This season begins with a woman most of us were never taught about, though many of us grew up seeing the character she was hired to perform.
Nancy Green was born enslaved in Kentucky in 1834. In 1893, at the Chicago World’s Fair, she became America’s first “living trademark,” portraying the fictional figure known as Aunt Jemima.
This episode lays the foundation for a multi-part series. In this first episode we
We begin with Nancy Green’s life.We trace the industrialization of food production.We examine the birth of modern branding and trademark law.We introduce the minstrel traditions that shaped the Aunt Jemima character.
And we begin to ask harder questions about plantation nostalgia, racial caricature, and the foundational, yet marginalized, labor of Black women in American history.
This is an intentionally dense episode. We are building context before we go deeper.
In the coming episodes, we’ll explore:
Minstrelsy and the “mammy” myth
The politics of representation at the 1893 World’s Fair
The economic realities of Black women’s labor
The evolution of the Aunt Jemima brand and its 2021 retirement
This series is not about canceling a logo. It’s about understanding how and why it was invented and what the larger cultural implications of that invention were..
Content note: This episode discusses slavery, racial caricature, and racist stereotypes in historical context.
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Sources
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Richardson, Riché. "Can We Please, Finally, Get Rid of 'Aunt Jemima'?" The New York Times.
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