Civil Rights
Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
q2K BHP
Black History Portal
THE BHP WIRE —
HIDDEN TRUTHS
What's New!
Explore the people, places, events, achievements, struggles and stories that shaped our journey.
Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
Innovation, patents, science, technology and world-changing contributions.
Pioneers, champions, Negro Leagues, records, activism and excellence.
Meet the people whose lives, choices and achievements shaped the journey.
Black towns, communities, institutions and places where history happened.
Moments that changed communities, movements, institutions and the nation.
Wilmington, North Carolina once had a thriving Black middle class and an elected interracial government. In 1898 white supremacists used violence to overthrow that government, kill Black residents and drive many others from the city.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
| Mammy's Cupboard | |
|---|---|
 | |
 | |
General information | |
| Type | Restaurant |
Architectural style | Novelty architecture |
| Location | 555 U.S. 61, near Natchez, Mississippi, United States |
| Coordinates | 31°28′41″N 91°22′17″W / 31.47806°N 91.37139°W |
| Opened | 1940 |
| Height | |
| Height | 28 ft (8.5 m) |
Mammy's Cupboard (founded 1940)[1] is a roadside restaurant built in the shape of a mammy archetype,[1] located on US Highway 61 south of Natchez, Mississippi. The woman's skirt holds a dining room and a gift shop.[2] The skirt is made out of bricks, and the earrings are horseshoes.[3] She is holding a serving tray while smiling.[4] Mammy's Cupboard has been through several renovations; the exterior has been repaired and the interior refurbished.[5] The restaurant currently serves various lunches and desserts.[2]
The restaurant's founder was originally a tour guide of Natchez's nearby antebellum mansions and she believed tourists would also be interested in this type of restaurant.[1] Also a mammy character had been portrayed in the very popular 1939 film Gone with the Wind, about the same time plans for the restaurant were being made.[1] During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s the Mammy's skin was repainted a lighter shade.[1] The current owner said of the Mammy, "There is honor in everything you do and for those who have young people. You have a crying child. Who are they going to run to? Nine times out of ten, they are going to run to the mammy. ... I want people to look at her and see that."[6]
The author of Crossings: A White Man's Journey Into Black America described the restaurant as "a massive statue—twenty-eight feet [8.5 m] high—of a black woman dressed like Aunt Jemima, wearing a red scarf, a white blouse, and a red hoopskirt that actually houses a restaurant",[7] while the authors of Frommer's USA said that if you want to visit the restaurant, "you need to check your political correctness at the door".[8] The restaurant's homemade pie was covered in the book American Pie[9] and the newspaper The Press Democrat for National Pie Day.[10]
Media related to Mammy's Cupboard Restaurant at Wikimedia CommonsSource: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
Mammy's Cupboard (founded 1940) is a roadside restaurant built in the shape of a mammy archetype, located on US Highway 61 south of Natchez, Mississippi. The woman's skirt holds a dining room and a gift shop. The skirt is made out of bricks, and the earrings are horseshoes. She is holding a serving tray while smiling. Mammy's Cupboard has been through several renovations; the exterior has been repaired and the interior refurbished. The restaurant currently serves various lunches and desserts.
Aunt Jemima is a discontinued American breakfast brand for pancake mix, table syrup, and other breakfast food products. The brand was retired in 2021 and is now sold under the name Pearl Milling Company. The original version of the pancake mix was developed in 1888–1889 by the Pearl Milling Company and was advertised as the first "ready-mix" cooking product. Aunt Jemima was modeled after, and has been a famous example of, the "Mammy" archetype in the Southern United States. Due to the "Mammy" stereotype's historical ties to the Jim Crow era, Quaker Oats announced in June 2020 that the Aunt Jemima brand would be discontinued "to make progress toward racial equality", leading to the Aunt Jemima image being removed by the fourth quarter of 2020. In June 2021, amidst heightened racial unrest in the United States, the Aunt Jemima brand name was discontinued by its current owner, PepsiCo, with all products rebranded to Pearl Milling Company, the name of the company that produced the original pancake mix product. The Aunt Jemima name remains in use in the brand's tagline: "Same great taste as Aunt Jemima." Nancy Green portrayed the Aunt Jemima character at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago and was one of the first black corporate models in the United States. Subsequent advertising agencies hired dozens of actresses to perform the role as the first organized sales promotion campaign.
Stereotypes of African Americans are beliefs about the culture of people with partial or total ancestry from any black racial groups of Africa whose ancestors resided in the United States since before 1865. These stereotypes are largely connected to the racism and the discrimination faced by African Americans. These beliefs married with the spread of Judeo-Christian religious imperialism date back to the slavery of black people before and during the colonial era and they have evolved within American society over time as justification for slavery and the mistreatment of African Americans. The first significant display of stereotypes of African Americans was in the form of minstrel shows. Minstrel shows boomed at the beginning of the nineteenth century; these shows were theatrical plays that used white actors who performed in blackface and wore torn attire to portray African-Americans in order to lampoon and disparage black communities. Throughout history, more stereotypes became popular to dehumanize African American communities further. Some nineteenth century stereotypes, such as the sambo, are now considered to be derogatory and racist. The "Mandingo" and "Jezebel" stereotypes portray African-Americans as hypersexual, contributing to their sexualization. The Mammy archetype depicts a motherly black woman who is dedicated to her role working for a white family, a stereotype which dates back to the origin of Southern plantations. Society has also depicted African-Americans as having an unusual appetite for fried chicken, watermelon, and grape drinks. In the 1980s as well as in the following decades, emerging stereotypes of black men depicted them as being criminals and social degenerates, particularly as drug dealers, crack addicts, hobos, and subway muggers. Jesse Jackson, a prominent civil rights activist, acknowledged how the media portrays black people as less intelligent, less patriotic, and more violent. Throughout different media platforms, stereotypes became far-fetched, such as The magical Negro, a stock character who is depicted as having special insight or powers, and has been depicted (and criticized) in American cinema. However, in recent history, black men are stereotyped as being deadbeat fathers and dangerous criminals. There is a frequent stereotype in America that African Americans are hypersexual, athletic, uncivilized, uneducated and violent. These general and common themes in America have made young African Americans labeled as "gangsters" or "players" who generally reside in the "hood". A majority of the stereotypes of black women include depictions which portray them as welfare queens or depictions which portray them as angry black women who are loud, aggressive, demanding, and rude. Others depict black women having a maternal, caregiving nature, due to the Mammy archetype. Laziness, submissiveness, backwardness, lewdness, treachery, and dishonesty are stereotypes historically assigned to African Americans. In the United States, whiteness is associated with goodness, morality, intelligence and attractiveness while blackness is stereotyped to be the opposite of these traits. These views literally reference the colors on the spectrum and not human skin tones. African Americans are also stereotyped to be prone to violence and are stereotyped to be hostile and unfriendly. African Americans are considered loud, obnoxious, aggressive, rude, low class, primitive, dirty, talkative, religious, mentally inferior, ugly, overly assertive and having bad attitudes. African American stereotypes are similar to the discriminated Roma in Europe. Roma are also stereotyped as criminal and musically talented. These stereotypes were created and reinforced by the white media. The Roma (Gypsy) community have a history similar to that of African Americans, as both groups were enslaved by white people.
Aunt Priscilla was a pseudonym for the columnist Eleanor Purcell of The Baltimore Sun. Purcell used the image of the Mammy archetype to create a cooking column called Aunt Priscilla's Recipes which was purported to be written by an African American woman. The daily column was written in an exaggerated dialect.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →The Greenwood District.