Racist Mascots HAVE TO GO
by Mike Lunsford, Editor-In-Chief
As you take time out of you day to flip through various social media streams, you tend to see a lot of the same things repeating themselves. The one on my feed that is currently getting a lot of shares is about Aunt Jemima. Why is this receiving the viral treatment? Back in 2020, Aunt Jemima’s parent company Quaker Oats decided to change the name of the product due to its racist history. So what has social media done? They’ve found a way to emotionally manipulate people into thinking this name change shouldn’t happen. And people are sharing it because they are missing the big picture.
The post in question discusses the work of Nancy Green, an enslaved Black woman who was born in Kentucky in 1834. She went on to be chosen as the spokesperson of Aunt Jemima’s ready-made pancake mix. Here, read the viral narrative for yourself:
Nancy Green, a large Black woman wearing gingham dress and headscarf, smiling and holding two boxes of Aunt Jemima pancake mix.
I share this post and an image of Nancy Green playing her role for a purpose. This post is emotionally manipulative because it keeps vital context out of the narrative in order to support the OP's beliefs that Quaker Oats had to change the Aunt Jemima product name because of "cancel culture." It purposefully distorts Ms. Green's real life struggle to make it seem like changing the racist, stereotypical mascot of Aunt Jemima is somehow insulting to her. The true context is this:
The role of Aunt Jemima was created before Quaker Oats chose Nancy Green. It was cultivated from a song called “Old Aunt Jemima,” originally written by a white man named Billy Kersands and performed in black face. It was a stereotype of a Black woman who sang of a simpler time, when Black folk were still enslaved people and happy about it. So, there’s the first lie: it was branded after Nancy Green. The name and the racial stereotypes pre-date her performance.
The “good storyteller” aspect? Yeah, so her abilities to spin a yarn were probably great but let's be real here…she was telling a story that the R.T. Davis Milling Company created for her: romanticized stories about the “Old South” claiming it was a happy place for blacks and whites alike. More about the stories she told below.
She was signed to a “lifetime contract” - this is total bullshit. In fact, she was replaced by another exploited Black woman named Agnes Moody in 1900 because Ms. Green refused to go to Paris for an exhibition. She was afraid of traveling across the ocean. The company fired her, replaced her with Ms. Moody, and then the company reported that Ms. Moody was the original Aunt Jemima. The company completely erasing Ms. Green’s work.
“Extremely well paid” - also bullshit. By 1910, Ms. Green was back to being a housekeeper and very few people even knew that she was ever Aunt Jemima. This is more proof that the “lifetime contract” statement is garbage.
“Financial freedom” - my God! The woman was living with her great-nephew and his wife at the time of her death, and still working as a housekeeper. She did NOT maintain her job until 1923 when she died. She stopped playing the character in 1900!
“ERASED by politics” - Alright…let’s stop this shit right now. She is not suddenly erased by current politics. She was erased by racism and lies almost 100 years ago. When she died in 1923 at the age of 89, she was buried in a pauper’s grave in Chicago with no headstone. Sherry Williams, founder of the Bronzeville Historical Society, spent 15 years uncovering Ms. Green's resting place, and it wasn’t until 2020 that a headstone was finally placed. Now mind you, Ms. Williams reached out to Quaker Oats about potentially building a memorial to honor Nancy Green's role as their corporate mascot, their response is as follows:
…Nancy Green and Aunt Jemima aren’t the same — Aunt Jemima is a fictitious character.
Are you noticing a trend? Corporations which grew wealthy on racist lies, and white folks longing for the "romanticism of the Old South" are the problem - NOT people asking that racist mascots and demeaning narratives be removed. Do you see that? Hopefully...but if you don’t, read on:
Now, Ms. Green WAS a vocal activist when it came to speaking out against poverty. This is true. She was a vocal member of her church and did all she could to use her stature as a spokesperson to try to improve life for others. So…1 out of 10 of these statements are correct. (Great job meme creator for really setting the bar high.)
And let’s keep smashing this piece of shit narrative by sharing more truth. Ms. Green first appeared as Aunt Jemima at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. Mind you - while Ms. Green was standing next to “the world’s largest flour barrel,” cooking pancakes and telling stories about how great slavery was and how she saved her master from the Union troops capturing him by distracting them with pancakes - other African American women formed the Women's Columbian Association and the Women's Columbian Auxiliary Association to address the exclusion of African Americans from the 1893 World’s Fair exhibitions. They asked:
that the fair reflect the success of post-Emancipation African Americans. Instead, the Fair included a miniature West African village whose natives were portrayed as primitive savages.
But hey! The World’s Fair did plenty to show they supported the emancipated black folk of America, right?! They held an off-site “Negro Day” picnic!
yeah Tom Hanks...my sentiments exactly
The Women’s Columbian Auxiliary Association had more to say:
These educated progressive women saw "a mammy for the national household" represented at the World's Fair by Aunt Jemima. This directly relates to the belief that slavery cultivated innate qualities in African Americans. The notion that African Americans were natural servants reinforced a racist ideology renouncing the reality of African American intellect.
Aunt Jemima embodied a post-Reconstruction fantasy of idealized domesticity, inspired by "happy slave" hospitality, and revealed a deep need to redeem the antebellum South.
The racism inherent in this role is so thick, even the character's name is racist. With antebellum caricatures like Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben, the reason why they are given titles like that is insidious. First off, it makes them seem like they’re family, like they’re friendly and you can trust them in order to sell more of their product. But the worst part? Black people weren’t given the title of Mr., Mrs., or Ms. at all by southern slaveholders. They had terms like "uncle," "aunt," "mammy" because a title like Mr. or Mrs. or Ms. was something enslaved people were not afforded because ya know…they weren't considered to be real people. White folk refused to give them that respect. Stop for just one second and think about that: enslaved people were so disrespected that white folk wouldn't even give them a courtesy title of Mr. Ms. or Mrs. FUCK ALL OF THAT.
The fact that the OP speaks of Ms. Nancy Green being "cancelled" pisses me off because they are acting like Aunt Jemima IS Nancy Green. Additionally, they're acting like the world should never change or improve upon the mistakes of the past. If the post actually was truthful, perhaps a conversation could be had about reframing the narrative, renaming the product after Nancy Green but this was not a post made in good faith. It purposefully lied to incite anger in others and used Nancy Green as the reason why a racist stereotype shouldn't change.
Cancel Culture is when someone did something awful and their career suffers the consequences because society judges them appropriately. It’s not a curse word like this post implies. It’s a tool of accountability. And frankly, if anyone cancelled Ms. Green, it’s the owners of the company who fired her when she refused to travel overseas. If anyone cancelled her, it was the people who forced her to continue to live in poverty even after she made a random pancake mix company famous by her work in portrayal of their mascot. Why aren't we cancelling Quaker Oats for refusing to honor her in any sort of respectful way? Why is our anger not directed at the corporations? Why is it instead directed at a concept like "cancel culture?" Nancy Green died penniless, buried in an unmarked grave. She deserved better. She deserves to be honored for being, as the African American Registry of the United States suggests, “a Black storyteller and one of the first Black corporate models in the United States." But more importantly, she deserves to not be used as an excuse to keep a racist symbol alive. This post’s purpose is to convince you Ms. Green was the role she played and acknowledging that is disrespectful to her.
Honor MS. Nancy Green. Honor that she did what she could in the midst of a racist system. And, for fuck’s sake, stop blaming Cancel Culture. Instead of fighting to keep Aunt Jemima a thing, fucking honor Nancy Green. Instead of honoring the Lost Cause narrative and racist stereotypes, honor the woman.
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aunt_Jemima
https://aaregistry.org/story/nancy-green-the-original-aunt-jemima/
https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780813918112
https://aaregistry.org/story/nancy-green-the-original-aunt-jemima/