Racism For Breakfast
Convenient breakfast foods were a big deal at the 1893 World’s Fair. Unfortunately, they were served up with a hearty portion of Old South romanticism.
It all began in 1888 when Missourians Chris Rutt and Charles Underwood started operating a small grist mill. Though neither had a culinary background, they began developing a pancake flour formulation that only required adding water. This “innovation” was intended to help them repackage and sell excess flour.
After some trial and error, they settled on a blend of wheat and corn flour, salt, and lime phosphate (which acts similarly to baking powder). While Rutt and Underwood’s creation was revolutionary enough to see their business acquired within a year, it was a former slave from Kentucky who made their mix a fixture in kitchens across America.
Rutt was inspired to re-think the branding of his one-time “Self-Rising Pancake Flour” after seeing a minstrel show where men in blackface sang about Old Aunt Jemima. However, it was the Pearl Milling Company’s new owner — R.T. Davis — who brought the “mammy” to life.
In a booth meant to mimic the shape of a flour barrel, Nancy Green served pancakes to fairgoers while singing and telling sanitized stories about her life on a Southern plantation. These tales were inspired by the elaborate backstory featured in a pamphlet Davis had commissioned.
In it, Aunt Jemima was characterized as a former house slave for one Colonel Higbee, a fictitious Louisiana man whose plantation was known for fine dining. As the story goes, a former Confederate general who fondly remembered her pancakes put her in touch with Davis’s company, which paid her in gold to oversee the construction of a factory that would produce her pancake mix.
Fairgoers quite literally ate this story up. So much so that fair officials gave Green a special award for showmanship while Davis racked up as many as 50,000 orders from eager distributors.
The character of Aunt Jemima proved so popular that paper dolls were added to every box. There were dolls for Jemima, her husband Mose, and their four children Abraham Lincoln, Dilsie, Zeb, and Dinah. Of course, in a sign of the times, a racial slur for African youth was used in place of “children.”
The Aunt Jemima boxes depicted the family both before and after she had sold her famous recipe. The “presale” boxes featured tattered clothes, while the “post-sale” boxes had elegant clothing that could be cut out and placed over the family, some of whom were dancing barefoot.
The 1893 fair might have made one black woman a household name, but it did very little to promote the successes of African Americans after they’d been released from the bonds of slavery. This exclusion was despite the efforts of the Women's Columbian Association and the Women's Columbian Auxiliary Association to encourage greater inclusion.
In response to public pressure from the two Columbian Associations, the fair did bless a “Negro Day” where Frederick Douglass spoke. Tellingly, the accompanying picnic was prohibited from being held on the fairgrounds.
Unlike many black people, Green ended up being a fixture at the World’s Fairs. According to her obituary in the Chicago Defender, she played the role of Aunt Jemima until she died in 1923. She appeared at every World's Fair but one.
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Interestingly enough, Aunt Jemima’s husband wasn’t always Mose. He was originally called Rastus but was re-named to avoid confusion with the mascot of another brand.
That brand, Cream of Wheat, was introduced to the masses in the same year and place as Aunt Jemima Pancake Flour. For the uninitiated, Cream of Wheat is a porridge-like breakfast that visually resembles grits but has a much smoother texture.
Cream of Wheat was created to move surplus grain, much like Rutt and Underwood had intended with their Aunt Jemima mix. Though “Chef” Rastus was presented as the face of the brand, the breakfast item was the brainchild of Scotsman Tom Amidon.
Amidon was the chief miller at Grand Forks, North Dakota’s Diamond Milling Company. He proposed the mill’s owners package up a convenience food made from a portion of the wheat berry typically discarded during flour-making.
After Diamond Milling augmented its regular flour shipment with ten cases of Cream of Wheat, food broker Lamont, Corliss & Company telegrammed requesting an additional 50 cases. The distributor sent the following wire the next day, “FORGET THE FLOUR. SEND US A [RAILROAD] CAR OF CREAM OF WHEAT.”
Cream Of Wheat’s Rastus never had the rich back story of Aunt Jemima, but he did have the same roots — as a character in minstrel shows. Whereas Aunt Jemima actually resembled Green, Rastus’ initial likeliness was merely a generic drawing the package designer had lying around.
Cream Of Wheat didn’t quite have the draw of Aunt Jemima, but fairgoers seemed to like its heartiness and ease of preparation. Who knew casual racism could be so palatable?