Why Aunt Jemima Had to Go

This week Quaker Oats announced they will be doing away with Aunt Jemima as the face and name of their pancake brand. Aunt Jemima is a fictional character used by the company’s founders to appeal to and comfort White Americans, who longed for the days of the Antebellum South, as a means to sell their pancake mix. The character was based off a song and character from a minstrel show. The song “Old Aunt Jemima” was written by African American comedian, songwriter, and minstrel show performer Billy Kersands. In 1889, Chris Pratt and Charles Underwood got the idea to use Aunt Jemima for their pancake mix after seeing the character in a minstrel show. Nancy Green, a freed slave, became a real live face for the brand. She would make appearances where she “dressed as Aunt Jemima, sang songs, cooked pancakes, and told romanticized stories about the Old South — a happy place for blacks and whites alike, now accessible only by nostalgia, or buying Aunt Jemima pancake recipe.”

Aunt Jemima

Aunt Jemima is a mammy figure. The mammy archetype is a Black woman who lived in the plantation house happily caring for the White household as a cook, caretaker, seamstress, and personal assistant. Hattie McDaniel’s role as Mammy in Gone With the Wind is the perfect…