When cancelling means erasing real black people and their contributions from history

The untold story of the real 'Aunt Jemima' and the fight to preserve her legacy

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You probably have never heard her name, but Nancy Green has likely been in your kitchen before. Green created the Aunt Jemima recipe, and with it, the birth of the American pancake.

"Her face on the box, that image on the box, was probably the one way that households were integrated," Sherry Williams, president of the Bronzeville Historical Society in Chicago, told ABC News.

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It was so good that the boys would now tell everyone ... the milling company heard about it ... they came and sought her out," Hayes said.

And just like that Aunt Jemima was born. It made its debut at the World’s fair in Chicago in 1893.

As legend tells it, Green sold 50,000 boxes of the now famous pancake mix.

"She was the trusted face. Back then, you know, anybody who would look at an African American woman cooking, they knew that they can trust her cooking, that she could cook,” Hayes said.

But for all those years, ads by Quaker Oats for Aunt Jemima never mentioned Green.

Green lived until the age of 89 but died after being hit by a car in Chicago in 1923.

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I’m really not sure if there is any bigger injustice you could do to a woman born into slavery, who put pancakes on the map in America, and who dies in a terribly tragic accident and is buried in a paupers grave than to wipe her out of history by removing the very likeness of her that brought people together, doing away with any opportunity to remember her every time you mix up some pancakes or put syrup on your pancakes, or have a likeness that could serve as a talking point at dinner tables around the country of black people’s contributions in American history for years to come.

Instead of a talking point, she and that opportunity to discuss her has all but been lost forever, and the utter disservice of erasing her from history does not serve her legacy or anything but frightened little knee jerk reactionists who simply cannot see the forest for the trees to save their own lives.

I fail to see any rational thinking involved in doing away with the likeness of Nancy Green from Aunt Jemima, and how that serves black people or anyone for that matter. After reading up on her and her life and accomplishments I am aware that the only way I learned of her name is because I searched for it because of her likeness was on Aunt Jemima products, and yet people want her and all she did to be completely wiped from history and forgotten about.

That is the greatest injustice of all.