Nancy Green, The Face Behind "Aunt Jemima"

Two years ago, Quaker Oats, an American food conglomerate based in Chicago, announced that they were removing the image and name long-associated with its Aunt Jemima brand of syrup and pancake mix. The brand, which was formed in 1889, featured a Black woman named Aunt Jemima, dressed as a minstrel character. The company admitted that Aunt Jemima’s origins were based on a racial stereotype and the move was an effort toward racial equality.

The inspiration for the first Aunt Jemima was a former slave named Nancy Green. Nancy (née Hayes) Green was born enslaved on March 4, 1834. Montgomery County Historical Society oral history places her birth at a farm on Somerset Creek, six miles outside Mount Sterling in Montgomery County, Kentucky. It is believed that she had two to four children, one of which was born between Nancy and a local farmer named George Green. It is difficult to pinpoint these things as there were no birth certificates or marriage licenses for enslaved people.

Nancy has been variously described as a servant, nurse, nanny, housekeeper, and cook for Charles Morehead Walker and his wife Amanda. She also served the family's next generation (Chicago Circuit Judge Charles M. Walker, Jr., and Dr. Samuel J. Walker) as a nanny and a cook. By the end of the Civil War, Nancy had lost her husband and children and moved with the Walkers to Chicago. According to Marilyn Kern-Foxworth’s book, "Blacks in Advertising, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow," Judge Walker was the one who recommended she represent R.T. Davis Milling Company’s pancake mix.

At the age of 59, Nancy made her debut as Aunt Jemima at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition held in Chicago. Situated beside the "world's largest flour barrel," she operated a pancake-cooking display, sang songs, and told romanticized stories about the Old South. After the Expo, a major promotional push by the company forced Nancy to make thousands of personal appearances. She appeared at fairs, festivals, flea markets, food shows, and local grocery stores. She portrayed the role for 20 years before being replaced by Agnes Moody for her refusal to cross the Atlantic for the 1900 Paris exhibition. During the Paris exhibition it was reported that Moody was the original Aunt Jemima.

In 1910, at age 76, Nancy was still working as a residential housekeeper according to the census. Few people were aware of her role as Aunt Jemima. Sadly, Nancy passed away on August 30, 1923, at the age of 89 in Chicago, when a car collided with a laundry truck and careered onto the sidewalk where she was standing. She is buried in a pauper's grave near a wall in the northeast quadrant of Chicago's Oak Woods Cemetery. Her grave was unmarked and unknown until 2015.

Sherry Williams, the founder of the Bronzeville Historical Society, spent 15 years researching Nancy’s resting place. After she received approval to place a headstone, she reached out to Quaker Oats about whether they would support a monument for Nancy's grave. "Their corporate response was that Nancy Green and Aunt Jemima aren't the same – that Aunt Jemima is a fictitious character." The headstone was placed on September 5, 2020.

In 1935, Anna Short Harrington was selected by Quaker Oats to represent the Aunt Jemima line. She earned enough money to purchase a 22-room house with a backyard bungalow on Monroe Street, in a segregated area known as the 15th Ward, in New York. At that time, it was considered among the worst slums in the world. The multi-room house was cut up into single room dwelling units, which Anna rented to boarders. The house was demolished for urban renewal and the construction of Interstate 81 in the 1960s.

In 2014, the descendants of Anna Harrington filed a $2 million lawsuit claiming that Quaker Oats and parent company PepsiCo made false promises to Nancy Green and Harrington and exploited the pair. The lawsuit was thrown out in 2015.