©2022. Published in Landslide, Vol. 14, No. 2, December/January 2022, by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not be copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association or the copyright holder.
January 12, 2022 Feature
The Last Breakfast with Aunt Jemima
Deborah R. Gerhardt
In the spring and summer of 2020, as Americans struggled to make sense of George Floyd’s murder in front of a crowd in broad daylight, trademark owners began abandoning iconic but racially charged words and imagery, including “Aunt Jemima,” “Uncle Ben,” and the “Redskins.” This unprecedented moment in advertising history has much to teach us about the connections between law and culture.
In the 1950s, James Baldwin wrote, “Before . . . our joy at the demise of Aunt Jemima and Uncle Tom approaches the indecent, we had better ask whence they sprang, how they lived?”1 As historian M. M. Manring notes, “The things we see and use every day—and even more to the point, ignore—tell us much about ourselves.”2 While a white person may walk past a Confederate monument, pour Aunt Jemima syrup, or attend a “Redskins” game without thinking they are engaging with racist imagery, members of the depicted communities experience these symbols differently. For decades, much of America knit these words and designs into daily life, often not noticing their racial connotations. A closer look at Aunt Jemima provides an excellent opportunity to broaden one’s perspective and reflect on how trademarks function in contemporary culture.
A Brief History of Aunt Jemima
For over a century, many white Americans routinely had breakfast with Aunt Jemima not knowing who she was, where she came from, and how she was perceived by Black Americans.
Aunt Jemima started out as a white drag queen.3 In the late 1800s, on a quest to find a name for his new instant pancake mix, Chris Rutt wandered into a minstrel show and saw a white man in drag and black face perform the song “Aunt Jemima.” Rutt liked the name and took it. But the pancake mix didn’t sell until the subsequent brand owner hired Nancy Green, a Black cook for a Chicago judge, to dress as Aunt Jemima and make pancakes at the 1893 World’s Fair.4 Quaker Oats bought the brand in 1925 and hired a white advertising executive at J. Walter Thompson to write Aunt Jemima’s story.5
She was designed to be the quintessential “Mammy,” a caricature from Southern mythology that is “the most well-known and enduring distortion of African American women.”6 She represented “Old South plantation nostalgia and romance grounded in an idea about the ‘mammy,’ a devoted and submissive servant who eagerly nurtured the children of her white master and mistress while neglecting her own.”7 Through meticulous observation of the brand’s history, Manring observed in Slave in a Box: The Strange Career of Aunt Jemima that throughout the 20th century, the Aunt Jemima advertising campaign promoted the idea that by purchasing Aunt Jemima products, white consumers could taste “a life of leisure with racial and sexual harmony, seemingly more free but inherently dependent on a black laborer. . . [a life in which] white men were gallant, women were unburdened by the kitchen, and children played happily around cheerful black servants who would never leave.”8
The Aunt Jemima ads never portrayed the woman of the plantation so that white women would imagine themselves in that role. These ads were meant to soothe white guilt over the history of slavery and contemporary racist practices by affirming a racial order in which black women were submissive and plump helpers.9 The ads ran in popular women’s magazines to promote Aunt Jemima as a loyal servant who “saved [white women] from work but also from worry and seemingly cleared up tensions between white men and white women, between masters and servants, by clarifying sexual and work roles as well as racial lines.”10
While white Americans often did not see Aunt Jemima as a demeaning racial stereotype, many Black citizens were deeply offended and repelled by her.11 They “recognized her as a symbol of submissiveness, demanded that the trademark’s owners quit using her, and called on black consumers to boycott the product.”12 In 1918, a Crusader editorial criticized Aunt Jemima ads as the “white man’s propaganda to demean, ridicule and insult the Race. They are malicious targets aimed at what he considers a powerless people.”13 In surveys from the 1930s, Black consumers universally disapproved of Aunt Jemima ads.14 As the Civil Rights movement gained momentum in the 1960s, the NAACP called for a boycott of the brand.15
To quiet the criticism, Quaker Oats made some cosmetic changes: they removed her bandana, made her look less fat and old, and eventually gave her pearl earrings.16 But Aunt Jemima continued to offend Black citizens. In the 1990s, Alice Walker wrote that she “felt insulted by the image and by a white person’s appropriation of it,” explaining that “[f]or generations in the South it was the only image of a black woman that was acceptable. You could be ‘Aunt’ Jemima, sexless and white-loving, or you could be unseen.”17
The harm from branding that caricaturizes historically marginalized groups can be hard to bear. Sociologist Gaynelle Grant remembers that as a young girl:
[W]hite kids in my school would say things to me like, “Hey, Aunt Jemima, make me some pancakes,” or, “Where’s your red bandanna, Aunt Jemima?” . . . . They equated Aunt Jemima with every black female they saw. The very nature of advertising is to alter how we look at ourselves and the things in our environment . . . . [A]dvertising that perpetrates negativity—like blacks as smiling, simple-minded servants—affects the way our culture regards black people.18
When society projects the undesirable and restrictive qualities of a one-dimensional stereotype onto an actual person, the effort it takes to be seen through that prejudicial cloud for one’s merits can be exhausting. As some racial theorists explain:
If others see me as a member of an inherently flawed group—an impending failure or irredeemable burden on society—then it becomes harder to see through that clouded lens of negativity, particularly when there is a general absence of positive images of people who look like me in society. As a result, that reflected and limited view of oneself can become readily more internalized, negatively impacting one’s developmental trajectory and subsequent psychological functioning.19
If some in the majority do not see the harm that racist branding causes and defend the brand as a positive tribute, the conflict created by opposing perceptions can divide citizens into racial and political camps so far apart that they cannot see each other.
Despite boycotts and criticism from the Black community, Aunt Jemima was a huge financial success and exemplified the power of brand familiarity. Ad Age ranked her seventh in the top 10 most iconic brand “mascots” of the 20th century.20 Nevertheless, Quaker Oats struggled to manage the negative racial stereotype she reinforced. An advertising account manager for the brand during the 1980s and 1990s said that “the company was often reluctant to spend heavily to market Aunt Jemima, believing ‘it wasn’t worth the blowback.’”21 By the 2010s, Quaker Oats had abandoned aggressive advertising of Aunt Jemima. In 2019, it spent $6.2 million marketing Life Cereal and only $245,000 promoting Aunt Jemima.22 A former member of the advertising team reported that employees “were constantly being told, ‘Let’s not over-promote it or do a lot of partnerships’—nobody wanted to call attention to it . . . [but] Aunt Jemima was a category leader, and nobody wanted to mess with that stream of revenue.”23 While the costs of promoting the racial stereotype may have been hard to quantify, changing course on a brand this big is predictably expensive. In 2014, the cost of rebranding Aunt Jemima products was estimated to be between $20 and $50 million.24 Her brand loyalty reaped such a high financial return that Quaker Oats kept her products on store shelves, and we kept buying them. After Quaker Oats stopped aggressively promoting Aunt Jemima, she continued to sell herself.25
Native American Legal Challenges
Like Black citizens who were appalled by Aunt Jemima’s stereotypical depiction, leaders of indigenous nations challenged the use of their images as mascots for commercial products and sports teams. Beginning in 1946, section 2(a) of the Lanham Act provided a mechanism to deny or cancel registrations of marks that disparage a group of people.26 Despite this bar, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) registered many marks viewed as disparaging by the targeted communities.
For decades, Suzan Harjo worked tirelessly to explain how demeaning it is when trademarks for commercial products and sports teams portray minority groups as mascots that reinforce racial stereotypes. Her advocacy led thousands of schools to drop “Indian” names and characters from school sports programs.27 In 1992, Harjo and six other Native Americans petitioned the USPTO to cancel the “Redskins” trademark registrations.28 The football team’s owner defended the name, insisting that it honors indigenous Americans.29 Although many sports fans may view team mascots favorably, Harjo explained that in the eyes of her people, the “Redskins” name
is the worst word that is used about us in the English language. And I do mean worst. It harks back to the days when colonies, trade companies and some states issued bounty proclamations for exterminating Native American people and providing the bloody “red skins” as proof of “Indian kill.” In 1863, for example, the Daily Republican in Winona, Minn., carried the following notice: “The State reward for dead Indians has been increased to $200 for every red-skin sent to Purgatory. This sum is more than the dead bodies of all the Indians east of the Red River are worth.”30
After decades of litigation, the USPTO canceled the “Redskins” registrations.31 The team chose to continue using them anyway.32 This hard-fought battle was circumvented three years later when the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed the Lanham Act’s disparagement bar and found it unconstitutional.
The Lanham Act’s disparagement bar fell after Simon Tam sought to register “The Slants” as a trademark for his Asian American electronic dance band, hoping to infuse the term with a positive connotation.33 The USPTO denied Tam’s application, finding that the proposed mark violated section 2(a) because it is known as an insult to people of Asian descent.34 Tam appealed on First Amendment grounds.35 Throughout the litigation, the USPTO defended the bar to avoid putting its seal of approval on marks that contain racist speech.36 Despite this intent, the USPTO lost. In a unanimous opinion, the Supreme Court held that the Lanham Act’s disparagement bar violated Tam’s First Amendment right to free expression.37 In doing so, the Court recognized the expressive power of trademarks and made it clear that more than source identification was in play in the trademark landscape. After this decision, a racist word could be registered as a trademark with the USPTO.
Three Events Lead to a Cultural Reckoning
After the Supreme Court’s decision in Matal v. Tam, the Washington football team maintained its “Redskins” trademark registrations.38 While trademark law did not bring them down, cultural shifts ultimately led to their demise.39 The rise of the Me Too40 and Black Lives Matter41 movements heightened awareness of racial and gender inequality. The real turning point came after three events that led to a cultural reckoning with racially explicit imagery.
The first event occurred on June 17, 2015. Dylann Roof attended a Bible study group at the historic Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina.42 The congregants welcomed him, and they prayed together.43 As the service ended, Roof took out a .45-caliber Glock 41 and started shooting, murdering nine people and injuring one, all of them Black.44 Media reports showed that Roof had posed for a photo holding the Glock in one hand and a Confederate flag in the other as a warning that he planned to start a “race war” with “drastic action.”45 Shocked, the nation was forced to reflect on the meaning of symbols adopted by white supremacists.
The second event happened two years later, after Charlottesville, Virginia’s city council voted to remove statues of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. On August 11–12, 2017, white supremacist groups marched in Charlottesville to protest the removals, chanting racist and anti-Semitic threats to the community.46 On the second day, a white supremacist deliberately sped his car into a group of pedestrians, injuring 19 and killing Heather Danielle Heyer, a 32-year-old woman who was passionate about equality.47
Appalled by the increasingly vocal rise of white supremacy and the racist rhetoric in support of Confederate monuments, many communities began to confront whether it made sense to maintain divisive symbols in public spaces before they became a flashpoint for tensions like those that boiled over in Charlottesville. Before the Charleston Church Massacre in June 2015, only six Confederate monuments had been removed or relocated from public property.48 Between June 2015 and the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville in August 2017, 11 more monuments were taken down, and 46 monuments were removed between that date and George Floyd’s murder.49 These actions taken by political leaders in states, cities, and universities across America reflect a significant change in how the nation views race-related imagery.
Then, on May 25, 2020, Derek Chauvin, a white Minneapolis, Minnesota police officer, pinned George Floyd to the pavement, pushing his knee into Floyd’s neck for over nine minutes.50 Floyd, a 46-year-old Black father, cried for mercy, pleaded repeatedly that he could not breathe, and, in his last moments, called to his dead mother.51 The officer’s partners looked on and did nothing while a 17-year-old girl filmed the whole awful ordeal.52 When the footage circulated on social media the next day, protests erupted against police brutality and in support of equality.53
Despite the coronavirus pandemic that kept many inside, protests continued throughout the summer of 2020. As the nation wrestled with the practices and symbols that reinforced white supremacy and citizens reflected on how much racism had been tolerated, the nation began to change.54 The percentage of Americans who reported that they support the Black Lives Matter movement increased by 15 percentage points between the beginning of 2019 and June 2020.55 Since George Floyd’s murder, more than 100 more Confederate monuments have been removed or relocated from public spaces.56 Against this political backdrop, racially explicit brands were confronted with the choice of responding to the cultural moment and making a change or sticking with their stereotypical symbols and risk being known as promoting images of inequality.
For many of these brands, George Floyd’s murder was the tipping point. Within weeks after his death, companies began to drop racially divisive names and images. Many of these trademarks—like Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben’s, and the Cleveland Indians—were iconic household brands known by generations of American families. If there was ever a time ripe for a reboot, the summer of 2020 was it. As critical social consciousness and empathy for those suffering from systemic racism increased among white citizens, many brand owners concluded that it was time to take action to show they share contemporary values. In a culture suddenly much more attuned to how differently Black citizens experience life in America, companies began to consider whether the moment called for change.
On June 17, 2020, within a month after George Floyd’s murder and at the height of public opinion polling that supported the Black Lives Matter movement, Quaker Oats announced it would phase out Aunt Jemima, recognizing that her “origins are based on a racial stereotype.”57 The company’s chief marketing officer explained, “While work has been done over the years to update the brand in a manner intended to be appropriate and respectful, we realize those changes are not enough.”58
Then, like a set of expensive dominoes, other racist brands began toppling. Hours after the Aunt Jemima announcement, the Cream of Wheat and Uncle Ben’s brand owners announced their trademarks would be dropped.59 Later that week, Dreyer’s said it would rename “Eskimo Pie” ice cream.60 On June 25, 2020, the Dixie Chicks dropped “Dixie” from their name, proclaiming, “We want to meet this moment.”61 The band Lady Antebellum made a similar announcement earlier in the month, shortening its name to “Lady A.”62 Although the owner of Washington’s football team promised this day would never come, on July 13, 2020, he issued a press release stating the team would stop using the “Redskins” name and logos.63
These three events in Charleston, Charlottesville, and Minneapolis increased awareness of the harms and possible violent consequences of maintaining divisive imagery in our streets and our homes. In the fall of 2020, Americans reported that they perceived race relations as more troubled than at any time since polling on the subject began.64 In November 2020, Saturday Night Live aired a skit in which Alec Baldwin called the characters “Aunt Jemima” and “Uncle Ben” into a conference room and fired them. When Maya Rudolph (playing Aunt Jemima) asked, “What did I do?” Baldwin’s character responded, “It’s not what you did; it’s how you make us feel about what we did.”65
Conclusion
The history of Aunt Jemima shows how critical brand values are to understanding how trademarks function and endure. Trademarks are not mere information shorthand for quality and source at the point of purchase. They hold meanings originating with their owners but ultimately dependent on whether consumers choose to invest enough time, attention, and money by making the brand part of their lives. The demise of Aunt Jemima shows that if a profitable brand’s foundation fails to resonate with contemporary values, it may be time to knock the thing down and start over. Now that the nation was more sensitized to images that fed into racial inequality, Aunt Jemima’s time had come.
Despite widespread concerns over race relations in the United States, the nation remains optimistic and committed to racial healing.66 It is in that space between what was and what is possible that many brands chose to act. If they can be change agents toward that better future of racial equality, they can align with a hopeful vision and participate in meaningful progress toward realizing constitutional ideals in the public imagination. Aunt Jemima, and so many other marks that depict minorities as flat stereotypes, was never going to be a unifying symbol that could mesh with the value of equality. Although there are many other actions companies might take to assure their practices align with their expressed values, those that chose to drop divisive words and imagery deserve to be commended for trading in long-established brand familiarity for blank slates on which to cultivate new brands founded on unifying values.
Endnotes
1. James Baldwin, Many Thousands Gone, in Notes of a Native Son 24, 27 (1955).
2. M. M. Manring, Slave in a Box: The Strange Career of Aunt Jemima 16 (1998).
3. Id. at 61.
4. Id. at 75; see also Bird’s-Eye View of the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893, World Digit. Libr., https://www.wdl.org/en/item/11369 (last updated May 24, 2017) (explaining that the 1893 fair was known as the “Columbian Exposition” to mark the 400th anniversary of Columbus arriving in the Americas).
5. Manring, supra note 2, at 24, 91, 112.
6. Joseph C. Miller et al., Reckoning with Jemima: Can the Brand Be Remade for Good?, Ivy Publ’g 1, 4 (Aug. 12, 2020), https://www.iveypublishing.ca/s/product/reckoning-with-jemima-can-the-brand-be-remade-for-good/01t5c00000CwqkDAAR.
7. Riché Richardson, Opinion, Can We Please, Finally, Get Rid of “Aunt Jemima”?, N.Y. Times (June 24, 2015), https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/06/24/besides-the-confederate-flag-what-other-symbols-should-go/can-we-please-finally-get-rid-of-aunt-jemima.
8. Manring, supra note 2, at 112.
9. Id.; Miller et al., supra note 6, at 4–5.
10. Manring, supra note 2, at 23.
11. Id. at 13.
12. Id. at 151.
13. Id. at 153.
14. Id. at 155–57.
15. Id. at 165–66.
16. Id. at 169, 172.
17. Alice Walker, Giving the Party: Aunt Jemima, Mammy, and the Goddess Within, Ms., May–June 1994, at 22, 22.
18. Renee Graham, Symbol or Stereotype: One Consumer’s Tradition Is Another’s Racial Slur, Bos. Globe, Jan. 6, 1993, at 35.
19. Jesse A. Steinfeldt et al., Environmental Microaggressions: Context, Symbols, and Mascots, in Microaggression Theory: Influence and Implications 213, 219 (Gina C. Torino et al. eds., 2019).
20. Kirsten Chang, Top Ad Icons of the 20th Century, CNBC (Aug. 12, 2011), https://www.cnbc.com/2011/08/12/Top-Ad-Icons-of-the-20th-Century.html.
21. Tiffany Hsu, Aunt Jemima Brand to Change Name and Image over “Racial Stereotype,” N.Y. Times (June 17, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/17/business/media/aunt-jemima-racial-stereotype.html.
22. Id.
23. Id.
24. Miller et al., supra note 6 (citing Claire Zillman, Why It’s So Hard for Aunt Jemima to Ditch Her Unsavory Past, Fortune (Aug. 12, 2014), https://fortune.com/2014/08/12/aunt-jemima-racism).
25. See Jessica Wohl, As Aunt Jemima Becomes Pearl Milling Company, Here’s What Should Happen Next, Ad Age (Feb. 16, 2021), https://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/aunt-jemima-becomes-pearl-milling-company-heres-what-should-happen-next/2314301 (reporting that even after Quaker Oats invested only $19,000 on media spending for Aunt Jemima in 2019, the brand had $353 million in sales in 2020 and led others in its market).
26. 15 U.S.C. § 1052(a).
27. Suzan Shown Harjo, The R-Word Is Even Worse Than You Think, Politico Mag. (June 23, 2014), https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/washington-football-team-108213.
28. Harjo v. Pro-Football, Inc., 50 U.S.P.Q.2d 1705, 1749 (T.T.A.B. 1999), rev’d, 284 F. Supp. 2d 96, 99 (D.D.C. 2003), remanded by 415 F.3d 44 (D.C. Cir. 2005) (per curiam).
29. Ned Snow, Free Speech & Disparaging Trademarks, 57 B.C. L. Rev. 1639, 1651 (2016).
30. Harjo, supra note 27.
31. Blackhorse v. Pro-Football, Inc., 111 U.S.P.Q.2d 1080 (T.T.A.B. 2014). On appeal, the district court affirmed the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board’s decision, and the USPTO canceled the federal registration. Pro-Football, Inc. v. Blackhorse, 112 F. Supp. 3d 439 (E.D. Va. 2015), vacated, 709 F. App’x 182 (4th Cir. 2018) (per curiam).
32. Michael McCann, Why the Redskins Scored a Victory in the Supreme Court’s Ruling in Favor of The Slants, Sports Illustrated (June 19, 2017), https://www.si.com/nfl/2017/06/19/washington-redskins-name-slants-trademark-supreme-court.
33. Matal v. Tam, 137 S. Ct. 1744, 1751 (2017).
34. In re Tam, 108 U.S.P.Q.2d 1305, 1313 (T.T.A.B. 2013).
35. Matal, 137 S. Ct. at 1751.
36. Id. at 1760.
37. Id. at 1751.
38. Pro-Football, Inc. v. Blackhorse, 709 F. App’x 182, 183 (4th Cir. 2018) (per curiam).
39. See Les Carpenter, Washington’s NFL Team to Retire Redskins Name, following Sponsor Pressure and Calls for Change, Wash. Post (July 13, 2020), https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2020/07/13/redskins-change-name-announcement.
40. History & Inception, me too, https://metoomvmt.org/get-to-know-us/history-inception (last visited Nov. 11, 2021).
41. About, Black Lives Matter, https://blacklivesmatter.com/about (last visited Nov. 11, 2021).
42. Alan Blinder & Kevin Sack, Dylann Roof Is Sentenced to Death in Charleston Church Massacre, N.Y. Times (Jan. 10, 2017), https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/10/us/dylann-roof-trial-charleston.html.
43. Id.
44. Id.; see also Andrew Knapp, FBI Had Resources to Halt Dylann Roof’s Gun Buy, but It Didn’t Use Them—and Still Doesn’t, Post & Courier (Feb. 4, 2018), https://www.postandcourier.com/church_shooting/fbi-had-resources-to-halt-dylann-roof-s-gun-buy/article_452b95ea-0705-11e8-8bc9-8723f84ce9dd.html.
45. S. Poverty L. Ctr., Whose Heritage? Public Symbols of the Confederacy 1, 6 (2016), https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/com_whose_heritage.pdf.
46. Sines v. Kessler, 324 F. Supp. 3d 765, 776–79 (W.D. Va. 2018); Neil MacFarquhar, Charlottesville Lawsuit Puts Rising Intolerance on Trial, N.Y. Times (Oct. 28, 2019), https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/28/us/charlottesville-civil-rights-trial.html.
47. Christina Caron, Heather Heyer, Charlottesville Victim, Is Recalled as “a Strong Woman,” N.Y. Times (Aug. 13, 2017), https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/13/us/heather-heyer-charlottesville-victim.html.
48. Whose Heritage? Public Symbols of the Confederacy, S. Poverty L. Ctr. (Feb. 1, 2019), https://www.splcenter.org/20190201/whose-heritage-public-symbols-confederacy (choose “Download the data” under “In this article”; then click on “Whose Heritage Master” tab within the spreadsheet to see relevant data). This data was sourced on November 15, 2021, and counts a monument as removed even if the SPLC data provides that the pedestal remains in its original place.
49. Liz Vinson, Six Years Later: 170 Confederate Monuments Removed since Charleston Church Massacre, S. Poverty L. Ctr. (June 17, 2021), https://www.splcenter.org/news/2021/06/17/six-years-later-170-confederate-monuments-removed-charleston-church-massacre.
50. George Floyd: What Happened in the Final Moments of His Life, BBC News (July 16, 2020), https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52861726.
51. Evan Hill et al., How George Floyd Was Killed in Police Custody, N.Y. Times (May 31, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/us/george-floyd-investigation.html.
52. Id.
53. George Floyd, supra note 50.
54. Colleen Long et al., Summer of Protest: Chance for Change, but Obstacles Exposed, Associated Press, Sept. 6, 2020, https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-shootings-race-and-ethnicity-or-state-wire-racial-injustice-9035ecdfc58d5dba755185666ac0ed6d.
55. Jennifer Chudy & Hakeem Jefferson, Opinion, Support for Black Lives Matter Surged Last Year. Did It Last?, N.Y. Times (May 22, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/22/opinion/blm-movement-protests-support.html (displaying data indicating that support fell to 2019 levels in 2021).
56. Press Release, S. Poverty L. Ctr., SPLC Whose Heritage Dataset Updates as of June 29, 2020 (June 29, 2020), https://www.splcenter.org/presscenter/splc-whose-heritage-dataset-updates-june-29-2020.
57. Aunt Jemima Brand to Remove Image from Packaging and Change Brand Name, PRNewswire, June 17, 2020, https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/aunt-jemima-brand-to-remove-image-from-packaging-and-change-brand-name-301078593.html.
58. Id.
59. Chauncey Alcorn, Cream of Wheat Is Reviewing Its Black Mascot after Aunt Jemima and Others Acknowledged Their Racist Roots, CNN (June 18, 2020), https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/18/business/cream-of-wheat-racist-brands/index.html.
60. Maria Cramer, Maker of Eskimo Pie Ice Cream Will Retire “Inappropriate” Name, N.Y. Times (June 20, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/20/business/dreyers-eskimo-pie-name-change.html.
61. Kristin M. Hall, The Dixie Chicks Officially Change Their Name to The Chicks, Associated Press, June 25, 2020, https://apnews.com/article/music-us-news-ap-top-news-entertainment-natalie-maines-81e0e08498b9acaa5e7f5eb2d85b39f6.
62. Ben Beaumont-Thomas, Country Group Lady Antebellum Change Name to Lady A Due to Slavery Connotations, Guardian (June 11, 2020), https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/jun/11/country-group-lady-antebellum-change-name-to-lady-a-due-to-slavery-connotations.
63. Carpenter, supra note 39.
64. Lydia Saad, U.S. Perceptions of White-Black Relations Sink to New Low, Gallup (Sept. 2, 2020), https://news.gallup.com/poll/318851/perceptions-white-black-relations-sink-new-low.aspx.
65. Saturday Night Live, Uncle Ben - SNL, YouTube (Nov. 8, 2020), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFLuGVOWlkc.
66. Saad, supra note 64.