Behind corporate stereotypes, there were ‘vital, live people’
Charisse Jones
For a young Black woman trying to make her way in the early 1900s, job options were few. In most cases, she worked for a white family, caring for their children, cleaning their house or doing their laundry.
In 1911, when Lillian Richard left her hometown of Hawkins, Texas, to seek domestic work in Dallas, she found a different opportunity – offering cooking demonstrations and becoming one of the original faces of the Aunt Jemima pancake brand. Despite the kerchiefed caricature on the packaging, being a brand ambassador allowed Richard to travel, as well as make a living, and brought her renown in her community.
“I want people to know she was a real person,” said her great-niece Vera Harris. “She wasn’t just some cartoon character. She ... had feelings like we all have and just wanted to make a living at the age of 20. She was happy and proud of the work she did.”
Aunt Jemima. Uncle Ben’s. Cream of Wheat. Mrs. Butterworth. The images associated with those brands not only sold syrup, rice and cereal but perpetuated painful stereotypes that negatively shaped how African Americans and women were perceived for generations.
Amid a national reckoning on racism in the wake of the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other African Americans killed by police, the makers of those products are changing or reviewing their controversial branding.
“It is symbolic, but ... symbols have real power,” said Gregory Smithers, a history professor at Virginia Commonwealth University who co-wrote the book “Racism in American Popular
Media: From Aunt Jemima to the Frito Bandito.”
“Symbols give shape and texture to our everyday reality,” he said. “They inform how we see other people, other cultures. They inform how we vote, how politicians make priorities and pass laws. And they inform what we see as acceptable forms of representation.”
But behind some of those symbols or images, however distorted, were real men and women with families, ambitions and lives.
Two men named Frank
Frank Brown’s image became the face of Uncle Ben’s in 1946, said Caroline Sherman, a spokeswoman for Mars Food, the brand’s parent company.
Brown was a maitre d’ in a Chicago restaurant. Not much else is known about him, but Sherman said there is an effort to learn more.
“I don’t have a lot of details about his past,” she said, “but that’s what we’re hoping to gather as we go forward.’’
The name Uncle Ben came from an African American farmer in Texas who was renowned for his high-quality rice. According to the brand’s website, Gordon Harwell and his partner decided to change the name of Converted Brand Rice in the late 1940s to draw in new customers.
The brand attempted a makeover in 2007 when “Ben” became a successful, modern businessman instead of a servant. Mars decided that shift didn’t go far enough and plans to change the image on the packaging, though it doesn’t know when or what those changes will be. “Getting more and more information and perspective about the past is only going to help that process be stronger,” Sherman said.
A bit more is known about Frank L. White, a chef who was the model for the image used on boxes of Cream of Wheat.
White was born on the island of Barbados around 1867, moved to the USA seven years later and got his citizenship in 1890, according to a story in June 2007 by The Associated Press, which cited a Lansing State Journal interview with researcher Jesse Lasorda.
Cream of Wheat debuted in 1893 and initially featured a fictional character dubbed “Rastus,” a racist term for Black men depicted as simple-minded and irresponsible that arose during the minstrel era. Around the turn of the century, White’s picture was taken while he worked at a restaurant in Chicago, according to the AP.
The man whose likeness became the new face of the cereal brand wasn’t identified at the time. White claimed it was him, and the story became part of the lore in Leslie, Michigan, the town where White lived for roughly two decades before his death Feb. 15, 1938, according to a report in the Jackson Citizen Patriot cited by AP.
“We understand there are concerns regarding the chef image, and we are committed to evaluating our packaging and will proactively take steps to ensure that we and our brands do not inadvertently contribute to systemic racism,” B&G Foods said in a news release about reviewing the brand image. “B&G Foods unequivocally stands against prejudice and injustice of any kind.”
In 2007, White’s grave at Woodlawn Cemetery got a new granite marker. It included an etching of the chef portrayed on the Cream of Wheat Box.
“Everybody deserves a headstone,” Lasorda, who led the effort for the new marker, told the Lansing State Journal.
The meaning of ‘Mammy’
Conagra Brands, the maker of Mrs. Butterworth’s, said the syrup bottles shaped like a matronly woman were “intended to evoke the images of a loving grandmother.”
But last month, Conagra became one of several companies to say it would start “a complete brand and packaging review . ... We stand in solidarity with our Black and Brown communities, and we can see that our packaging may be interpreted in a way that is wholly inconsistent with our values.”
Mrs. Butterworth is not believed to be modeled after a real person, but to some, she conveys a disturbing stereotype of a servile Black woman who is content to spend her life waiting on whites.
“That’s a clear appropriation of the ‘mammy’ motif,” Smithers said, explaining how that caricature was “loyal, subservient and always ready with some down-home wisdom . ... That imagery became so ingrained in the way Americans saw race in the 20th century that it fit almost unnoticed into a panoply of similarly offensive marketing campaigns.”
The Aunt Jemima brand was born in 1889 when owners Chris Rutt and Charles Underwood created the pancake mix. The original image on the packaging was inspired by Nancy Green, “a storyteller, cook and missionary worker,” according to the brand’s website.
Green was born into slavery in Kentucky and worked as a cook and housekeeper for a judge on the South Side of Chicago, Smithers said. She first performed as Aunt Jemima at the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893 and went on to play the character in print and on radio for many more years.
Smithers said it doesn’t appear that Green received royalties for the use of her likeness. Her income mostly came from her job as a housekeeper and the small fee she was paid for her advertising appearances.
“One myth that needs quashing is the idea that Green died a millionaire,” he said. “It’s simply not true.” She was “able to live (a) comfortable life and donate money to her church.”
Green was the first of a rotating cast of women – at least four, perhaps a dozen – whose likenesses were referenced on Aunt Jemima packaging or who played the character at cooking demonstrations and in print, radio and TV ads.
“The imagery naturalized the idea that African American women existed merely to serve white people,” Smithers said. “That subservient imagery proved harmful on a number of levels. It informed popular assumptions about Black womanhood. It shaped the way people interacted with Black women, (including) exposing them to sexual violence, and informed the racism that punctuated not only pop culture, but 20th-century feminist movements, politics and social history.”
Some descendants of the women who played Aunt Jemima say their stories are more complicated.
‘Acknowledge these women’
Richard’s family said she was the third woman to portray Aunt Jemima. Born in 1891, the fifth of 11 children, Richard eventually left her hometown to try to earn a better living.
“You can’t think about 2020,” said Harris, her great-niece. “You have to go back and try to imagine how it was in 1911 . ... If you were a woman, you did domestic work. You were cooks, you were maids. You took care of white people’s children. So she went out for better opportunities because Dallas was much larger than Hawkins, Texas. She knew if she went there, she could find domestic work and it would pay more.”
Richard promoted Aunt Jemima products at stores, fairs and events for the next 23 years.
“They’d bring her back in a fancy car,” Harris said of her great-aunt’s employer. “Her brothers and sisters and friends would be all excited to see her when she came home because she had stories to tell them about what she saw in the places she went to. She kind of became a little celebrity.”
Richard retired after suffering a stroke and returned home to Hawkins where she was cared for by relatives. She died in 1956.
Harris said her family is proud of Richard’s legacy, hosting a pancake breakfast for the Hawkins community every March where a relative, dressed as Richard portraying Aunt Jemima, takes to the stage to talk about Richard.
Harris said the city erected a historical marker to Richard in 1995 in the neighborhood where she grew up. A sign proclaims Hawkins is the pancake capital of Texas and the former home of Richard. “Not only is our family proud of her,” Harris said, “but the community as a whole.”
Harris said she fully supports the Black Lives Matter movement. She also understands Quaker Oats’ decision to change the name and imaging of its Aunt Jemima brand, which the company said is “based on a racial stereotype,” despite a revamp in 1989 when the character stopped wearing a red bandanna and donned pearl earrings instead.
But “we don’t want her history to be wiped away,” Harris said. “My aunt was a smart lady.”
Harris contacted Quaker Oats and said she would like the company, which bought the Aunt Jemima brand in 1926, to consider creating a commemorative box that lists all the women who played the character on the back.
That might include Anna Robinson, who, according to the brand’s website, took on the role at the second Chicago World’s Fair in 1933, then toured the nation, earning enough income “to provide for her children and buy a 22-room house” where she rented out rooms.
Quaker said in an emailed statement that it didn’t have anything to add beyond its announcement that it would change Aunt Jemima’s branding. “We’re in the process of working on the packaging redesign, but no final decisions have yet been made.”
Harris said the box could display photos of the women as they looked when they weren’t dressed in costume.
“Say something like ‘We wouldn’t be where we are without the blood, sweat and tears of these Aunt Jemimas,’ ” she said. There could be a short explanation about why the image is no longer used. “But let the world know these were vital, live people. They weren’t minstrel, made-up characters . ... Acknowledge these women.” other