In April 2008, a tornado ripped through downtown Atlanta. Damage totaled around half a billion dollars. One life was lost. Amid the destruction came the resurrection of an early 20th century billboard—a caricature of coal-black, wide eyed, tutu-wearing twins, happily scrubbing dishes. The two were the Gold Dust Twins, the nationally recognized trademark for Gold Dust Washing Powder, a household cleaning product whose popularity soared with the antics of the cheerful, degraded duo.
The advertisement is painted on the exterior east wall of a vacant, three-story brick building at 229 Auburn Avenue.1 The structure was once the local office of the Atlanta Life Insurance Company, founded in 1905 by Alonzo Herndon, one of the wealthiest African Americans in the South at the time. For more than eighty years the Gold Dust advertisement remained hidden from view, obstructed by the neighboring Herndon Office Building, completed in 1926. When the tornado-damaged Herndon Building was demolished in 2008, the advertisement came to light, raising difficult questions of race and culture—and more pressing, what to do with the twins now that they were back. – Velma Maia Thomas, Scholar Blogs – Emory University (July 27, 2015)
Who are the Gold Dust Twins?
The Gold Dust Twins were advertising icons for a soap company called N. K. Fairbank, created to sell its Gold Dust Washing Powder.
According to Marilyn Kern-Foxworth, author of “Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, and Rastus: Blacks in Advertising, Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow,” the Gold Dust Twins were around starting in about 1887, but they really took off after their appearance at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904.
Tornado Uncovers Disturbing, Nearly Century-Old Ad On Auburn Avenue
By Stephannie Stokes • Jan 21, 2015 – WABE (NPR), Atlanta (see and hear more with a podcast) – http://news.wabe.org/post/tornado-uncovers-disturbing-nearly-century-old-ad-auburn-avenue
- See Pancake Days is Happy Days – Aunt Jemima – Sept. 5, 2009
