While visiting a vaudeville house in St. Joseph, Missouri, one evening in the autumn of 1889, Rutt saw a team of blackface minstrel comedians known as Baker and Farrell. The high point of the act was a jazzy, rhythmic, New Orleans–style Cakewalk performed to a tune called “Aunt Jemima” (Morgan, 1986, p. 55). The song was originally called “Old Aunt Jemima” and was one of the most popular songs of the day, performed by Billy Kersands, a well-known minstrel, from 1870 to 1900. By 1877 Kersands had performed the song more than 3,000 times and had developed three different improvisational texts for his audiences (Sacharow, 1982, p. 63). One of the most widely sung 1875 versions used these lyrics:
My old missus promise me
Old Aunt Jemima, oh, oh, oh
When she died she’d set me free
Old Aunt Jemima, oh, oh, oh
She lived so long her head got bald
Old Aunt Jemima, oh, oh, oh
She swore she would not die at all
Old Aunt Jemima, oh, oh, oh. 2
Kersands has been labeled the highest paid black minstrel of his time, his remarkable popularity based partially on his theme song, “Old Aunt Jemima” (Sacharow, 1982, p. 64).
The team of Baker and Farrell, dressed in aprons and red bandannas, was reminiscent of the traditional Southern cook. The song was so captivating that it had the whole town rocking (Campbell, 1964, p. 40). Mesmerized, Rutt knew that the song and costume projected the image for which he had been searching. He decided to mimic it, using not only the name but the likeness of the Southern mammy emblazoned on the lithographed posters advertising the act of Baker and Farrell, thus beginning a new era in advertising. This would be the first time a living person would be used to personify a company’s trademark (Kern-Foxworth, 1988, p. 18).
https://web.archive.org/web/20140424192836/http://testaae.greenwood.com/doc_print.aspx?fileID=GR5184&chapterID=GR5184-561&path=books%2Fgreenwood"Rutt borrows one more thing from the minstrel act - the crudely drawn sketch of a Black Mammy that appeared on the vaudeville duo's posters.
1893: New company owner R.T. Davis goes on a national search for a real woman to be Aunt Jemima. He finds Kentucky ex-slave Nancy Green. The logo is changed to look like her."
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=iYhEAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA146
Green went on to portray "Aunt Jemima" at fairs, store appearances, food shows and so on until her death in 1923. A steady job, but it's not as if "Jemima" was her name, or her invention; it pre-dated her, and she was an actress/model/spokeswoman in a part. I don't think the first person to play Ronald McDonald would claim the clown is tied up with his real life story.
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