Quaker Oats has released a new name and logo for its “Aunt Jemima” products.
The name “Aunt Jemima,” which has long been criticized as a racist caricature of a Black woman stemming from slavery, will be replaced with the Pearl Milling Company name and logo on the former brand’s new packaging.
“We are starting a new day with Pearl Milling Company,” a PepsiCo spokesperson said. “A new day rooted in the brand’s historic beginnings and its mission to create moments that matter at the breakfast table.”
The new brand is scheduled to launch in June, one year after the company announced the change.
The Pearl Milling Company was the late-19th-century business that created the original ready-made pancake mix, according to PepsiCo. It was founded in 1888 by Chris L. Rutt.
Rutt named the original company after “Old Aunt Jemima,” an 1875 song from a minstrel show that featured performers in blackface who wore aprons and bandana headbands.
The new Pearl Milling Company brand logo replaces the Aunt Jemima image with what appears to be a 19th century watermill, where flour was ground at the time. The new logo’s red, white and yellow color scheme matches the colors that were used on Aunt Jemima’s packaging.
Not everyone is happy about the change however — the family of ‘Aunt Jemima’ does not like the change.
Anna Short Harrington (eventually took the place of the original Aunt Jemima, former slave Nancy Green, after Green passed away in 1923).
Harrington’s great-grandson, Larnell Evans, says Quaker not only took her likeness, but it also used her recipe to make the mix. “She worked for that Quaker Oats for 20 years,” Evans told Patch. “She traveled all the way around the United States and Canada making pancakes as Aunt Jemima for them. This woman served all those people, and it was after slavery. She worked as Aunt Jemima. That was her job… How do you think I feel as a black man sitting here telling you about my family history they’re trying to erase?”