I want you to close your eyes for a second, unless
you're driving. Please don't close your eyes
if you're driving. But just mentally transport
yourself into your kitchen. Okay. It's Saturday
morning. Maybe you're 10 years old or maybe you're
40. The skillet is sizzling. The smell of butter
and, you know, batter is wafting through the
house. I'm there. I can smell it. You open the
pantry or look at the breakfast table and what
do you see? For about 130 years, the answer for
millions of Americans was the same thing. You
saw the red box, you saw the bottle of syrup,
and you saw the face. That face. It's probably
one of the most recognizable images in the history
of global advertising. The warm smile, the pearl
earrings in later years, that sense of comfort,
it was a staple. Absolutely. But if you walk
down that same grocery aisle today in the post
-2021 world, that face is gone. The name is gone.
The box is still red. The font looks kind of
similar, but it says Pearl Milling Company. Which,
let's be honest, sounds a bit like a generic
shell company from a movie about corporate embezzlement.
It's very industrial. It is. It sounds like a
place where you'd buy sheet metal, not pancake
mix. What? And for a lot of consumers, that switch
felt like a glitch in the Matrix. It felt like
it happened overnight. Right. One day she's there.
The next day, headlines are blazing. Social media
is melting down. And the brand is... Well, it's
effectively erased. But that's the thing. And
this is what we're really digging into today.
It wasn't sudden. I mean, the erasure was sudden,
sure. The final act was sudden. Exactly. But
the tension that led to it, that had been boiling
for over a century. The writing had been on the
wall since, I mean, since before the brand was
even a national hit. And that is our mission
for this deep dive. We have a massive stack of
sources here. We've got legal briefs from 1915,
old census records from the 1930s, minstrel show
playbills from the 1880s, and corporate press
releases from 2020. We are going to look past
the culture war headlines. We have to. Because
this isn't just a story about a logo change.
No, it's much darker, much more complex, and
frankly, much more interesting than a simple
PR move. This is a story about the invention
of modern advertising. It's about a trademark
lawsuit that actually changed the fundamental
laws of American capitalism. And most importantly,
it's about the actual breathing women who played
this character. Yes, that's the human core of
it. That's the part that really hooked me. We
are talking about women who were pioneers in
a way, but who are also trapped in a caricature
that mocked their very existence. It's a paradox.
You have a brand built on a mammy archetype,
literally designed to soothe white anxiety after
the Civil War. Right. That also provided the
first real path to fame and, well, some financial
independence for black female models in America.
Right. Grappling with that duality is what makes
this story so difficult and so necessary. So
let's get into the weeds. And I was genuinely
surprised to find that this story doesn't start
on a plantation in the Deep South. It doesn't
start with a family recipe handed down through
generations of cooks. No, not at all. It starts
in St. Joseph, Missouri. The year is 1888. And
it starts with a problem that I think any modern
entrepreneur would recognize immediately. Market
saturation. Okay, so St. Joseph, Missouri. We're
talking about two guys here, Chris L. Rutt and
Charles G. Underwood. Right. Rutt was a newspaper
editor, a guy used to spinning stories, which
becomes very relevant later. And Underwood was
his partner. Awards guy. Awards guy. And they
decide to pivot careers and buy a flour mill.
On paper, it seemed like a safe bet. Everyone
needs flour, right? It's a staple. But they timed
it poorly. Horribly. It was the tail end of the
Industrial Revolution's impact on agriculture.
Technology had made milling so efficient that
the market was absolutely glutted. So just too
much supply. Way too much. There's too much flour
and not enough buyers. Prices had crashed. So
Rutt and Underwood are sitting on this pile of
product. They can't move. They were bleeding
money. They needed a differentiator. This is
the classic necessity is the mother of invention
moment. They couldn't just sell flour, so they
had to sell something else. Precisely. They spent
about a year experimenting in that mill. And
you have to remember, they weren't chefs. They
were desperate businessmen trying to save a failing
investment. Right. They took their excess wheat
flour, mixed it with cornmeal, and then added
two crucial chemical ingredients, phosphate of
lime and soda. Baking soda. Essentially, yes.
They were creating a chemical reaction in a bag.
They created the world's first self -rising pancake
flour. You have to understand, before this, pancakes
were a scratch process. Right. Let's contextualize
that for you, if you're listening, and just dump
the mix in the bowl today. Before this, you had
to manage your own leavening. That was the hard
part. Exactly. You had to have a sourdough starter,
or you had to measure out your baking soda and
cream of tartar perfectly. If you got the ratio
wrong, you had hardtack or sludge. It was a skill.
A real chemical process in your own kitchen.
It was. Rutt and Underwood automated the chemistry.
They put the science in the bag. That's a massive
technological leap. It's really the birth of
convenience food as we know it. It is. It's the
grandfather of the TV dinner and the instant
noodle. But they had a branding problem. They
were selling this miracle powder in generic paper
sacks. It had no identity. It was just white
powder. Which is a hard sell. Here, buy this
bag of mystery powder. It makes breakfast. Not
a great slogan. Exactly. They have the what,
but they don't have the who. They need a hook.
They need a story. And this is where the story
takes a turn into the entertainment culture of
the late 19th century. And we have to be really
clear about what entertainment meant in 1889.
We do. In late 1889, Chris Rudd, the newspaper
editor, goes to a vaudeville house in St. Joseph
to clear his head. He's looking for inspiration.
And when we say vaudeville or minstrelsy, I mean,
we are talking about the dominant form of American
entertainment at the time. And it was almost
entirely rooted in mocking black people. That
was its foundation. So, Rutt watches a performance,
and he sees a musical number featuring a song
called Old Aunt Jemima. Oh, wait. Right. The
song itself had been written back in 1875 by
a black performer named Billy Cursands. So, it
has this... Complex Origin itself was a standard
on the circuit. It was a massive hit. So people
knew the song. It had name recognition. It did.
But here's the detail that really underscores
how artificial this brand identity was. There
are conflicting accounts of what exactly Rutt
saw on stage that night. Because history is never
a straight line. Exactly. One account says he
saw a pair of blackface performers named Baker
and Farrell. But another very credible account
suggests he saw a performer named Pete F. Baker.
And Pete F. Baker was a white man. A white man.
And he wasn't just playing a black character.
This is where it gets truly bizarre. Okay, I
braced myself. The act was a white man. wearing
blackface, playing a character who was a German
immigrant, who in turn was imitating a black
minstrel, parodying a black female cook. Wait,
wait, wait. I need you to parse that for me.
My brain just did a somersault. I know. Let's
walk through it. It's a white guy. Pretending
to be a German guy. Who is pretending to be a
black woman. But not even a black woman. He's
pretending to be a black minstrel performer who
is parodying a black woman. So it's a copy of
a copy of a caricature. Correct. It is layers
of artifice. Rutt wasn't looking at a real person
or a genuine cultural tradition. He was looking
at a funhouse mirror reflection designed to make
white audiences laugh at black stereotypes. It's
like Inception but for racism. That is actually
a very accurate way to put it. But Rutt didn't
see the artifice or he didn't care. He saw the
reaction. The crowd loved it. The character was
wearing an apron and a kerchief singing this
catchy rhythmic song and Rutt had his aha. moment
that's the brand that's the brand he appropriated
the name aunt jemima and the image from the lithograph
posters right there in the theater lobby let's
pause on the name aunt jemima to a modern ear
before 2020 that just sounded like a brand name
like betty crocker or uncle ben but in 1889 aunt
carried a very specific very heavy weight it
was the coded language of the jim crow south
You have to remember, white Southerners absolutely
refused to use honorifics like Mrs. or Mr. for
black people. They wouldn't grant them that dignity.
Never. That implied equality. So aunt -uncle
became the default terms for older enslaved or
formerly enslaved people. It was a way to enforce
a social hierarchy. It's insidious because it
sounds affectionate, aunt. It implies family.
It implies love. That's the trap. It was a way
of claiming familiarity. You're part of our family,
while strictly maintaining hierarchy. But you
are not my equal. It signaled that this person
was safe, domestic, and subservient. So by choosing
that name, Rutt was explicitly tapping into the
mammy archetype. Precisely. We need to define
that. The mammy is a very specific sociological
construct. It depicts a black woman who is completely
devoted to the white family she serves. often
more than to her own family. Right. She is desexualized,
usually depicted as overweight, dark -skinned,
smiling, and infinitely patient. It was the white
fantasy of the happy slave. It's the idea that,
hey, slavery wasn't that bad. Look how happy
she is to cook for us. It's a justification after
the fact. Exactly. And Rutt and Underwood, two
guys in Missouri facing a flour surplus, looked
at that archetype and decided it was the perfect
vehicle to sell breakfast. And from a cold, cynical
marketing perspective... They were right. They
were. You have to look at the timeline. We're
talking late 1880s, early 1890s. The Civil War
has been over for 25 years, but the country is
still obsessed with it. The South is establishing
Jim Crow laws. There was a deep, deep nostalgia
among white Americans, North and South, for the
good old days of the plantation. For a version
of the good old days that never really existed.
A fantasy version. So this pancake mix wasn't
just selling food. It was selling a comforting
lie about history. It was saying, remember when
things were simple. Remember when everyone knew
their place. It validated that nostalgic worldview.
It told consumers, here is this happy, smiling
figure who wants nothing more than to cook for
you. It offered a taste of plantation hospitality
without the moral burden of slavery. Perfect
summary. But here's the irony. Okay. Despite
this genius branding, Rutt and Underwood actually
failed, didn't they? They ran out of capital.
All that, and they still went broke. They did.
They were idea guys, not operators. They ran
out of money in 1890 and sold the company to
the R .T. Davis Milling Company. And this is
where the marketing machine really turns on.
The Davis Company had the capital to take this
local Missouri brand. and turn it into a national
myth. This is the part of the research that really
blew my mind. The amount of backstory they invented
for this character is like something out of a
Tolkien novel. They didn't just put a picture
on a box. They wrote a whole fictional biography.
It was total world building. Marketers invented
a plantation owner named Colonel Higby. Colonel
Higbee, of course it's a colonel. Of course.
The story went that Aunt Jemima was the loyal
cook on Colonel Higbee's plantation in Louisiana.
Louisiana. But the mill was in Missouri. Geography
didn't matter. They needed the Deep South cred.
Louisiana sounded more authentic to the plantation
narrative than Missouri. They claimed the secret
recipe was from the South before the Civil War.
They coined the phrase matchless plantation flavor.
It's just layer upon layer of fiction. And they
had these wild stories about her heroism during
the war. Oh, this is the best part. They went
all out. One pamphlet claimed Aunt Jemima fed
Union soldiers strictly to delay them so that
Colonel Higbee could escape capture. So she's
a Confederate loyalist. In their telling, yes.
It framed her loyalties specifically to her enslaver.
It's a choice. A very specific choice. What was
the other one? Something about a shipwreck. Yes.
Another story said she revived a group of shipwreck
survivors with her flapjacks. Wait, she revived
shipwreck survivors with pancakes? Like CPR,
but with syrup? That was the claim. They turned
her into a superhero of domesticity. But again,
let's do a reality check. The recipe came from
a chemical experiment by two white guys in St.
Joseph, Missouri in 1888. Using a pearl milling
process, hence the eventual name change. Exactly.
The Davis Milling Company wasn't even in a northern
state, really. Missouri was a border state. The
whole Deep South lineage was complete fiction.
It's amazing how effective it was. And they pushed
this fiction directly to children, too. The paper
dolls. The paper dolls are a fascinating and
honestly disturbing piece of cultural history.
Starting in 1894, you could cut out a family
of dolls from the pancake box. Okay. You had
Aunt Jemima, and they gave her a husband named
Uncle Rastus, later Uncle Moe's, Rastus itself
being a name for minstrelsy. Of course. And the
children? The names are caricatures. Comically
and offensively named. You had children named
Abraham Lincoln, Dilsey, Zeb, and Dinah, which
is the collection of stereotypes. But the genius,
and I use that word strictly in a manipulative
marketing sense, was the before and after. Right.
This is the Horatio Alger twist. So the dolls
came on the box barefoot and dressed in tattered
clothing. The label said before the receipt was
sold, receipt being the old word for recipe.
So poverty. They are depicting poverty and not
just poverty, but the poverty of enslavement.
Explicit poverty. But if you bought another box
or sent away for a premium, you could get elegant
clothing cutouts to put over the dolls. And that
set was labeled after the receipt was sold. So
it was a rags to riches story? Exactly. It symbolized
that because she sold the recipe to the Northern
Milling Company, the family was now wealthy.
It was a way of saying, see, everyone wins. The
white company gets the pancakes and the black
family gets rich. It effectively erased the slavery
aspect of the mammy character and replaced it
with a capitalist success story, even though
the character herself was still depicted as a
servant in the advertising. It sanitized the
history. It allowed white consumers to feel benevolent.
By buying this pancake mix, I'm helping Aunt
Jemima get her new clothes. It assuaged any guilt.
It was a masterclass in psychological marketing.
OK, so that's the myth. That's the fiction. But
unlike Betty Crocker, who was a composite drawing,
Aunt Jemima was played by real women. And this
is where the story gets incredibly human and
tragic. We have to talk about Nancy Green. Nancy
Green is the original. If you think about the
brand's explosion, it is largely due to her charisma.
She was born into slavery in Montgomery County,
Kentucky in 1834. So she had lived the reality
that the brand was fantasizing about. She had.
She moved to Chicago after the war and was working
as a cook for a judge. a respected figure in
her community. Her big break came at the 1893
World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. We have
to set the scene for the 1893 World's Fair. This
wasn't just a county fair. This was the white
city. This was a major global event. It was arguably
the most important cultural event of the 19th
century in America. It was designed to show the
world that America had arrived. Electricity,
architecture, the first Ferris wheel. And the
Davis Melling Company had a huge idea for a stunt.
Literally huge. built a flower barrel that was
24 feet high. A giant flower barrel pavilion.
And standing outside was Nancy Green. She was
59 years old. She was dressed in the full costume
apron, headscarf. And she just worked. She cooked
pancakes by the thousands, she sang songs, and
she told stories about the old South. Pies in
town, honey. That was the slogan. That was the
catchphrase. And she was magnetic. She was a
massive hit. You have to realize, she was arguably
the first black corporate model in the United
States. She gave the brand a heartbeat. Police
had to be called in to control the crowds around
her booth. She was a superstar. A genuine celebrity.
She received a medal and a certificate from the
fair organizers. She was offered a lifetime contract.
But there is a really stark contrast happening
at that same fair. Because while Nancy Green
is performing this happy slave role for crowds,
who else is in Chicago? Ida B. Wells. the legendary
journalist and anti -lynching crusader. She was
there, along with Frederick Douglass and other
progressive black leaders, protesting the fair.
Why were they protesting? They were handing out
pamphlets titled The Reason Why the Colored American
is Not in the World's Columbian Exposition. They
were furious because the fair organizers had
largely excluded black achievement. So no black
inventor scientists. Exactly. They weren't showing
black inventors or poets or doctors. They were
showing primitive villages from Africa and they
were showing Nancy Green making pancakes. That
was the extent of black representation. So you
have Ida B. Wells saying we are intellectuals
and creators. And just a few hundred yards away,
corporate America is saying, look at this happy
Aunt Jemima. It perfectly captures the struggle
of that era. Progressive black women saw Aunt
Jemima as a mammy for the national household.
They hated it. They saw it as validating the
idea that black people were natural servants.
It was a battle for the soul of black representation,
and Nancy Green was right in the middle of it.
But for Nancy Green, this was a job, a good job
by the standards of the time for a black woman.
A very good job. It gave her financial security.
She used her platform to advocate for anti -poverty
programs in Chicago. She was a key figure at
her church, Olivet Baptist Church. She was not
a passive victim. But did she get rich from this?
The paper dolls said the family got rich. Nancy
Green did not get rich in the way the company
owners did. Not even close. She had a steady
job. She had fame. But here is the heartbreaking
detail. She died in 1923 in a car crash on the
streets of Chicago. A truck collided with a laundry
wagon and it overturned on the sidewalk where
she was standing. And her burial? She was buried
in a pauper's grave, unmarked, in Chicago's Oakwood
Cemetery. That is devastating. The face of a
global brand, a Chicago celebrity, buried without
a headstone. It took until 2020, nearly 100 years
later, for a headstone to finally be placed for
her by a historical society. It really highlights
the gap between the value she created for the
company and the value the society placed on her
as a person. She even refused to go to Paris
for the 1900 exhibition. She did. She had leverage
and she used it. But at the end of her life,
the system still failed her. And she wasn't the
only one. There were many women who played this
role over the years. Dozens. Once the company
saw how well Nancy Green worked, they hired actresses
regionally to do cooking demos at grocery stores
and county fairs. But the next big national figure
was Lillian Richard. And she has a very different
story, geographically at least. Yes. She was
hired in 1925. She was from Texas. She portrayed
the character for 23 years. And this is where
we start to see the local pride aspect. Right.
Her hometown of Hawkins, Texas, is actually known
as the pancake capital of Texas. Because of her.
Specifically because of her. The local chamber
of commerce leans into it. Her family is incredibly
proud of her legacy. For them, she was a star.
She was traveling. She was earning money. She
was representing her community on a national
stage. This is going to be very important when
we get to the end of this story. That pride,
yeah. But before that, we have to talk about
Anna Robinson. Because if Nancy Green established
the character, Anna Robinson defined the look
that most people remember from the mid -20th
century. Right. Anna Robinson was hired for the
1933 Chicago World's Fair, another World's Fair,
another pivotal moment. Physically, she was different
from the previous models. She was much heavier.
She weighed about 350 pounds. Which fit the stereotype
more closely. The visual stereotype, anyway.
Exactly. The company, which was Quaker Oats by
this point, wanted that plump, motherly look.
They felt Nancy Green was too slender. They wanted
the full caricature. And they leaned hard into
the celebrity angle with her. This is the part
with the nightclubs. Yes. There are photos of
Anna Robinson making pancakes at El Morocco and
the Stork Club in New York. Wait, El Morocco?
Like the high society nightclub where Bogart
and McCall would hang out? The very same. Imagine
the scene is the 1930s or 40s. You have the absolute
elite of New York society movie stars, Broadway
legends, tycoons in tuxedos and gowns. And there
was Anna Robinson in her costume serving them
pancakes. She was part of the glitterati scene,
but as a prop. Completely. She was atmosphere.
And the company put out this narrative that she
was living the high life, just like the people
she served. They claimed she lived in a 22 -room
mansion. They did. They said she was essentially
American royalty. a celebrity chef before the
term existed. But you dug into the census records.
What was the truth? The 1940 census is the source
of truth here. It shows she rented an apartment
in a four -flat in Washington Park on Chicago's
South Side. She lived there with her daughter
and grandchildren. Her total payment in 1939
was reported as $1 ,200. Okay, doing some quick
inflation math, $1 ,200 in 1939 is about $26
,000 or $27 ,000 in today's money. Right. It
is barely a living wage. It certainly isn't 22
-room mansion money. She died poor. The disparity
between the image of abundance she projected
and the scarcity she lived in lived in is staggering.
It was performance in every sense of the word.
There were others too, right? Just to show the
scale of this. Oh, yes. There was Edith Wilson.
She's interesting because she was already a star.
She was a classic blues singer and actress. She
played the character on radio and in the first
TV commercials. She was the first Aunt Jemima
to really step into the mass media age. And then
Aileen Lewis at Disneyland. This one feels like
a fever dream. It really does. Aunt Jemima's
Pancake House in Frontierland. It opened in 1955.
Aileen Lewis would serve dignitaries there. There's
a story of her serving Jawaharlal Nehru, the
Prime Minister of India. That is a surreal image.
The Prime Minister of India being served pancakes
by a woman playing a caricature of an American
slave in a theme park built by Walt Disney. It
speaks to how deeply embedded this character
was in the American cultural fabric. It wasn't
just a logo. It was an institution. It was considered
wholesome. The last living Aunt Jemima was a
woman named Rosie Lee Moore Hall, right? Yes.
She was hired by an advertising agency to portray
the character, and she worked for Quaker until
her death in 1967. After that, they stopped using
a live model as the main face of the brand. So
that institution wasn't just cultural, it was
legal. This is one of the most surprising things
I found in the research, the Aunt Jemima doctrine.
I had no idea this brand actually changed the
law. Yes. If you are a lawyer or a law student,
you might know this case. Aunt Jemima Mills Company
v. Rigney & Co. from 1917. It fundamentally changed
trademark law in the United States. Set the scene
for us. What was the law before 1915? Before
this ruling, trademark protection was very narrow.
It was based on the idea of passing off. You
only infringed on a trademark if you sold the
exact same product and tried to trick people.
So if I sold Host Speaker's flour, you couldn't
sell Host Speaker's flour. Right, but you could
sell Host Speaker's syrup because flour and syrup
are different products. The law didn't see a
connection. That seems simplistic, but I guess
in a smaller economy, it made sense. Right. So
the Aunt Jemima company sued a rival, Rigney
& Co., who was selling pancake syrup under the
name Aunt Jemima with a similar logo. And the
lower court threw the case out. They did. They
followed the old rule. They said flowers, flowers,
syrup is syrup. No confusion. Case closed. But
Aunt Jemima appealed. They did. And the Second
Circuit Court reversed the ruling. They created
a new legal theory. They said that because flour
and syrup are commonly used together, they're
related goods, consumers would assume they came
from the same source. So using the name on a
related product could damage the reputation of
the original. Precisely. Therefore, the brand
protection extends to the syrup, too. This became
known as the Aunt Jemima Doctrine. So it set
the precedent for modern trademark protection
across related goods. It did. It acknowledged
that a brand is more than just the specific product.
It's the reputation. It's the goodwill. It's
why Coca -Cola can stop you from making Coca
-Cola sneakers, even though they don't sell sneakers.
That all goes back to a case about pancake mix.
So the happy slave narrative didn't just sell
pancakes. It helped write the rules of American
capitalism regarding intellectual property. It
connects the dots in a way few other brands do.
From minstrelsy to marketing to modern law. Now
let's fast forward a bit. The image didn't stay
frozen in 1890. As America changed, the brand
tried to adapt. Slowly. Painfully slowly. For
decades, it was a heavy caricature. Very dark
skin, exaggerated features, straight out of the
minstrel poster. But over time, they tried to
soften it. In 1968... They slimmed her down.
This is during the civil rights era, so that's
not a coincidence. Absolutely not. They gave
her a white collar and a geometric headband.
It still looked like a kerchief, but it was stylized.
They were trying to make her look less like a
plantation cook and more like a modern domestic
servant. A subtle but important shift. And then
the big change in 1989, the 100th anniversary.
That was the Pearl era. They removed the head
covering completely. That was huge. The kerchief
was the primary signifier of the mammy or the
enslaved woman. It was the most criticized part
of the image. By far. They took it off, gave
her wavy gray streaked hair, pearl earrings,
and a lace collar. Quaker called it a more sophisticated
look. Contemporary was the word they used. They
were trying to pivot from servant to grandmotherly
figure, but the name remained. And the history
remained. You can put pearls on the image, but
it's still named after a minstrel song about
a slave. And that tension didn't go unnoticed.
Artists and activists had been pointing this
out for decades. Absolutely. We have to talk
about Betisar. She is a legendary artist. In
1972, she created a piece called The Liberation
of Aunt Jemima. Describe that for us. It's a
very confronting image. It is a mixed media assemblage.
She took one of those stereotypical Aunt Jemima
notepad holders. the kind you'd hang in a kitchen,
and she placed it inside a box lined with the
brand's imagery. Okay. But she armed her. She
put a rifle in one hand and a hand grenade in
the other. In front of her is a large, clenched,
black power fist. Wow. Talk about subverting
the submissive narrative. It was a powerful statement.
It transformed the mammy from a passive servant
into a revolutionary. It forced people to look
at the violence inherent in the stereotype. It
asked, what if she fought back? It's an iconic
piece of black feminist art. And then you have
pop culture in the 90s, public enemy. Burn, Hollywood,
burn. Big Daddy Kane has that verse. As for playing
a lawyer, out of the question. For what they
play, Aunt Jemima is the perfect term. He was
criticizing how black actors were boxed into
these subservient roles. The name itself had
become shorthand for a specific kind of stereotype.
It had. And it also became a slur. I think that's
important to acknowledge. It wasn't just a harmless
brand name. No, it became a weapon. It became
the female equivalent of calling someone an Uncle
Tom. It meant you were a sellout or subservient
to white interests. We saw this used against
high -profile political figures. Right. It was
used against Condoleezza Rice when she was Secretary
of State. Our radio host called her that. He
did. And more recently, Kamala Harris. When she
was selected as VP, a mayor in Virginia posted
a meme referring to her as Aunt Jemima. Which
led to immediate censures and apologies. Because
everyone understood what it meant. It wasn't
a compliment about her cooking. It was a way
of saying you are a servant. You belong in a
subservient role. It was a racist and sexist
attack. So you have this brand that is commercially
dominant, legally powerful, but culturally radioactive.
It's a slur. It's a racist caricature, but it's
also on everyone's breakfast table. Something
had to give. And 2020 was the breaking point.
June 17th, 2020. This is right in the middle
of the George Floyd protest. The country is having
a massive, painful recognition. with racial justice.
The context is everything. Quaker Oats, which
is owned by PepsiCo, makes the announcement.
They said the brand would be discontinued to
make progress toward racial equality. They admitted,
for the first time really, that the brand's origins
were based on a racial stereotype. And it was
a domino effect. Immediate. Within 24 hours,
the owners of Uncle Ben's, Mrs. Butterworth's,
and Cream of Wheat all announced they were reviewing
their branding. It was like a damn broke. These
brands had survived the civil rights movement
of the 60s, but they couldn't survive 2020. So
they scrubbed the image, but then came the question
of name. What do you call it? And this is where
history comes full circle. In February 2021,
they announced the new name, Pearl Milling Company.
Which, as we learned at the start, was the name
of the original company Rutt & Underwood started
in 1888. It's a deep cut. It returns the brand
to the inventors of the technology, rather than
the caricature used to sell it. It's bland, sure,
but it's historically accurate to the product's
origin. But there's a legal twist here too, right?
I noticed that for a while, the boxes still said
Aunt Jemima in small print, formerly known as...
That is the trademark law biting them again.
PepsiCo explained that if they completely abandoned
the name immediately... just stopped using it
entirely, a third party could essentially claim
trademark abandonment, snap up the rights, and
start selling a real Aunt Jemima syrup. That
is wild. They have to keep using it to kill it.
They have to transition it carefully to keep
control of the intellectual property so someone
else doesn't launch a zombie brand using the
racist imagery. It's a legal minefield. Now,
here is where it gets really interesting and
maybe a little unexpected. You would think the
descendants of the women who played Aunt Jemima,
Nancy Green, Lillian Richard, Anna Short Harrington,
you'd think they would be thrilled to see the
caricature go. You would think. It seems logical.
But it wasn't that simple. Not at all. Tell us
about the reaction from the families. Well, let's
look at Lillian Richard's family. Remember, she's
the one from the Pancake Chapel of Texas. Vera
Harris, her family historian. was quoted saying,
I wish we would take a breath and not just get
rid of everything. It is our history. It is our
history. That's powerful. And Lornell Evans,
who is the great grandson of another one of the
models, Anna Short Harrington, he was even more
direct. He sued Quicker Oats, though the lawsuit
was dismissed. He said, this is an injustice.
This is part of my history. Explain that tension.
Why would they want to keep a brand rooted in
a happy slave narrative? Because for these families.
The women weren't caricatures. They were their
grandmothers, their great aunts. They were pioneers.
Right. You have to imagine the context of the
early 20th century. For a black woman to be nationally
famous, to travel, to be the face of a major
corporation, that was virtually impossible. It's
an achievement, a real one. It was a massive
achievement. They took a role that was designed
to mock them, and they infused it with dignity
and professionalism. They used the money to support
their families. They became local heroes. So
by erasing the brand, the families feel like
the company is erasing their ancestors' success.
Exactly. It feels like erasing the evidence that
they were there. It's a double -edged sword.
The image is painful for society, but the erasure
is painful for the descendants. It's a really
complex emotional position for them to be in.
It's the nuance that gets lost in a press release.
You're removing a racist symbol, but you're also
removing the only monument these women had. Which
is why the work of people like those fighting
for Nancy Green's headstone is so important.
If the brand goes away, we have to find other
ways to remember the women. We have to separate
the actors from the role. We have to tell their
stories. It reminds me of Hattie McDaniel winning
the Oscar for Gone with the Wind. She played
a mammy, a stereotype, but she broke a barrier
to do it. And she famously said, I'd rather play
a maid than be one. It is the exact same tension.
Do you celebrate the barrier breaking or do you
condemn the role that required it? The answer
is usually you have to do both. You have to hold
both thoughts at the same time. So we have gone
from a surplus of flour in a Missouri mill to
a minstrel show to a giant barrel in Chicago
to a trademark revolution and finally to a bland
box that says Pearl Milling Company. It is a
journey. And I think it shows that consumer goods
are never just goods. They are artifacts of the
culture that made them. They're like little time
capsules. That bottle on the table wasn't just
syrup. It was a story about how America wanted
to see itself. And how it hid the parts it didn't
want to see. The happy slave propaganda was a
way to consume the labor of black women without
having to acknowledge their suffering or their
citizenship. But it also gave women like Nancy
Green and Lillian Richard a stage. A stage they
shouldn't have needed, but a stage they used
nonetheless. And they used it with grace and
power in a world that gave them very few options.
So here is my question for you to chew on as
you go about your day. We looked at the syrup
bottle, but look around your kitchen. Look at
your pantry. Look at the brands you trust. How
many other traditions or nostalgic items in your
daily life are rooted in constructed histories?
How many are selling you a story you've never
really questioned? We love heritage brands. We
love things that feel old and authentic. But
often, that authenticity is just a marketing
campaign from 1890 designed to sell you a worldview
along with your breakfast. And when those brands
disappear or change, do we lose the history,
the good and the bad? Or does it finally free
us to create something new? Something to think
about the next time you pour syrup on your pancakes.
Thanks for diving deep with us. See you next
time.