Aunt Jemima Has a New Name: Pearl Milling

Aunt Jemima is now Pearl Milling Co.

The PepsiCo Inc. unit that sells Aunt Jemima pancake products unveiled the new name on Tuesday, officially retiring a brand that had come under criticism for its origins in racist imagery of Black people.

Pearl Milling Co. was the creator of the original self-rising pancake mix, first marketed as “Self-Rising Pancake Flour” before it was trademarked in 1890 under the Aunt Jemima brand.

The new packaging, which will appear in June, will retain much of the current colors and design. The company had already dropped the image of a Black woman from its bottles and boxes.

“Our changes are in line with PepsiCo’s journey toward racial equality, and the evolution will help carry the 130-year-old brand into the future,” PepsiCo said.

PepsiCo was one of several brand owners that said they would rethink their products and marketing as the U.S. was confronting systemic racism after the killing of George Floyd, an African-American, in police custody last summer.

Mars Inc. said it would change the name of Uncle Ben’s rice to Ben’s Original and drop the image of a bow-tied Black man from its packaging. The maker of Cream of Wheat said the image of a Black chef would be removed from Cream of Wheat’s packaging, and the name of Eskimo Pie was changed to Edy’s Pie. 

Aunt Jemima’s founders bought Missouri-based Pearl Milling Co. in 1888, then began a search for a novel product all Americans would eat, according to the book “Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben and Rastus,” by Marilyn Kern-Foxworth. They settled on pancakes, and perfected their mix in 1889. The brand name was inspired by a popular song, “Old Aunt Jemima,” typically performed in minstrel shows by a white man in blackface.

The brand’s creators hired a former enslaved woman, Nancy Green, to be its spokeswoman. She made her debut as Aunt Jemima at the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, singing, telling stories and making pancakes outside a booth resembling a giant flour barrel, according to the book “Black Hunger” by Doris Witt. PepsiCo acquired the business when it bought Quaker Oats in 2001.

Write to Jennifer Maloney at jennifer.maloney@wsj.com

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Appeared in the February 10, 2021, print edition as ‘PepsiCo Renames Pancake Favorite.’