By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
A little piece of St. Joseph will soon disappear from grocery store shelves.
The Quaker Oats Company, claiming the Aunt Jemima image was born from a racial stereotype, has announced the pancake mix and syrup will change its name and image.
“Well, personally, I’m disappointed. I think we’ve become overly sensitive. I think Aunt Jemima portrays a very positive image,” St. Joseph historian Bob Slater tells St. Joseph Post.
Slater says it all started when a newspaper editor with the St. Joseph Gazette named Chris Rutt, who had an ownership in Pearl Milling Company, developed a self-rising flour with business partner Charles Underwood.
“Rutt was a big pancake eater, did not like to mix all of the ingredients so he and Underwood fooled around and finally developed this excellent pancake flour,” Slater says. “That was in 1889. A year later, R. T. Davis, who owned a big mill in St. Joe, bought the formula from Rutt and Underwood.”
St. Joseph Librarian Purd Wright also had a hand in the product development, first branding the image of “Aunt Jemima Pancake Flour.”
Aunt Jemima broke into the national spotlight after the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago when a former slave, Nancy Green, portrayed Aunt Jemima and served pancakes to an ever-growing crowd. The crowds at her cooking demonstration grew so large, police had to be called in to control them and move people along.
Green was honored for her role at the fair and stayed with the R. T. Davis Milling Company until her death in 1923. Other women stepped into the role of Aunt Jemima.
Quaker Oats, based in Chicago, bought the Aunt Jemima brand in 1926.
Slater is disappointed to see her go.
“She’s friendly. She wants to be helpful. I think it’s a very positive image,” Slater says. “So, I’m disappointed, but the people that made that decision make a lot more money than I ever made, so I guess they know what they’re doing. Is Colonel Sanders next? Where do we go from here?”
No matter where it goes from here, a bit of St. Joseph history will be lost.
“I’m disappointed. I value the St. Joe connection,” Slater says. “The fact that it started here, we had the baseball team named the Aunt Jemimas, at lot of St. Joe connections. There’s the Aunt Jemima house. It severs another link to St. Joe’s history.”