Reinventing Aunt Jemima

                Reinventing Aunt Jemima

  

        A recent entry in the seemingly endless Republican “making up shit” campaign is this, from a short speech at the recent Tulsa farce, from an earnest Young Republican blonde “college student.” I put that in quotes because other than Liberty or Oral Roberts, it’s hard to picture her as actual college material. 

        In summary she, for a reason which escapes me and most sane individuals, is lamenting the decision by Quaker Oats to cease using the stereotypical “Mammy” image of Aunt Jemima on several products. Why she felt compelled to do this can probably be determined by the fact that she blames “the leftist mob.”  Here is her lament: “She (Nancy Green) was a freed slave who went on to be the face of the pancake syrup that we love, and we have in our pantries today. She fought for equality, and now the leftist mob is trying to erase her legacy. And might I mention how privileged we are as a nation if our biggest concern is a bottle of pancake syrup,” she said.  This last assertion is stultifyingly moronic, meaningless, and Trump worthy. 

        It's a goddamned good thing Nancy Green wasn’t the Thigh Master spokesperson, or this young naïf, who truly had nothing to say and said even that poorly, would have been in tears.

        Just as bad are the recent Facebook claims of a female Black Republican (yeah, really, there is at least one): The claim is also made in an image shared in a June 17 Facebook post from Peggy Hubbard, a Black Republican and former U.S. Senate candidate. Shared more than 186,000 times, the post,  rife with error,  came just hours after the maker of the Aunt Jemima brand of syrup and pancake mix announced it is removing the name and image because "Aunt Jemima's origins are based on a racial stereotype." (uh… yeah, they are, and I have always wondered why it continued this long.) Then Ms. Hubbard goes completely bat shit nuts ranting:

       "We as black people don't know our history! Here is something that Black History Month doesn't tell you! They feed us b.s. (sic) and, hide the TRUTH from us. Nancy Green aka Aunt Jemima was the FIRST black millionaire! she sold her pancake mix to General Mills Corp. The jokes on US black people."   

       Note: Apparently, regardless of race, the first refuge of the ignorant is to capitalize inappropriately. This is like a red warning sign, “caution, bullshit ensues.” Which it certainly does in this snippet of drivel.

First: Nancy Green was a corporate symbol. No corporate advertising image in that day and age ever became a millionaire. As a Black woman, she was almost surely undercompensated for the use of her image. And her public appearances.

Second: Nancy Green did not, as some have claimed, sell any recipe, pancake, syrup, or anything else other than her image to General Mills, Quaker Oats, Amazon, Bill Gates or George Soros.

         Chris Rutt, who created the pancake flour in 1889, was inspired by the song “Old Aunt Jemima” after hearing it during a minstrel performance and decided to give the name to his pancake flour. Rutt then sold his company to a larger milling company, R.T. Davis Milling Co., after failing to sell the flour. The milling company brought its mix to the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago and hired Nancy Green, a former slave, then working as a cook for a judge, to act as Aunt Jemima and sell the pancake flour.

Third: Nancy Green was a domestic worker (housekeeper) until her death by automobile in 1923. She was active in her own community and church but claims by the young Republican twit in Tulsa that she “fought for equality” are unsubstantiated. 

       It is inconceivable that significant overt public activism would not have resulted in her employers terminating her employment. Her public appearances as Aunt Jemima were, as the corporate lords wished, always in character. Tragically, but in truth, between 1893 and 1923, black activists were more likely to be lynched than lauded.    

Fourth: The claim that Ms. Green died as America’s “first Black millionaire”, does little justice to the real “first female self-made millionaire”, of any race in America, Madame C.J. Walker. There are some who claim that Madame Walker’s mentor, Annie Malone, also Black, actually was also a millionaire, and even earlier than Madame Walker. Both extraordinary women were true entrepreneurs, seeing the market for beauty care products among American women of color and servicing it.  And those are the facts, sprinkled with educated opinion.