Fare thee well, Aunt Jemima ...

"Well," huffed the worthy white matron whose comment somehow ended up in my Facebook feed earlier this week. "I'll be using the Bisquick recipe for my pancakes from now on!"

This after learning that one of the nation's oldest trademarks, Aunt Jemima, would be retired by the Quaker Oats Co. as part of the conversation about racism that has developed since the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis during late May.

The response among some white folks made it seem as if the Tooth Fairy had switched overnight from delivering dimes to dispensing stupid pills.

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The Aunt Jemima pancake mix recipe was developed by white entrepreneurs in St. Joseph, Missouri, during 1889, and given the name of a popular vaudeville character widely portrayed at the time by white folks in blackface.

"Aunt" was an honorific used by whites in the South when referring to older black women; the costume and the concept, including kerchief head covering, reflected romanticization of plantation culture --- who, after all, would not want a docile enslaved "mammy" in one's kitchen to crank out breakfast pancakes for her beloved white family?

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Outrage over the imminent departure of Aunt Jemima somehow last week became focused on a real person, Nancy Green, born into slavery and employed in 1893 to represent the brand and conduct a pancake-making display at the World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago. 

Green remained an employee of what became the Aunt Jemima Mills Co. until her death in 1923, but as a residential housekeeper during and after 1910 and she was just one of dozens and dozens of portrayers hired during that period and thereafter, into the 1960s, to make personal appearances representing the brand.

Contrary to the stories circulating this week, she did not develop the pancake mix recipe, nor did she grow rich. When she died, she was buried in an unmarked grave in Chicago. Had she traveled extensively, it seems unlikely that she would have been allowed to stay in white-owned hotels or eat Aunt Jemima pancakes in white-owned restaurants.

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One poor gentleman, in concluding his diatribe about Aunt Jemima's departure last week, screeched: "Nancy Green was a remarkable woman... and has just been ERASED by politically correct bedwetters."

Which is absolutely hilarious when you think about it. Prior to the Quaker Oats Co. decision to rebrand, perhaps 12 among millions of consumers of Aunt Jemima pancakes or syrup had ever heard of Nancy Green.

Now she's one of the most widely known women in the Americas. Good one, that.