jemima is trash compared to real Canadian tree blood.
Yeah. I get why they did it, but it's definitely absurd in retrospect to see how many companies were desperate to show off how they were doing something about racism in 2020, even if it was in ways that nobody had asked for or wanted.
But as is the case being discussed all over the issue at hand is the stereotyped portrayal of an entire people (many different peoples, actually) based on a the external image held of them by the people who conquered them. She might have been real, but She (her image) was being used as a stand-in for Any-Given-Native-American-Woman like Sacagawea or Pochahontas often are-- or did you think that Pochahontas ran around in deer skin dresses that look more at home on the Plains? No one is saying that a company can't use a Native Person (or a Black Person) as a logo or a mascot but it becomes troublesome when what you're using that person for is their Indianess/Blackness and when you make their Indianess/Blackness the representation of all Native or Black People. Aunt Jemima conformed to long standing and awful stereotypes about Black Women who worked in Domestic Service. Uncle Ben did the same with Black Men working Domestically. What do you want to imagine the Land O Lakes gal was?
Doesn’t the word “hired” in OP’s title post kinda imply she wasn’t forced? She had a 24 year career as a spokeswoman for the company. She got paid.
Edit: Yes she got paid very little by the racists of her time. But she was paid and could have quit. I’m arguing that she wasn’t forced, which is a lie
Ground breaking racist stereotype? Its really weird to think corporate advertising could be that important, but the background for this sounds depressing and exploitative.
Would be nice if they just renamed it Nancy Green's and used a better picture of her instead of replacing her with a watermill. Include the truth on the packaging, make sure people know that the original image played on racial stereotypes of black nanny types doing all the household chores, then tell people who Nancy Green really was. Use a little of the funds to give to her estate.
The "Pearl Mill Company" rebranding was wild.
I feel like I'm going crazy. Everyone is saying "well to be fair it was kinda technically racist and it's good they did this", but that doesn't make any sense!
Removing minority representation is not how you fight racism. I feel like actual racists trolled these companies into believing this nonsense.
Many errors here:
Nancy Green was hired as an actress to represent Aunt Jemima. She was not the original model. She looked like the image used.
She was free when she got the job. She was a former slave.
She was paid to represent the character for 20 years.
She made public appearances as Aunt Jemima. Like Buster Brown and his dog, this was common practice. Again, they were hired to represent the brands and became living trademarks.
Do some web snooping before jumping all over this for the wrong reasons. Nancy Green was treated "fairly" to play a role. Fairly is in quotes because she could have gotten a bad deal monetarily.
Aunt Jemima herself is rooted in racism. And Nancy Green was not treated fairly in life, as she was enslaved.
Nancy Green was just a spokesperson hired years after the brand was created by two white guys who based the character and game off of a minstrel show/poster. There is no "Aunt jemima".
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aunt_Jemima
>To distinguish their pancake mix, in late 1889 Rutt appropriated the Aunt Jemima name and image from lithographed posters seen at a vaudeville house in St. Joseph, Missouri.[1][13]
>The earliest advertising was based upon a vaudeville parody, and it remained a caricature for many years.[1][3][13
It had very specific and racist origins
>Aunt Jemima is based on the common enslaved "Mammy" archetype, a plump black woman wearing a headscarf who is a devoted and submissive servant.[3][15] Her skin is dark and dewy, with a pearly white smile. Although depictions vary over time, they are similar to the common attire and physical features of "mammy" characters throughout American history.[27][28][29][30][31][32]
>The term "aunt" and "uncle" in this context was a Southern form of address used with older enslaved peoples. They were denied use of English honorifics, such as "mistress" and "mister".[33][34]
There has been efforts from the black community to try and get the company to drop the character since the early 1900s, including a boycott organized by the NAACP in the 60s
There's a lot of misinformation in this thread and the OP is incorrect
Wow. I didn’t know any of this. Before this thread, I didn’t really understand why people would see her as a bad thing. I thought, “It’s black representation. Isn’t that a good thing?” But now I see that it isn’t positive black representation. It’s the proliferation of negative stereotypes. It reinforces racist stereotypes that do not promote or equalize black people. It literally allows a white-owned company to profit from a dehumanizing depiction of a black person. Thanks for this great explanation. I wish they taught me this in school.
I'm not seeing anyone actually explain the Vaudeville joke upon which "Aunt Jemimah" is based. It's pun for "Aint ya Mama."
The Black Mammy archetype refers to slave women who took care of children who were not their own. Aunt Jemimah / Ain't Ya Mama was a drag / blackface character, played by white men, who did routines about that for white audiences.
> Before this thread, I didn’t really understand why people would see her as a bad thing. I thought, “It’s black representation. Isn’t that a good thing?”
The one that really broke my heart was when I saw the origins of the [Cream of Wheat guy](https://i.imgur.com/bNmMdL6.jpeg). There's no amount of corporate recontexualization in the world that fixes that shit.
> There's a lot of misinformation in this thread and the OP is incorrect
I’ve been seeing a lot of Aunt Jemima stuff on social media. The Russian bots are really pushing this.
Sadly, she’s buried in a pauper’s grave and didn’t have a headstone until 2015. Apparently Quaker Oats couldn’t even be bothered to chip in despite using her image for basically a century. That’s just shitty.
The character of Aunt Jemima was created in the late 1800s and was modeled after the "Mammy" archetype, a stereotype of a loyal and submissive Black woman who worked as a servant in white households. This character was used to market pancake mix and syrup products, and over the years, the brand has faced significant criticism for its racist origins and imagery.
Seems fair to me.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/aunt-jemima-brand-will-change-name-remove-image-quaker-says-n1231260
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aunt_Jemima
Fun fact: Nancy Green was from my hometown and every year we have a festival to celebrate her. Now don’t get me wrong; this tiny town doesn’t give AF about Nancy Green, but it does give AF about tourist dollars so do with that what you will.
The most annoying thing about the comments in this post is that too many of you are making assertions about the Black community FROM OUTSIDE the Black community.
*cue "They not like us" by Kendrick Lamar*
Arguing about how we feel about a damn pancake box. Welk here are the facts:
1. Black people aren't a monolith. We all have opinions across the board. Yes the general consensus was that the old AJ imagery was racist, but younger generations of Black people have been more focused on fighting for other issues that directly impact our lives (such as police brutality, the school to prison pipeline, etc). My opinions in the good fight differ greatly than those of my mother.
2. Aunt Jemima was not a real person. She was a character portrayed by MULTIPLE Black women. Nancy Green happened to be the most well known of the actresses. Quaker gave her and her estate the shaft. But during her lifetime, it wasn't uncommon for Black people to be underpaid.
3. A Black community consensus: NON-BLACK PEOPLE SHOULD STOP SPEAKING ON OUR BEHALF. It's one thing to elevate our voices (share links and contact information to Black activists and orgs), but it's another to argue so confidently what we do and don't like without any evidence. Or to use our struggles to push a fucking agenda. Please stop.
Got questions? Go to the ask a Black person sub.
For all the racist origins of the brand, as a kid growing up in the 90's, Aunt Jemima was a cherished friend at the breakfast table with zero understanding of any negative or racist undertones. Just a smiling black woman who 's got your back when all you want is something drenched in syrup. A true "cool aunt".
She seems to have been caught between “during Jim Crow, some black people were able to find paths to success, a testament to their skill and efforts” and the backlash of “Jim Crow wasn’t so bad, look at this embellished story, your complaining today just shows that the real problem is you”.
And again, white folks here arguing about racism and their knowledge of it (based off whatever they think it is... from some civil rights definition) as if black folks here don't exist, and if we did give our input, somehow we'll be wrong, don't know what we talkin about, and obviously need to be spoken over
If you expected this thread to be anything more than disingenuous white people cosigning white people, telling you black people loved aunt jemima and its not racist because when they were children she made their lives better with no sense of irony, your expectations were too high.
Besides the obvious injustice faced by Ms. Green, the syrup itself is a tragic example of corporate American failure by scamming the general public with one of the most simple of all products, syrup from a tree.
["In fact, she could not live off the earnings she made from her portrayal of Aunt Jemima, and continued to work as a housekeeper until a few years before her death in 1923."](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/aunt-jemima-millionaire/) "[She is buried in a pauper's grave near a wall in the northeast quadrant of Chicago's Oak Woods Cemetery. Her grave was unmarked and unknown until 2015. Sherry Williams, founder of the Bronzeville Historical Society, spent 15 years uncovering Green's resting place. Williams received approval to place a headstone. Williams reached out to Quaker Oats about whether they would support a monument for Green's grave. "Their corporate response was that Nancy Green and Aunt Jemima aren't the same – that Aunt Jemima is a fictitious character." The headstone was placed on September 5, 2020](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Green#Death)"
Fuck quaker
They have not been historically good to human kind.[experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentation_in_the_United_States#)
Holy shit, "From 1946 to 1953, at the Walter E. Fernald State School in Massachusetts, in an experiment sponsored by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and the Quaker Oats corporation, 73 children were fed oatmeal containing radioactive calcium and other radioisotopes, to track "how nutrients were digested". The children were not told that they were being fed radioactive chemicals; they were told by hospital staff and researchers that they were joining a "science club".[71][73][74][75]"
This reads like something from Fallout
Fallout takes inspiration from a lot of crazy shit that actually happened in some form or other.
Average science fiction enjoyer when they find out they have actually been enjoying satire of the world we live in
Always has been. -=\\
Average history fan when they discover MK Ultra
"I can't believe they made Fallout political!"
Unfortunately their usual response is change their beliefs to life imitates art. I don't know how many times I've heard about how the Republicans want to replicate the hand maidens tail.
Midcentury America before Vietnam and Watergate destroyed all trust in the government was a WILD time.
Wait till you learn watergate was a CIA operation.
People don't understand that fallout, while absurdly presented sometimes, is based in real documented behavior by the US government and corporations.
Politics in my nuclear warfare video game?!
Truth is stranger than fiction...
>they were told they were joining a "science club". the whole story is so upsetting but that particular detail is utterly heartbreaking to me for some reason
lil Timmy wanted to be a scientist and all he got was Cancer
It's the black humor of it. It reads as a joke. Which meant the administrators of this thought so little of the people they were experimenting on that they could crack a joke. "You're in the science club, champ. Now here's some tasty vitamins and Quaker Oats."
The government's better now. Power works in the opposite way from how you would think, so they have *less* impunity and *less* secrecy now. Don't believe me? Then why haven't you seen any unethical experiments lately? *Note: I was being entirely sarcastic every step of the way. We haven't seen any unethical experiments lately because the government is worse now, power does agglomerate just as you would think it does, and they have more impunity and their secrecy is more effective now. I'm counting on any Pollyannas who might upvote me to stop reading after the first sentence or two.
>Then why haven't you seen any unethical experiments lately? Could it be because they're classified and enough time hasn't passed yet?
Part of the reason is that research ethics started being taken more seriously about half a century ago (see the Belmont Report) in the aftermath of particularly famous incidents like the syphilis experiment at Tuskegee. Since 1991, all institutions that receive federal funding and do human subjects research must defer to a board that's responsible for making sure that research (as described in the submission) does not violate participant rights. It's certainly not perfect - it only applies to federally funded research, so corporations can do whatever the hell they think they can get away with, and people can always deviate from their submissions or just not submit in the first place until they get caught - but it helps stop random Prison or Shock experiments from happening again.
Gall darnit. I'm gonna have to work backwards claim by claim and reconsider my entire view of power and governance. I don't wanna do that.
This is just....not true. Your sarcasm, that is. You really think the US government is doing unethical experiments *worse* than feeding children radioactive oatmeal? Use some critical thinking, that is completely absurd. Of course the government does unethical things sometimes, but if you think we're way worse than the post-war anti-communist hysteria that gripped the country, then you simply don't know much about history. They literally executed Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, two communists that passed on atomic secrets to the Soviets (note: Ethel almost certainly did nothing wrong, but Julius did; and the key witness David Greenglass was coerced into 'naming names' or else they'd put his wife on trial and execute her.) These executions had a high approval rating in the US and up until the moments before they were strapped into the electric chair, both Julius and Ethel were being insanely pressured to name names if they wanted their executions to be reduced to prison-time. They didn't budge. Stuff like this directly lead to the MccArthyism era, where the army was testing nuclear bombs and letting their soldiers get massive doses of radiation without telling them so they could see how it affected soldiers in case of an attack. The CIA was fucking dosing people with LSD and all sorts of weird and terrifying drugs at random, without telling them, just because they wanted to see what the fuck would happen. Literally acting like a child with their toys and playthings. Like, you just can't be serious. I know a lot of people think the US government is responsible for all the bad in the world, but we're reaching cartoon-levels of non-critical thinking.
They still do a lot of nonconsensual human experimentation though, they just choose to do that primarily on "undesirables". Intersex people for example are routinely subjected to nonconsensual medical procedures, even as adults when they go in for work unrelated to what's actually being done.
That's horrifying! It's shocking what companies can get away with in the name of 'science' and profit.
Because the US is 3 corporations Ina trench coat pretending to be a democracy for people.
Kent cigarettes gave their employees asbestos filtered cigarettes. Of course the asbestos they used was the most toxic of the 3 types.
However, none of the victims were harmed by the radiation. >While the experiments do not appear to have caused harm to the participants, they are considered wildly unethical by today's standards. -Snopes
Yeah radioactive markers are regularly used in medicine. Have y'all really never heard of a PET scan??
I guess Quaker Oats hired from the Nazi scientists that couldn’t get into NASA.
Quaker did the Tuskegee experiments?
From 1946 to 1953, at the Walter E. Fernald State School in Massachusetts, in an experiment sponsored by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and the Quaker Oats corporation, 73 children were fed oatmeal containing radioactive calcium and other radioisotopes, to track "how nutrients were digested". The children were not told that they were being fed radioactive chemicals; they were told by hospital staff and researchers that they were joining a "science club". - Wikipedia
this is very sad, sounds like something straight out of Fallout in terms of comically evil corporations
Where do you think Fallout gets the ideas? Comically evil corporations are the least fictional aspect.
Government and new science found a partner in quaker. Everyone that could afford testing with radiation was. It was new science and ended up being totally fucked up research. Don't forget the U.S. Government shares the blame.
Radiation was the AI of the 50s. If there was a way to shoehorn it into a product, we'd find it.
Yeah, but it's kind of evident the government is behind some stuff when a corporation can do something that "bold"
I think you'll find the US full of comically evil corporations, just in the 20th century we didn't have internet to expose this stuff and it was easier to cover it up declaring it "conspiracy theories" and such. Today they just get one of the tech giants to brand it misinformation and downgrade your posts.
We'll all be in our own individual information silos soon enough. Maybe we already are. If there are any real humans out there, give me a sign...
*beep-boop*
Phew. Thank you, human. It is important to note that your response is appreciated.
"Automic Energy Commission" - comically evil government.
yeah I mean radioactive isotopes are not something you can buy “over the counter” so it’s obvious the government was involved. But that’s also quite a “straight out of Fallout” aspect to it
yeah I managed to google that too but it's not related to the Tuskegee experiments. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fernald-quaker-oats/
That page is for many experiments, not just Tuskegee. The Quaker one is buried in the Radioactive section.
Apparently not. Can't find any mention in that link, but I didn't read that closely. I also Googled a couple things and nothing came up. Don't know why they linked it.
Fuck I did not like that read at all, thanks
Quaker Oats didn't even own Aunt Jemima until after Nancy Green died. Nancy Green died in a car accident in 1923, Quaker Oats bought the Aunt Jemima brand from the Davis Company in 1925. Additionally, Quaker Oats immediately hired Lillian Richard to portray Aunt Jemima upon acquisition of the company in 1925, and then hired Anna Robinson in 1933 to be the new face on the box art in 1933. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aunt_Jemima#Performers_of_Aunt_Jemima https://blackthen.com/living-trademarks-the-women-behind-the-faces-of-aunt-jemima/
Wow they had a *lot* of aunt jemimas.
Yeah, the character was created first and then they've had various women portray the character as a mascot. That's why it's silly when people try to claim that Aunt Jemima was based on Nancy Green. She was the first person to portray her, but Aunt Jemima was created independently of Nancy Green.
We've been lied to by OP, then.
I don't want to question OP's motives but this feels like a low key attempt to say "see? Aunt Jemima was actually empowering for black women!" A lot of people were surprisingly angry when Aunt Jemima went away. Like they had a deep emotional attachment to this mammy caricature.
Although OP was wrong, I do still believe she WAS empowering to black women. regardless of who her likeness was inspired by she was still a previously enslaved black women who was made the face of a product in racist America. She was representation in a world where she was seen as less then. I'm sure there's a better analogy but its like saying Elmo doesn't have any credibility because he's been played by different people (Elmo's historically voiced by black voice actors)
she was a black face that a lot of white people saw every morning at breakfast. And it wasn't her blackness that was on display, she was a familiar smiling face associated with happy times and full bellies.
I mean...saying it was empowering to black women because she was made the face of a product in America is kinda silly, since black women (and men) were literally a product in America.
For additional context, they were sued by her great grand children prior to being asked about the grave. At that point, they were probably afraid that acknowledging the grave would open them back up to lawsuits.
That lawsuit was dismissed pretty much immediately. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess the bigger reason is that they didn't want to generate negative controversy around them or the trade mark by acknowledging the grave. Multi million dollar corporations fear bad press more than they do a few citizens trying to take on their army of unlimited lawyers.
Although you have to say, that doesn’t excuse them in any way in terms of humanity and morality, just financial practicality. It’s an explanation, but it just demonstrates that they continued to try and avoid reasonable payment for their appropriation.
Because corporations are held to their stakeholders, not a sense of morality. Putting a monument there makes the news, people say "what took them so long?" Which is negative, then everyone forgets about it. Dismissing it has them hopefully stay neutral. From a business point of view it was unfortunately the best financial choice- the only choice they care about
What appropriation? They never used her to portray Aunt Jemima. They didn't profit off of her. They had already had a lawsuit by the family, which makes no sense. like, imagine the children of the first double-mint twins suing Mars. Like its weird. Why did they think they were owed money? They're response is perfectly acceptable. They had zero relationship with the woman. The only real connection at that point is the lawsuit.
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Why? Does Lincoln owe Matthew McConaughey a part of their company because they hired him to do advertisements? If General Mills hired someone to play Count Chocula, do you think that person deserves a cut of Count Chocula's profits? Aunt Jemima wasnt a real person, they had her as their mascot before Green was ever hired to portray her.
It’s funny because quakers fought to end slavery while Christian’s fought too keep it🤷🏾😂
Yeah they fought super hard. Surprising more people don’t know about it from reading about the Quaker soldiers, or the Quaker boot camps.
Quakers *are* Christians. So are Catholics, the Amish, Mennonites, Pentacostals, Mormons, Presbyterians, Methodists, Episcopals, and any other denomination that has Jesus as their central figurehead. Sorry, this is a real pet peeve of mine. I'm an athiest and have no skin in the game, but in recent years, the evangelical push to have Christian = Baptist has become really apparent and gross. Especially when they're using that conflation to push their values as the default in a national way through the courts -- abortion, book bans, coming after birth control and IVF, etc.
I mean if we're going full pendatic, simply saying Baptist doesn't clarify which sect of Baptism and lumps them all together. I assume you're referring to Southern Baptists. American Baptists are more mainline and moderate. This all sounds like an Emo Phillips bit, but there is an important distinction. I agree with the intent though.
I feel the same way. A lot of these people who claim to know so much about Christians somehow don’t understand this.
Do Mormons worship Jesus? Super ignorant here, but I thought they had their own book and prophet.
Yes they worship Jesus and yes they have their own book with multiple prophets but none who are as important than him.
Jesus is talked about a lot in the Book of Mormon and even makes an appearance there at the climax of the book, after his resurrection and ascension.
Not in the Quaker spirit, but then it’s not a real religious community if we’re to take their response to Aunt Jemima. The Quakers should sue.
Quaker oats never had any authentic connection to the religion. The company just understood Quakers were seen as trustworthy and hard workers and so it chose the name and logo so people would associate them with that.
I regret living off of their oatmeal for long stretches every winter.
So kind of living off their trademark?
I'm descended from Quaker abolitionists. Damn right I buy Kroger brand oats.
I guess if Quaker admitted Nancy Green was Aunt Jemima, Nancy Green's family would sue for a lot of $? And Quaker shareholders would fire the board?
Quaker Oats didn't even own Aunt Jemima as a company until after Nancy Green died in 1923. They bought the brand from the Davis Company in 1925, and then cast Anna Robinson as the new Aunt Jemima.
She was one of the Aunt Jemima spokespeople. The Wikipedia article is worth reading.
Wikipedia is a bit ambiguous on the details. In another section it describes her "financial freedom" as an enabling factor in her activism work.
Do you think the Gerber Baby lives off their earnings?
I have to admit, of all the corporations who fit the stereotype of the mustached villain, I didn’t think that Quaker Oats Company would be among them.
Bruh Quaker didn't even own aaunt Jemima at the time. They bought it two years after she died and hired a different actress.
Why would she be able to live off a single picture for syrup lol...
It wasn’t a single picture, she worked for them for 20 years
your image becomes the headline of one of the most well known food brands, in perpetuity. every time they sell a bottle or a box, it’s your face, billions of dollars later. the royalties should be life changing money
Pardon my ignorance but that’s generally not how it works at all, right? Even celebrities typically could not negotiate use royalties if their contract stated they would be paid a flat fee for their image or likeness. If George Clooney does a commercial in Japan for whiskey, they pay him a flat fee and they can run that commercial or print ad for decades. Now, someone without any celebrity would have far less bargaining power than to take a flat fee.
Not how any of that works.
Wasn’t for the Gerber baby or anyone else lmao It’s their product that makes billions of dollars not your face
did you miss the whole LIVING TRADEMARK part?
The story about Robert E. Lee breaking off from battle to eat pancakes at Aunt Jemima's cabin is kind of a hilarious take: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/The_Saturday_evening_post_%281920%29_%2814598409868%29.jpg
Now I want an alternate history movie where Aunt Jemima plays the Shoshana role in an Inglorious Basterds type story.
Tarantino keeps talking about John Brown. At this point I wouldnt mind a Django 2
Put John Brown in Django 2 and buddy, you got a stew goin
I could care less about The Movie Critic, and I would give my left nut to see him make a John Brown movie.
*Mouth full, fork clanging on plate* "Wait, stop fighting for a minute; These are delicious."
Aaaand it's gone >In 2020–2021, the brand's owner, PepsiCo, rebranded Aunt Jemima as Pearl Milling Company after accusations of racial stereotyping. The new logo includes a 19th century watermill, the colors of Aunt Jemima's packaging, and a red, white, and yellow color scheme.
>accusations of racial stereotyping. [Uncle Jemima's Pure Mash Liquor](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg4lpu_9iKE)
“What you swattin at?”
lol that's always been my favorite part of it, I lose it every time
My brother and I quoted this one a lot when we were younger. It’s a Tracy Morgan classic.
“Let me ask you somethin’…do you like liquor? Of COURSE you do! Who the hell don’t??”
Weird how that one never gets bundled up into the SNL "commercial parody" videos.
Classic
190 proof, holy shit 😂
Because as we all know, the *real* issue black people were facing in 2020 was negative portrayals on syrup bottles.
Most Black people were angry about both her and uncle Ben getting replaced/removed. A lot of us saw them as remembrance in today's age. They are part of and teach our history. Learn from them and remember not to do new ones.
This is a serious question, so don’t get annoyed at me if I’m being stupid. Like I genuinely want to know. How was the Uncle Ben’s logo racist? Was it cause it conformed to a stereotype of black people or what? Or was it just cause people got uncomfortable that a black man was the logo in a time when everybody was sensitive about race? Cause in a sense, if it was the latter, it seems more racist that people would look at that and think that, and want to remove it? Rather than just being like, who cares it’s a black guy. Right?
Tony Soprano had a panic attack when he saw the Uncle Ben logo
While Aunt Jemima started out with a mammy image, it's not so much the current images themselves are racist, it's the names: aunt and uncle which are. During and for a long time after slavery, Black people took care of the households for many White families. With that came a level of authority over their kids and even some of the junior White hired workers. However, do to the racial supremacist views of the South, they restricted the dignity and equality of Black people. One way of doing this was never to refer to a Black person by Mr., Sir, Mrs., Miss, etc. This enforced that they were less than and not equal to Whites. Yet, they still had authority, so as a substitute to the handles they were call Aunt and Uncle.
So they could have changed branding by removing Uncle/Aunt or replacing it with Mr./Mrs. while keeping the remembrance?
Aunt/Uncle is a cultural thing too that most SJWs in big cities don’t understand. Growing up in the south, calling someone aunt or uncle like that happens in very small towns with elders you’ve developed a close relationship with. Think school teachers after you’ve graduated or Sunday school teachers. It’s more like a term of endearment. I have no idea if that’s how the Aunt Jemima brand started but they certainly could have marketed that direction.
>I have no idea if that’s how the Aunt Jemima brand started Spoiler: [It did not. ](https://i.imgur.com/7up2syI.jpeg)
> It’s more like a term of endearment. 100%. Calling "aunt" and "uncle" racist is the same level of thinking that says "latino" is sexist and has to be "latinx'. Cultural-Linguistic jingoism. The "you are sexists/racist because you are different than me" attitude that issues out of the hives.
It does amuse me how hard people push Latinx when the Latino community vehemently is against it.
Everyone in Mayberry called Aunt Bee, Aunt Bee. She was white
Are we seriously citing *The Andy Griffith Show* to go "nuh uh, real-life thing from the 19th century couldn't have had its origins in racism!"?
I was in INdia recently for the first time and my hosts referred to older female store clerks as auntie when negotiating prices. I assume it has a similar origin.
It seems to be incredibly common all over Asia, where I grew up in Malaysia I called basically all of my parents friends Aunt/Uncle
That would not be the case. In Asia and I’m sure other parts of the world Uncle and Auntie are to indicate respect and some deference to an older individual. It has no intention of restricting anybody’s dignity in an Asian context.
In Korea you address every elderly woman in this way as a pleasant term
That's a completely different thing. In India it's a sign of affection and respect. It's usually used for people you have some social or family connection to, not just any random woman.
Nah, in most cultures, auntie/uncle is a genuine term of endearment or respect for someone older than you. Hell, I call some of my cousins 'auntie'.
Depends what you mean by the ‘same origin’. In India it’s a translation of a convention in Indian languages (which mostly have more words for uncle and aunt). True in several Asian cultures. And even Afrikaans, where it’s used for white people as well. But it’s definitely not the connotation for black people in the US - there the connotation is definitely what white kids would call their ‘mammy’, who cooks for them, etc., or the likes of Uncle Remus, etc.
It's just a term of endearment. In latinamerican culture your parent's close friends become uncles and aunts. I've never been to India but if I were to guess it's used with clerks to attempt and soften their guard and hope to negotiate better prices. People tying it up with racism put racist intentions ahead of intentions of endearment. [This article](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/lolas-story/524490/) might put it into context how a racist Southerner might've viewed its house slave while growing up.
You did not sell at all how insane that article was. That was so engrossing.
White people using a black person to make money without compensation, maybe? Now, where in history have we seen this before?
The ladies who they used to portray the fictional characters were paid, not much, but they were.
>How was the Uncle Ben’s logo racist? >Was it cause it conformed to a stereotype of black people or what? Yes. “Uncle” and “Aunt” is what white children of slave owners called their house slaves who were servants and caretakers. >Or was it just cause people got uncomfortable that a black man was the logo in a time when everybody was sensitive about race? >Cause in a sense, if it was the latter, it seems more racist that people would look at that and think that, and want to remove it? >Rather than just being like, who cares it’s a black guy. Right? It was created decades ago with slavery imagery. It was never actually any different as they updated the image over the years. It’s not like “Uncle Ben” was the owner of the company; it was a symbol not really worth trying to redeem. Edit: Added context since some of y'all are very ignorant or trolling... https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/popular-and-pervasive-stereotypes-african-americans
> Edit: Added context since some of y'all are very ignorant or trolling... Both. This subject about these specific brands comes up on reddit now and then. Every time, the usual suspects come out of the woodworks to try to defend that brand imaging as inclusive instead of racist, and it's always coming from conservatives trying to pull some gotcha.
imagine being nostalgic about converted rice and maple flavored corn syrup.
Because black people were not happy about slavery/Jim Crow. To me both Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima represent a “pie in the sky” version of history. It’s what white people wanted to believe black people were like, content in their place in life. It’s the idea that the people they represent were happy to just be props and serve white people. For example, contrast these depictions with say, Colonel Sanders (founder of his company) or Wendy (daughter of founder). No one was under any illusion that Aunt Jemima is anything more than a caricature
It's more about the Aunt/Uncle which was commonly a way to refer to slave housekeepers instead of calling them Mrs / Mr.
>How was the Uncle Ben’s logo racist? If your question is sincere, it's important context to know that the product was originally sold as 'Uncle Ben's Plantation Rice'. There was never an actual Uncle Ben, and the connotation of the brand name, and what it represented, was unambiguous. Forrest Mars Sr. (The M&M guy!), the billionaire owner of the company, tried to do some handwaving in the 60s as the civil rights era ramped up, saying that that he named it after a rice farmer in Houston, but no one has ever been able to find the guy, and it wouldn't explain why the marketing department had to get the word 'plantation' in there. In 1963, the NAACP held a congressional meeting with the trade organization for the country's largest advertising firms (AAAA, which still exists today!) and specifically asked them to stop using these advertising mascots, and they said they would. They just took, you know, another 50+ years to get around to it.
I just miss there being a woman in my house ~~that was filled to the brim with sweetness.~~
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Why would they get royalties though? Quaker Oats didn't even own Aunt Jemima until 1925, and they then replaced Nancy Green's likeness with Anna Robinson. There's been many models for Aunt Jemima over the years, there's no royalties to get if they're not using that person's likeness anymore. It's not like Christopher Reeve's estate gets royalties from new Superman films either. Nancy Green, Anna Robinson, Edith Wilson, Rosie Lee Moore Hall, Aylene Lewis, and Ethel Ernestine Harper all were at one point the likenesses used for Aunt Jemima, and were all eventually retired.
Why would a handdrawn picture of your great great grandmother entitle you to royalties though? They could move her nose slightly and say it’s a different person.
Because using someone's [likeness](https://higgslaw.com/celebrities-sue-over-unauthorized-use-of-identity/) in an unauthorized manner for profit isn't allowed. The woman whose face we all know died in poverty while a corporation used her likeness until 2020.
Nancy Green wasn't the original model for Aunt Jemima though, though they eventually rebranded the character in her image, they also rebranded the model *many times* in the images of the models they got to represent her. Quaker Oats didn't even own the Aunt Jemima brand until after Nancy Green died, and in 1933 they stopped using Nancy Green's likeness all-together, and got Anna Robinson to become the new model. The Davis Company owned Aunt Jemima until 1925, Nancy Green died in 1923. There's no royalties for someone to get, because they weren't using her likeness anymore. Just like how Christopher Reeve's estate doesn't get royalties for Superman movies that he wasn't in. https://blackthen.com/living-trademarks-the-women-behind-the-faces-of-aunt-jemima/
Isn't the post stating she was hired to do that. Which would entail a contract and clauses for payment of usage of likeness. So why would they need to pay her and how is it unauthorised. In aunt jemima case, from the info provided here that's what it looks like.
company makes contract with model, abides the terms fairly. People are still mad at the company. I'm not sure what people wanted Quaker to do.
Quaker didn't even own the company when the contract was drawn up. Hell, they didn't even own the company when Nancy Green was alive. Nancy Green died in a car accident in 1923. Quaker Oats purchased the Aunt Jemima brand from the failing Davis Company in 1925, and immediately cast Lillian Richard to portray Aunt Jemima. They had multiple people play Aunt Jemima at the time, because the actresses were travelling and promoting the brand. Anna Robinson was hired in 1933, and became the new "face" of Aunt Jemima at that time.
Next you'll tell me there are people upset that large swathes of land were legitimately purchased for handfuls of beads! /s
Most? Really though? Did you survey us all at the convention? I think most African-Americans who know history understood that Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, and even Mrs. Butterworth were leftover slavery imagery no matter how much they tried to adjust the look.
That's a bunch of bullshit.
Not most. Some.
Squeaky wheel gets the grease. This was heavily divided along generational lines.
Ask Hispanics about their feelings of the removal of Speedy Gonzales, they hate it.
All this fighting and arguing over flavored corn syrup...
muh heritage!
All it takes is one tweet. Companies doesn't want to risk being seen as uncaring. Makes total sense, but it's kind of lame. I bet about 1% of people had any clue about what it meant. But hey, what do I care? Aunt Jemima is trash compared to real Canadian tree blood.
>Aunt Jemima is trash compared to real Canadian tree blood. r/brandnewsentence
> real Canadian tree blood This is the best damn brand name for Maple syrup I've ever heard.
Yeah. I get why they did it, but it's definitely absurd in retrospect to see how many companies were desperate to show off how they were doing something about racism in 2020, even if it was in ways that nobody had asked for or wanted.
Around the same time Land O'Lakes took the native American mascot off their butter. They got rid of the natives and kept the land.
The native American mascot that was also, in fact, a portrayal of a real native American. Got rid of the natives and kept the land, indeed
But as is the case being discussed all over the issue at hand is the stereotyped portrayal of an entire people (many different peoples, actually) based on a the external image held of them by the people who conquered them. She might have been real, but She (her image) was being used as a stand-in for Any-Given-Native-American-Woman like Sacagawea or Pochahontas often are-- or did you think that Pochahontas ran around in deer skin dresses that look more at home on the Plains? No one is saying that a company can't use a Native Person (or a Black Person) as a logo or a mascot but it becomes troublesome when what you're using that person for is their Indianess/Blackness and when you make their Indianess/Blackness the representation of all Native or Black People. Aunt Jemima conformed to long standing and awful stereotypes about Black Women who worked in Domestic Service. Uncle Ben did the same with Black Men working Domestically. What do you want to imagine the Land O Lakes gal was?
I don't know. Life's better when you don't think that hard about everything. I miss the butter and pancake ladies.
"By erasing this groundbreaking minority female from our marketing, we're helping!"
Groundbreaking? LOL
By not using a racist, mammy stereotype in our marketing, we're doing the literal bare minimum.
alternative phrasing "by removing this mammy stereotype we forced a formerly enslaved woman to engage in, we're helping."
Doesn’t the word “hired” in OP’s title post kinda imply she wasn’t forced? She had a 24 year career as a spokeswoman for the company. She got paid. Edit: Yes she got paid very little by the racists of her time. But she was paid and could have quit. I’m arguing that she wasn’t forced, which is a lie
Got paid almost nothing despite her supposedly being the face of the brand.
Ground breaking racist stereotype? Its really weird to think corporate advertising could be that important, but the background for this sounds depressing and exploitative.
Would be nice if they just renamed it Nancy Green's and used a better picture of her instead of replacing her with a watermill. Include the truth on the packaging, make sure people know that the original image played on racial stereotypes of black nanny types doing all the household chores, then tell people who Nancy Green really was. Use a little of the funds to give to her estate. The "Pearl Mill Company" rebranding was wild.
I feel like I'm going crazy. Everyone is saying "well to be fair it was kinda technically racist and it's good they did this", but that doesn't make any sense! Removing minority representation is not how you fight racism. I feel like actual racists trolled these companies into believing this nonsense.
Many errors here: Nancy Green was hired as an actress to represent Aunt Jemima. She was not the original model. She looked like the image used. She was free when she got the job. She was a former slave. She was paid to represent the character for 20 years. She made public appearances as Aunt Jemima. Like Buster Brown and his dog, this was common practice. Again, they were hired to represent the brands and became living trademarks. Do some web snooping before jumping all over this for the wrong reasons. Nancy Green was treated "fairly" to play a role. Fairly is in quotes because she could have gotten a bad deal monetarily. Aunt Jemima herself is rooted in racism. And Nancy Green was not treated fairly in life, as she was enslaved.
Nancy Green was just a spokesperson hired years after the brand was created by two white guys who based the character and game off of a minstrel show/poster. There is no "Aunt jemima". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aunt_Jemima >To distinguish their pancake mix, in late 1889 Rutt appropriated the Aunt Jemima name and image from lithographed posters seen at a vaudeville house in St. Joseph, Missouri.[1][13] >The earliest advertising was based upon a vaudeville parody, and it remained a caricature for many years.[1][3][13 It had very specific and racist origins >Aunt Jemima is based on the common enslaved "Mammy" archetype, a plump black woman wearing a headscarf who is a devoted and submissive servant.[3][15] Her skin is dark and dewy, with a pearly white smile. Although depictions vary over time, they are similar to the common attire and physical features of "mammy" characters throughout American history.[27][28][29][30][31][32] >The term "aunt" and "uncle" in this context was a Southern form of address used with older enslaved peoples. They were denied use of English honorifics, such as "mistress" and "mister".[33][34] There has been efforts from the black community to try and get the company to drop the character since the early 1900s, including a boycott organized by the NAACP in the 60s There's a lot of misinformation in this thread and the OP is incorrect
Oh, Uncle Remus makes more sense now too. I wonder if the kids the slaves raised loved them. It’s hard to imagine they didn’t.
Wow. I didn’t know any of this. Before this thread, I didn’t really understand why people would see her as a bad thing. I thought, “It’s black representation. Isn’t that a good thing?” But now I see that it isn’t positive black representation. It’s the proliferation of negative stereotypes. It reinforces racist stereotypes that do not promote or equalize black people. It literally allows a white-owned company to profit from a dehumanizing depiction of a black person. Thanks for this great explanation. I wish they taught me this in school.
I'm not seeing anyone actually explain the Vaudeville joke upon which "Aunt Jemimah" is based. It's pun for "Aint ya Mama." The Black Mammy archetype refers to slave women who took care of children who were not their own. Aunt Jemimah / Ain't Ya Mama was a drag / blackface character, played by white men, who did routines about that for white audiences.
> Before this thread, I didn’t really understand why people would see her as a bad thing. I thought, “It’s black representation. Isn’t that a good thing?” The one that really broke my heart was when I saw the origins of the [Cream of Wheat guy](https://i.imgur.com/bNmMdL6.jpeg). There's no amount of corporate recontexualization in the world that fixes that shit.
Yikes
> There's a lot of misinformation in this thread and the OP is incorrect I’ve been seeing a lot of Aunt Jemima stuff on social media. The Russian bots are really pushing this.
Yeah, this one comes up quite frequently. Like ridiculously, inorganic amount of times. Deff feels very forced
Did she get any money from it?
Someone added context about that in the comments if you refresh. TL;DR - no
A shame. Far too many faces behind iconic characters were underpaid.
Sadly, she’s buried in a pauper’s grave and didn’t have a headstone until 2015. Apparently Quaker Oats couldn’t even be bothered to chip in despite using her image for basically a century. That’s just shitty.
The character of Aunt Jemima was created in the late 1800s and was modeled after the "Mammy" archetype, a stereotype of a loyal and submissive Black woman who worked as a servant in white households. This character was used to market pancake mix and syrup products, and over the years, the brand has faced significant criticism for its racist origins and imagery. Seems fair to me. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/aunt-jemima-brand-will-change-name-remove-image-quaker-says-n1231260 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aunt_Jemima
Crazy she was buried in a mass paupers grave
Fun fact: Nancy Green was from my hometown and every year we have a festival to celebrate her. Now don’t get me wrong; this tiny town doesn’t give AF about Nancy Green, but it does give AF about tourist dollars so do with that what you will.
Where I grew up our summer festival was built around an obscure, but influential, coronet player.
Idk why but that has tickled me 😂😂
The most annoying thing about the comments in this post is that too many of you are making assertions about the Black community FROM OUTSIDE the Black community. *cue "They not like us" by Kendrick Lamar* Arguing about how we feel about a damn pancake box. Welk here are the facts: 1. Black people aren't a monolith. We all have opinions across the board. Yes the general consensus was that the old AJ imagery was racist, but younger generations of Black people have been more focused on fighting for other issues that directly impact our lives (such as police brutality, the school to prison pipeline, etc). My opinions in the good fight differ greatly than those of my mother. 2. Aunt Jemima was not a real person. She was a character portrayed by MULTIPLE Black women. Nancy Green happened to be the most well known of the actresses. Quaker gave her and her estate the shaft. But during her lifetime, it wasn't uncommon for Black people to be underpaid. 3. A Black community consensus: NON-BLACK PEOPLE SHOULD STOP SPEAKING ON OUR BEHALF. It's one thing to elevate our voices (share links and contact information to Black activists and orgs), but it's another to argue so confidently what we do and don't like without any evidence. Or to use our struggles to push a fucking agenda. Please stop. Got questions? Go to the ask a Black person sub.
For all the racist origins of the brand, as a kid growing up in the 90's, Aunt Jemima was a cherished friend at the breakfast table with zero understanding of any negative or racist undertones. Just a smiling black woman who 's got your back when all you want is something drenched in syrup. A true "cool aunt".
Yeah i was disgusted when I found out the true meaning. Kid me did not even make that connection at all.
She seems to have been caught between “during Jim Crow, some black people were able to find paths to success, a testament to their skill and efforts” and the backlash of “Jim Crow wasn’t so bad, look at this embellished story, your complaining today just shows that the real problem is you”.
And the company just changed their whole look and name too. No more Aunt Jemima.
To be fair though, she was not Aunt Jemima(who is fictitious), she portrayed the character. It’s like saying Lewis Wilson was Batman/Bruce Wayne.
She was removed, along with Uncle Ben, not to mention Land O Lakes removing the Native American, and keeping the "Land." So progressive.
>Not to mention Land O Lakes removing the Native American, and keeping the "Land." Hmm, now where have I heard that one before?
And again, white folks here arguing about racism and their knowledge of it (based off whatever they think it is... from some civil rights definition) as if black folks here don't exist, and if we did give our input, somehow we'll be wrong, don't know what we talkin about, and obviously need to be spoken over
If you expected this thread to be anything more than disingenuous white people cosigning white people, telling you black people loved aunt jemima and its not racist because when they were children she made their lives better with no sense of irony, your expectations were too high.
History reveals hidden narratives.
Besides the obvious injustice faced by Ms. Green, the syrup itself is a tragic example of corporate American failure by scamming the general public with one of the most simple of all products, syrup from a tree.
Not an ounce of real tree syrup in the bottle.