At the start of 1894, the Ed. F. Davis UTC Company played a one-week run at
Cincinnati's Pike Opera House. As you can see from the CAST
LIST and SCENE SYNOPSIS in the program, Davis'
troupe put on a typical "Tom Show." There's one very
dramatic thing, however, about the program itself: the full-page ad on the
fourth of the pages below is for a different kind of show, starring another of white
America's favorite racial representations -- "Aunt Jemima."
"Aunt Jemima" was created a white businessman to sell his pancake
mix. She was first played by Nancy Green, who had been born a slave in 1834.
Although the stereotype of the bandanna-wearing black female cook dates back
at least as far as Stowe's "Uncle Tom" (and is even connected to such Stowe
characters as Aunt Chloe and Dinah), "Aunt Jemima" was less than a year old when she
and Tom crossed paths in Cincinnati. Her image first came to America's
attention in the summer
of 1893 through the promotional show staged around her at the Chicago world's fair (called the Columbian Exposition) .
She seems to be "in town" as part of a national tour, and it's likely that for the next
couple decades "THE ORIGINAL
AUNT JEMIMA" and Uncle Tom as enacted by any of dozens of Tommers often
appeared in the same locales. This, though, is the earliest instance I've found.
Click on any page or section to see enlargement.
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