“I’se in Town, Honey”: Reading Aunt Jemima Advertising in Canadian Print Media, 1919 to 1962

Abstract

Between 1919 and 1962, the Aunt Jemima advertising trademark made frequent appearances in Canadian print media. While scholars have documented how the image of the faithful, happy-to-please Black slave woman captivated the American cultural imagination, the advertising trademark has received much less scholarly attention in Canada. As Canadian culture modernized in the 1920s, withstood a Depression and the Second World War, and witnessed the birth of the suburbs, Aunt Jemima advertisements reflected the changing milieu. Using textual and visual analysis, this essay argues that English-language media, primarily the Toronto Daily Star and Chatelaine magazine, publications which had the highest circulations in early twentieth-century Canada, were significant outlets for White middle-class Canadians. The presence of Aunt Jemima, a prototypical “Mammy” plucked from the plantation South, thus stands as an example of how race, class, and gender were constructed in English-language media, and by extension, dominant Canadian society in the first half of the twentieth century.