After Quaker Foods said it was changing its name, the great-grandson of the real Aunt Jemima was angry that cancel culture was destroying her legacy.
Quaker Foods gave in to calls to “cancel” Aunt Jemima, and the brand will now be called something else. Anna Short Harrington, the great-grandson of the real Aunt Jemima, is now speaking out about how angry and sad he is that her legacy is being erased.
“This isn’t fair to me or my family. “This is a part of my history, sir,” Larnell Evans Sr. told Patch. “The racism they talk about, which they illustrate with pictures of slavery, comes from the other side, which are white people. This company makes money off of pictures of our slavery. And their answer is to get rid of the history of my great-grandmother. a female of color. It’s painful.
In 1893, at the Chicago World’s Fair, Nancy Green, a former slave, showed off the first “Aunt Jemima.” Green worked as a cook on the city’s South Side. She was hired to serve pancakes to people who came to the fair while wearing a headscarf and an apron.
She kept playing “Aunt Jemima” until 1923, when she passed away. Then Evans said that Anna Short Harrington, his grandmother, took her place.
Quaker Foods hired her right away and put her picture on their products and in ads. They also sent her all over the country to serve pancakes as “Aunt Jemima,” which made her a national celebrity.
She spent 20 years working at the Quaker Oats company. Evans said, “She went all the way around the United States and Canada as Aunt Jemima and made pancakes for them.” “This woman took care of all of those people after slavery ended. She was Aunt Jemima at work. That was part of her job. How do you think I feel as a black man telling you about my family history that they are trying to erase?”
Evans, a disabled 66-year-old former U.S. Marine, said that Quaker Foods also used Harrington’s pancake recipe. In 2014, her descendants tried to sue the company for $3 billion because it didn’t pay them royalties. They lost the case.
“How many white people grew up watching Aunt Jemima every morning at breakfast?” he asked. “How many white businesses made lots of money but didn’t give us a dime? They ought to look at it, in my opinion. They can’t just get rid of it while we still have to deal with it.”
“After making all that money, and now that black people are saying we want restitution for slavery, they’re just going to erase history as if it never happened?” Evans continued. “They won’t give us anything, are they?” Why do they have the right?”
But Quaker Foods has said that Aunt Jemima logos and pictures will be taken off all of their products by the end of the year.
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