The Truth About Your Uncle Ben and Your Aunt Jemima
Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima have been staples in many homes across the US and beyond for decades. But have you ever wondered about their origins?
Lets begin with Ben, the image of the smiling African-American man that has been serving rice to the masses since 1946. But who is Uncle Ben?
The image that you see isn’t actually of an Uncle Ben, rather a Frank Brown who was working as the maître d’hôtel of a Chicago restaurant frequented by Gordon L. Harwell, the company’s then president. Gordon L. Harwell was a Texas food broker who needed a face and a name to rebrand his rice company Converted Brand Rice. At the time they were selling a variety of parboiled rice that introduced faster cooking and more easily preserved rice. The history alleges that Harwell and his associates were good friends with Brown and paid him a small amount (possibly the equivalent of $50) for the exclusive rights to his image, Brown not knowing the millions that were to be profited from his likeness. Of course, we only have Harwells account of the affairs.
You might be surprised to know that Uncle Ben’s was originally given the name Uncle Bens Plantation Rice in 1937. This information is hard to find, but old newspaper clippings reveal the original name that Harwell used to promote the company in one of his attempts at rebranding. It was not until 1946 that it became known simply as Uncle Ben’s. If you visit the company website they mention Converted Brand Rice and how it became Uncle Bens in the 1940’s but forgets to mention the 9 years in between that it spent known as Uncle Bens Plantation Rice. Interestingly the timeline begins in the 1940’s rather than the 1930's.
As for Ben himself, the name Uncle Ben apparently comes from a real African-American rice farmer from Houston, Texas who was well renowned for his rice. Although there isn’t much information on Ben, not so much as a last name, the company references him as the namesake. The reason why he’s an ‘Uncle Ben’ and not a ‘Mr Ben’ is that at the time White people felt uncomfortable giving ‘Mr’ and ‘Miss’ honorifics to Black people. Because of this elderly Black people were referred to as Aunt and Uncle. A common title for a slave or servant.
Caricatures of Black people have had a history in advertisement for centuries. It has been common for Black faces to be used to promote products marketed towards White audiences, often promoting some kind of negative image to fuel racist propaganda. Uncle Ben may seem innocuous to some at a glance until you question how he came to be. If Mr Ben was real, he, nor his family ever saw any compensation or benefit from the existence of Uncle Ben’s as a company. His name and story have been used to sell rice for over 80 years but this isn’t actually his business. On the other hand if Mr Ben wasn’t then real, then why create the character to begin with?
Due to backlash in 2007 Uncle Ben was symbolically promoted to Board Chairman of the company, with claims of creating a positive image for African-Americans. Despite trying to rebrand and the rewriting of his origins, the history still stands and Uncle Ben is still a trope of Black servitude.
Warm pancakes and sweet maple syrup. Aunt Jemima has been making them just the way you like them since 1889. But don’t salivate just yet.
Aunt Jemima is a brand owned by Quaker Oats Company which is a subsidiary of PepsiCo Inc. The Aunt Jemima you know now wasn’t always making pancakes. She made her first appearance in a minstrel show portrayed by a White man in blackface. Flour mill owner, Chris Rutt, attended a Baker and Farrell minstrel performance in St. Joseph, Missouri where a white actor portrayed a Black woman in a ‘mammy’ archetype, “Aunt Jemima”. It was here he saw an opportunity for his failing flour mill. The mammy was a common image seen in the 19th and 20th century, depicting a caricature of an overweight Black woman, often a slave, who was forever happy and whose sole desire was to serve her white family. It is a common image that has been used in entertainment and advertising for years despite complaints from Black communities about the implications of the imagery.
Selling unbranded pancake mix, Chris Rutt needed a face and a name to market his product to America and Jemima was perfect. Rutt himself struggled to manage the company and a year later Aunt Jemima was acquired by R. T. Davis Milling Company who brought Jemima to life, using former slave Nancy Green to depict the character in advertising. The brand was meant to bring comfort to White consumers with the use of a caricature of a Black woman that existed to serve them pancakes and allow them to romanticise the antebellum south. Aunt Jemima provided an idealisation of plantation life that was popular in advertising and the once struggling company became a sensation in the US and beyond. So why has the branding stood the test of time? Because they are selling more than just pancake mix, they are selling nostalgia.
Aunt Jemima has had some makeovers over the years to make her image less offensive. Despite the attempts at rebranding due to years of complaints from Black communities, the history of Aunt Jemima is too deep. From 1955 to 1970 you could visit Disneyland, California and be served pancakes by Aunt Jemima herself, dressed in full costume and portrayed by Aylene Lewis. There were competitions where you raced against each other dressed as ‘Aunt Jemima’ and the winner would get a picture with the character. You could even collect dolls of Jemima and her family.
Aunt Jemima’s Kitchen opened franchises serving food to families around America, Canada and England until finally closing up shop in 1970 due to their Quaker Oats sponsorship deal running out. Changing the image to a more palatable one means little when the name will always tell the story of the Black face of a White business. The faces used for profit while the community they take advantage of suffer the aftermath of centuries of propaganda. Corporate Blackface has a deep history. It is an insidious part of society that often goes overlooked, that is until you delve deeper into their origins.
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