Slave in a box
Subtitle: the strange career of Aunt Jemima
By: M.M. Manring.
Series: The American South series
Publisher: University Press of Virginia
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Charlottesville
Language: eng
Number of pages: 210
Subjects: Jemima, Aunt; Quaker Oats Company; Advertising -- Social aspects -- United States -- History -- 20th century; African American women in advertising; Stereotype (Psychology) in advertising -- United States
Description: In Slave in a Box, M. M. Manring investigates why the troubling figure of Aunt Jemima has endured in American culture.

The author traces the evolution of the mammy from her roots in Old South slave reality and mythology, through reinterpretations during Reconstruction and in minstrel shows and turn-of-the-century advertisements, to Aunt Jemima's symbolic role in the Civil Rights movement and her present incarnation as a "working grandmother." The reader learns how advertising entrepreneur James Webb Young, aided by celebrated illustrator N. C. Wyeth, skillfully tapped into nostalgic 1920s perceptions of the South as a culture of white leisure and black labor.

Aunt Jemima's ready-mixed products offered middle-class housewives the next best thing to a black servant: a "slave in a box" that conjured up romantic images of not only the food but also the social hierarchy of the plantation South.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 197-206) and index.