Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2025
An ad from the Shakopee Valley News on Dec. 6, 1956 noted that Aunt Jemima would be serving free pancakes from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Shakopee Red Owl Store on Lewis Street. “Yes, the Famous Pancake Queen will be here to serve you with her mouthwatering pancakes. Come in for your free hot pancakes served with hot syrup!” said Leo Robeck, owner of the Red Owl store, located next to Bill’s Toggery in downtown Shakopee in 1956.
Aunt Jemima was an American breakfast brand for pancake mix, table syrup, and other breakfast food products. The Pearl Milling Company advertised it as the first “ready-mix” cooking product. The original Aunt Jemima pancake recipe, made from four types of flour, was rather nutritious. The current owners (Pepsico) have turned the mix into a one-flour mix, filled with chemicals.
Aunt Jemima was modeled after, and has been a famous example of, the “Mammy” archetype in the Southern United States. Due to the “Mammy” stereotype’s historical ties to the Jim Crow era, Quaker Oats announced in 2020 that the Aunt Jemima brand would be discontinued. In June 2021 the products rebranded to Pearl Milling Company. The Aunt Jemima name remains in use in the brand’s tagline, “Same great taste as Aunt Jemima.” Other similarly motivated rebrandings include Uncle Ben’s rice (which was renamed Ben’s Original), the Mrs. Butterworth’s pancake syrup brand and bottle shape, and the “Rastus” Black chef logo used by Cream of Wheat.
Nancy Green, a former enslaved person of Montgomery County, Kentucky, portrayed the Aunt Jemima character at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Subsequent advertising agencies hired dozens of actresses to perform the role as the first organized sales promotion campaign.
Beginning in 1894, the company added an Aunt Jemima paper doll family that could be cut out from the pancake box. Aunt Jemima is joined by her husband, Uncle Rastus (later renamed Uncle Mose to avoid confusion with the Cream of Wheat character, while Uncle Mose was first introduced as the plantation butler). Their children, described as “comical pickaninnies”: Abraham Lincoln, Dilsie, Zeb, and Dinah. The paper doll family was posed dancing barefoot, dressed in tattered clothing, and the box was labeled “Before the Receipt was sold.”
Rag doll versions were offered as a premium in 1909: “Aunt Jemima Pancake Flour / Pica ninny Doll / The Davis Milling Company.” Early versions were portrayed as poor people with patches on their trousers, large mouths, and missing teeth. The children’s names were changed to Diana and Wade. Although the Aunt Jemima character was not created until nearly 25 years after the American Civil War, the clothing, dancing, enslaved dialect, and singing old plantation songs as she worked, all harkened back to a glorified view of antebellum Southern plantation life as a “happy slave” narrative.
Aunt Jemima became one of the longest continually running logos and trademarks in the history of American advertising. The earliest advertising was based upon a vaudeville parody, and it remained a caricature for many years.
Rosie Lee Moore Hall, the last “living” Aunt Jemima, was born in Robertson County, Texas on June 22, 1899. She was working in the Quaker Oats’ advertising department in Oklahoma when she answered their search for a new Aunt Jemima. Hall portrayed Aunt Jemima from 1950 until her death (on her way to church) from a heart attack on Feb. 12, 1967, according to Marilyn Kern-Foxworth in 1994. This was probably the woman who played Aunt Jemima in Shakopee in 1956.