Aunt Jemima Has a New Name After 131 Years: The Pearl Milling Company

“130 years ago two white men created ‘Aunt Jemima’ syrup,” Mr. Green said. “Took a Black slave archetype made her the face of their syrup for profit. Today, that ends. Aunt Jemima is finally being replaced. Those white men made billions appropriating blackness hopefully rotting in hell.”

On the Aunt Jemima website, photos of the pancake mix and syrup’s new packaging were unveiled on Tuesday. They feature a rendering of a mill with a water wheel and still use the same red, white and yellow color scheme. Both the pancake-mix box and the syrup bottle included a label that says, “New Name Same Great Taste Aunt Jemima.”

In addition to the rebranding, the newly established Pearl Milling Company also said on Tuesday that it was making a $1 million commitment to empower and uplift Black girls and women. The money is in addition to a $400 million, five-year investment to support Black business and communities, and increase Black representation at PepsiCo, the company said.

Noliwe Rooks, an author and professor at Cornell University whose work explores race and gender, said in an email on Tuesday night that there were additional steps the company could take.

“I think one good use of these funds might be to support a Black women-led ad agency who they could hire to consult with them going forward to ensure they have good advice about their branding and advertising plans,” Dr. Rooks said of the $1 million.

The Aunt Jemima character has roots in a 19th-century minstrel song that expressed nostalgia for the antebellum South. Quaker Oats replaced the kerchief on the Aunt Jemima character’s head with a plaid headband in 1968 and added pearl earrings and a lace collar in 1989.

Last September, Mars Food announced that it was changing the name of its Uncle Ben’s rice products to Ben’s Original and that it would also remove the image of an older Black man smiling from the box.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/09/business/aunt-jemima-renamed-pearl-milling-company.html