{"id":65785,"date":"2021-03-22T13:53:49","date_gmt":"2021-03-22T17:53:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.genealogybank.com\/?p=65785"},"modified":"2024-10-10T17:22:30","modified_gmt":"2024-10-10T21:22:30","slug":"celebrating-nancy-green-the-original-aunt-jemima","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/celebrating-nancy-green-the-original-aunt-jemima.html","title":{"rendered":"Celebrating Nancy Green, the Original Aunt Jemima"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction:<\/em><\/strong> In this article, in honor of March being Women\u2019s History Month, Jane Hampton <\/em>Cook searches old newspapers to learn more about Nancy Green, the original Aunt Jemima, and the times she lived in. Jane is a presidential historian and author of ten books, including Resilience on Parade: Short Stories of Suffragists & Women\u2019s Battle for the Vote. She was the first female White House webmaster (2001-03). Her works can be found at Janecook.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Nancy Green (1834-1923), an African American woman born into slavery in Kentucky, later became the original Aunt Jemima. GenealogyBank\u2019s Historical Newspaper Archives<\/a> provide insight into Green\u2019s life and the changes in technology that fueled her success.<\/p>\n

Green came to Chicago after the Civil War. She was employed as a caretaker who raised a prominent judge and doctor.<\/p>\n

A remarkable aspect of Green\u2019s story is that her celebrity didn\u2019t begin until she was 59 years old, when she made her debut at the 1893 World\u2019s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. She was hired by a milling company to promote their pancake mix by playing the character of \u201cAunt Jemima\u201d (a \u201cMammy\u201d slave stereotype) to cook pancakes at the Expo.<\/p>\n

As the Negro Star<\/em> explained in her obituary in 1923 (Note: the article gets one detail wrong: the pancake recipe mix was not her own):<\/p>\n

\u201cMrs. Green first came to fame at the Chicago\u2019s World Fair in 1893, when, in a pancake booth, she tickled the palates of visitors as well as amused them with pancake turner gymnastics.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"An<\/a>
Negro Star (Wichita, Kansas), 14 September 1923, page 1<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Her skill was not merely cooking. She was also an entertainer. Visitors to the pancake exhibit walked through a large-scale theatrical flour barrel and received a silver dollar-shaped pancake on the other side. Green\u2019s skill at flipping pancakes and entertaining her audience was a hit. She was the original celebrity chef, akin today to a hit TV show on the Food Network.<\/p>\n

As the obituaries above and below reported, the 89-year-old Green was struck and killed by a wayward automobile while walking along a Chicago sidewalk on 30 August 1923.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>
Chicago Daily News (Chicago, Illinois), 31 August 1923, page 4<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Old newspaper articles about the 1893 World\u2019s Columbian Exposition in Chicago provide additional context about America\u2019s culture and technology at that time.<\/p>\n

The 1893 World\u2019s Fair was centered upon electricity and star inventor Thomas Edison \u2013 who was also lured by the smell of Green\u2019s pancakes.<\/p>\n

As the Morning Star<\/em> reported:<\/p>\n

\u201cThomas A. Edison, by whose genius the fair has been made as glorious by night as by day, visited the exposition. At one time during the day, he became separated from his friends and, when found, was in the Agricultural building. In one hand was a pancake, in the other a cracker spread with jelly. Thomas A. Edison had discovered the \u2018lunch route\u2019 of the Agricultural building.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"An<\/a>
Morning Star (Rockford, Illinois), 18 August 1893, page 1<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Electricity was the new technology behind the latest food craze. The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em> reported that the World\u2019s Fair showed a \u201cnovel application of electricity to the daily needs of men and women\u201d: cooking.<\/p>\n

The technological pride of the cooking show was the electric pancake griddle. As this article reported:<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the pride of Aleck\u2019s heart is the pancake griddle, three disks on one frame, with the wire coiled in the bottom side of each section.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018I can heat that in one minute,\u2019 said he, \u2018and can turn out the prettiest flapjacks you ever saw, even, brown, and no muss.\u2019\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"An<\/a>
Philadelphia Inquirer (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), 11 June 1893, page 17<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Other newspapers picked up on the excitement of the new invention, an electric pancake griddle. As the Trenton Evening Times<\/em> reported:<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>
Trenton Evening Times (Trenton, New Jersey), 22 June 1893, page 5<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This technology, along with Green\u2019s winning personality and showmanship, earned her fame and employment as \u201cAunt Jemima.\u201d Green continued to perform at many exhibitions, including the World\u2019s Fair in San Francisco in 1915. At the time, three packets of Aunt Jemima pancake flour mix sold for $0.25.<\/p>\n

\"Photo:<\/a>
Photo: 1909 ad for pancake flour showing Nancy Green as Aunt Jemima. Credit: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Last year Quaker Oats announced that they are rebranding and renaming Aunt Jemima because of racial stereotypes. To honor Nancy Green in response, a Chicago woman<\/a> arranged for Green to receive a headstone in September 2020. Green is buried in Chicago near the greats of her era, Ida B. Wells and Jesse Owens.<\/p>\n

Explore over 330 years of newspapers and historical records in GenealogyBank. Discover your family story! Start a 7-Day Free Trial<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this article, Jane Hampton Cook searches old newspapers to learn more about Nancy Green, the original Aunt Jemima, and the times she lived in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":65807,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12323],"tags":[20527,57863,19013,57861,57865],"class_list":["post-65785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-african-american-history-genealogy","tag-african-american-history-and-genealogy","tag-aunt-jemima","tag-food-and-recipes","tag-nancy-green","tag-pancakes"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/photo-0322-2021-featured-graphic-pancakes.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65785"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100761,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65785\/revisions\/100761"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}