Racism

Gold Dust Twins – Tornado Reveals a Racist Remnant in Advertising – Atlanta, GA

Mar 21st, 2017

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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

Ingresso vietato ad ambulanti-medicanti e zingari – No admittance to street beggars and gypsies – Apartment building in San Benigno Canavese – Torino, IT

Nov 17th, 2015

by Frank.

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Some think this is a problem in Italy. Some think this is a problem “with” Italy. This was previously posted on FAB as Apartment Building Entrance Disclaimer – San Benigno Canavese, TO – Italia in Jul 9th, 2008. Unlike the “Whites Only” and “No Jews” signs from our past, these plaques have not become a public embarrassment nor disgrace.

Edmund Pettus Bridge – Selma, AL – #changethename

Jul 15th, 2015

by Frank.

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Vincenzo & myself in Selma today – © Frank H. Jump

A proposal to rename the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma the Journey to Freedom Bridge was approved on a voice vote in the Alabama Senate on June 3, 2015. – AL dot com

Sunlight Soap Repaint – E. Bailey Public Baths – Brighton, UK – Featured Fade, Daphne Hughes

Oct 12th, 2014

by Frank.

1 comment

CLICK FOR LARGER IMAGE – © Wikipedia Commons

Vintage Images UK

Southern Pacific Railroad Ad – Orientalism – They’re Coming to See California… Why Don’t You Come Too? – April 1904, Vol. XII

May 27th, 2014

by Frank.

1 comment

Sunset Magazine – April 1904, Vol. XII

Since the publication of Edward Said‘s Orientalism in 1978, much academic discourse has begun to use the term “Orientalism” to refer to a general patronizing Western attitude towards Middle Eastern, Asian and North African societies. In Said’s analysis, the West essentializes these societies as static and undeveloped—thereby fabricating a view of Oriental culture that can be studied, depicted, and reproduced. Implicit in this fabrication, writes Said, is the idea that Western society is developed, rational, flexible, and superior – Wikipedia

Sunset Magazine – April 1904, Vol. XII – CLICK FOR LARGER IMAGE

Yes, “they” are coming to California by rail, but not as tourists.

The first Chinese were hired in 1865 [sic] at approximately $28 per month to do the very dangerous work of blasting and laying ties over the treacherous terrain of the high Sierras. They lived in simply dwellings and cooked their own meals, often consisting of fish, dried oysters and fruit, mushrooms and seaweed. – Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum

From Sunset Magazine article – California Netherlands – April 1904 CLICK FOR LARGER IMAGE

In the late 1800’s, thousands of Chinese and Japanese workers were brought to work in the fruit orchards and sugar beet fields. They were the first farmworkers, to form associations and strike for improved wages and conditions. But their victories were short-lived.

The growers were able to play them off against anglos and other immigrant workers, especially during the depression years of the 1870’s and early 1900’s – when Asian workers were blamed for taking away jobs from “Americans.” The result was racist laws excluding the Chinese (1882) and Japanese (1920) from the U.S. – Farmworkers’ Website – The Struggle in California

Oakland Board of Trade Ad – Pseudo African-American Vernacular – Sunset Magazine – Vol. XII, 1904 – African-American English, Ronald A. Perry

May 26th, 2014

by Frank.

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CLICK FOR LARGER IMAGE – Sunset Magazine

Google Books

Sunset Magazine – Volume XII – 1904 – CLICK FOR LINK – Google Books (PDF)

The arrival of the first slaves in North America marked the beginning of an American fascination with the culture and speech of these black men who had exchanged a barbarous existence in Africa for a life of servitude among civilized, English-speaking Christians. But however much novelists like Harriet Beecher Stowe and Mark Twain, or songwriters like Stephen Foster attempted to represent black speech, one finds in their work little indication of their having carefully studied it. Touches of “nigger” dialect lend pathos to the speeches of Stowe’s Uncle Tom, humor to the philosophizing of Twain’s runaway slave Jim, and sentimentality to Stephen Foster’s Uncle Ned (“He’s gone war de good niggers¹ go…”) precisely due to its being “bad” English. An example of such pseudo African-American dialect is “Oh! Susanna”. This Stephen Foster composition, sung by generations of American schoolchildren in Standard English, is given here in the original version:

I come from Alabama
with my Banjo on my knee—
I’s g’wine to Lou’siana,
My true lub² for to see,
It rain’d all night de day I left,
De wedder it was dry;
The sun so hot I froze to def—
Susanna, don’t you cry.

FOOTNOTES:

¹During the nineteenth century the word “nigger”, had not yet acquired its meaning as a racial slur. As a colloquial term for “Negro” it occurs in the songs of Stephen Foster, the writings of Mark Twain and Walt Whitman, and even in reported conversations of Abraham Lincoln. Some have insisted that such traditional literature be censored.

² Nineteenth century caricatures of African-Americans inexplicably represent them as being unable to pronounce the phoneme “v”, so that we frequently have black preachers talking about “ebil” (evil) and “de debil” (the devil).

– African Americans as Perceived by White Society, African-American English – Ronald Alan Perry – Revista No. 31

ABSTRACT:

The Africans who were brought forcibly to America over a period of three centuries developed a characteristic speech that combined the English of their white masters with grammatical and phonetic features common to West African languages. This speech, known as “Ebonics” or African American Vernacular English, is characterized by the simplification or transformation of certain phonemes and by copula omission (un-conjugated “to be”). A decision by the Oakland, California school district to recognize “Ebonics” as a distinct African-American language has fueled debate as to whether it is a dialect of English, a language distinct from English, or simply bad English. In any event, this “black” English has fascinated white society and occupies an important place in Anglophonic literature, folklore and music. As manifested in the musical genre known as blues, it has influenced all of today’s popular music, prompting even Britons to imitate certain aspects of African-American speech. – Professor Ronald A. Perry – Universidad de Technólica de Pereira

Racial Stereotypes in Tobacco Ads – Smoke Seal of North Carolina Plug Cut Tobacco – Savannah, GA

Jan 19th, 2010

by Frank.

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Examples of Racial Stereotypes in Seal of North Carolina Tobacco ads

Worthpoint dot com

Darktown Tourists Going Off On Their Blubber – ‘Nuffin but poor weak cullud pussuns’ – Worthpoint dot com

‘Plug Cut is the boss smoke, and don’t you forget it’ – Chronicling America.loc.gov

Miami University Digital Library

Who was their target audience?

Worthpoint dot com

Antique Country Store dot com

Antique Country Store dot com

Antique Country Store dot com

Antique Country Store dot com

Antique Country Store dot com

Online resources:

Digital Collections – Miami University – Victorian Trade Cards
Chronicling America dot LOC dot org – December 22, 1888 – chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86064205/1888-12-22/ed-1/seq-1/;words=Plug Cut North cut smoke seal NORTH Carolina
North Carolina Plug Cut Tobacco – Worthpoint dot com

Pancake Days is Happy Days – Aunt Jemima

Sep 5th, 2009

by fadingad.

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circa 1938 – clipping bought in a junk store near Junction City OR

Whoever wrote this copy should have been boiled in corn syrup.

Aunt Jemima History
Aunt Jemima – Wikipedia
Just How Racist was Aunt Jemima? – Gawker
Slave in a Box – The Strange Career of Aunt Jemima by M.M. Manring – U. of VA Press

courtesy of Wikipedia

: Courtesy of Slate dot com – click for slideshow

From Uncle Bens to Aunt Jemima: The History of Racist Spokespersons in Media
Uncle Ben, CEO? The strange history of racist spokescharacters. By David Segal

Today, no company would be dumb enough to build a brand around a black servant, but the ones now in supermarkets have been grandfathered in, rendered innocuous by the passage of time, image overhauls, and judicious wardrobe adjustments. But it’s worth remembering what these spokescharacters truly are: a final, living vestige of Jim Crow America. – David Segal

Here are a couple of clips of the history of racist spokescharacters.

Aunt Jemima

“Aunt Jemima”

Such virulence didn’t last for long in the realm of commerce, but the image of the servile African-American soon became a popular motif in American marketing, one that’s proved remarkably enduring. You’re looking at the most successful example of them all. Aunt Jemima was dreamed up in 1889 by a white businessman who was inspired by a character at a minstrel show. Looking for a way to sell a self-rising pancake mix, Chris L. Rutt conceived a jolly ex-slave who lived on a Louisiana plantation and made legendary flapjacks in the days “befo’ de wah.” Eventually, she’d be boycotted by the NAACP, attacked by Langston Hughes, and belittled by Public Enemy. But this quintessential “mammy”—a black woman who lives to nurture, clean, and cook for whites—was a marketing phenomenon from the start, mythologized in ads painted by N.C. Wyeth and impersonated by actors who toured around the country. One had a permanent residency at “Aunt Jemima’s Pancake House” in Disneyland.

The Tom

The “Tom”

Aunt Jemima’s male counterpart was the Tom, a simple, cheerful, and ambition-free butler and cook. In the South, the mammy and the Tom reflected a nostalgia for the days of slavery and served as an implicit argument for segregation: If it’s so bad, why are these people so happy, huh? In the North, these characters were presented as the epitome of hospitality and were designed to make potential buyers feel pampered and privileged. It was a sales pitch that advertisers apparently couldn’t resist. One study of national magazines in the ’20s—the beginning of the Tom’s heyday—found that fully half of all ads that featured a black man depicted him as a servant. Like Ben, many were given the honorific “Uncle,” a word favored by Southerners who wanted to express respect in a society where calling a black man “Mister” was out of the question.

To view the entire slideshow, click here (SLIDESHOW HAS SINCE BEEN TAKEN DOWN)

What do you think? Will you purchase Uncle Ben’s (now Chairman Ben) rice or Aunt Jemima syrup knowing this? If so, why?

Note: On April 30, a former Pepsi ad man who broke color barriers with one of the first corporate marketing campaigns to portray African Americans in a positive light died. Edward Boyd was 92 at his death and was one of the first black executives at a major US corporation. Thank you, Edward F. Boyd!

Reformed Blacks of America

Reuters: Obama supporters fear race may bring candidate down

Oct 20th, 2008

by fadingad.

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Reuters Article By Matthew Bigg

ATLANTA (Reuters) – For supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama it is a nightmare scenario — his apparent lead in the battle for the White House suddenly evaporates on Election Day. The cause? Race.