{"id":106,"date":"2021-12-11T00:24:00","date_gmt":"2021-12-11T05:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/capstone-foodjustice\/the-mammy-stereotype-and-aunt-jemima\/"},"modified":"2021-12-15T00:06:03","modified_gmt":"2021-12-15T05:06:03","slug":"the-mammy-stereotype-and-aunt-jemima","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/capstone-foodjustice\/the-mammy-stereotype-and-aunt-jemima\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mammy Stereotype and Aunt Jemima"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Introduction<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Notions about the Black matriarch and domesticity drive the creation of the mammy stereotype. Enslaved Black women were heavily abused and labored for hours in hot, detached plantation kitchens.1<\/a><\/sup> In stark contrast, the \u201cOld South\u201d was glorified in the eyes of postbellum Southerners, thus, in their collective memory, the enslaved Black woman was regarded as merely a \u201chappy, loyal Mammy.\u201d2<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chris L. Rutt and Charles G. Underwood, the owners of the Pearl Milling Company, were looking for a trademark for their self-rising pancake mix. In 1889, Rutt attended a minstrel show where the song \u201cOld Aunt Jemima\u201d was performed.3<\/a><\/sup> In the show, the Aunt Jemima character was highly superstitious and fearful of all advances in technology. She also acted as the highly skilled cook for what Maurice Manring describes as \u201can idealized version of the Old South.\u201d4<\/a><\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rutt and Underwood proceeded to use this mammy caricature as the face of their product. Manring argues that the mammy figure of Aunt Jemima \u201csoothed guilt over slavery, kept white women out of the kitchen, and put hot food on the table. Like the real slave woman, she saved whites from work.\u201d5<\/a><\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With Aunt Jemima Pancake Mix, the Pearl Milling Company was not only selling a product, they were selling a narrative. In 1893, Nancy Green, a formerly enslaved woman and servant for a Chicago judge, was signed to play Aunt Jemima at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago.6<\/a><\/sup> There, she cooked pancakes for guests, sang, and told stories of \u201cAunt Jemima\u2019s\u201d life on the plantation, some of them real experiences from her own enslavement.7<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Green\u2019s portrait was used as a \u201cpleasant\u201d’ logo on all Aunt Jemima products, and her slave stories combined with imagined stories of the South to create the legend of Aunt Jemima. Purd Wright created the first Aunt Jemima backstory, which said that she protected the South and calmed tensions during the Civil War by serving northerners some of her pancakes.8<\/a><\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many other women played the role of Aunt Jemima after Nancy Green\u2019s death in 1925. Each woman followed the pattern of weaving their personal life stories into the legend of Aunt Jemima, to the point where the origins of the character began to blur and countless Black women had their identities lost to a fictional figure.9<\/a><\/sup><\/span> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Images<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Bottle, Aunt Jemima Syrup. 1993.0393.042. Landor Collection.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n\n

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Salt shaker, Aunt Jemima. 2012.0076.04.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n\n

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Audio<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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