'Aunt Jemima's' heirs sue product makers for $2 billion

The great-grandsons of a woman who depicted "Aunt Jemima" want $2 billion from the companies whose pancake products bear her name.

The two men accuse Quaker Oats, Quaker's parent company PepsiCo and Pinnacle Foods of theft of royalties, fraud and racial discrimination.

Quaker Oats is the maker of Aunt Jemima pancake mixes and syrup. Pinnacle Foods currently makes Aunt Jemima frozen pancakes, waffles and French toast.

In their suit, D.W. Hunter and Larnell Evans say Quaker Oats representatives discovered their great-grandmother making pancakes at the New York State Fair in 1935. Anna S. Harrington portrayed the character in commercials and other public appearances for 15 years.

The suit says Quaker used Harrington's pancake recipes and trademarked her likeness as the character "Aunt Jemima" in 1937.

The great-grandsons say Quaker exploited Harrington with the intent of not paying royalties toward her estate after her death in 1955. They claim the companies conspired not to acknowledge Harrington's status as an employee of Quaker Oats by saying they could not find any employment records or images of her. But they say, Quaker had her image deposited with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Add the catchy phrases, “All white, all the time.”, “Not a drop of impurity.” and “Whipping breakfast into shape, since 1619.”

White and delightsome??

Until 1981 2 Nephi 30:6, in the Book of Mormon, taught that dark-skinned Lamanites (Indians) would eventually experience a change in the color of their skin should they embrace the Book of Mormon. This passage of Mormon scripture read:

"...their scales of darkness shall begin to fall from their eyes; and many generations shall not pass away among them, save they shall be a white and a delightsome people."

However, in 1981, the LDS Church decided to change "the most correct book on earth" and switched the word "white" with the word "pure." Some Mormons insist that this was a clarification since the word was never meant to refer to a person with dark skin pigmentation who would magically turn white based upon a conversion to the Mormon gospel; rather, it is claimed that the change referred to a cleaner state of heart. This assumption is definitely not supported in the Book of Mormon since 2 Nephi 5:21 says,

"And he had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing, because of their iniquity. For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, and they had become like unto a flint; wherefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them."

Furthermore, we find another reference to a change in skin color in 3 Nephi 2:15. This passage reads:

"And their curse was taken from them, and their skin became white like unto the Nephites."

That the context refers to skin color is verified by a number of LDS leaders including Joseph Smith. Mormon author George D. Smith notes that Joseph Smith was given a revelation which foretold of a day when intermarriage with the Lamanites would produce a white and delightsome posterity. George Smith wrote, "This unpublished 17 July 1831 revelation was described three decades later in an 1861 letter from W.W. Phelps to Brigham Young quoting Joseph Smith: `It is my will, that in time, ye should take unto you wives of the Lamanites and Nephites, that their posterity, may become white, delightsome and just.' In the 8 December 1831 Ohio Star, Ezra Booth wrote of a revelation directing Mormon elders to marry with the `natives'" (Sunstone, November 1993, footnote #5, pg. 52).

Second LDS President Brigham Young stated in 1859, "You may inquire of the intelligent of the world whether they can tell why the aborigines of this country are dark, loathsome, ignorant, and sunken into the depths of degradation ...When the Lord has a people, he makes covenants with them and gives unto them promises: then, if they transgress his law, change his ordinances, and break his covenants he has made with them, he will put a mark upon them, as in the case of the Lamanites and other portions of the house of Israel; but by-and-by they will become a white and delightsome people" (Journal of Discourses 7:336).

At the October 1960 LDS Church Conference, Spencer Kimball utilized 2 Nephi 30:6 when he stated how the Indians "are fast becoming a white and delightsome people." He said, "The [Indian] children in the home placement program in Utah are often lighter than their brothers and sisters in the hogans on the reservation" (Improvement Era, December 1960, pp. 922-3).

During the same message Kimball referred to a 16-year-old Indian girl who was both LDS and "several shades lighter than her parents..." He went on to say, "These young members of the Church are changing to whiteness and to delightsomeness. One white elder jokingly said that he and his companion were donating blood regularly to the hospital in the hope that the process might be accelerated."

LDS writer George Edward Clark gives a similar account in his book entitled "Why I Believe." On page 129 he wrote, "The writer has been privileged to sit at table with several members of the Catawba tribe of Indians, whose reservation is near the north border of South Carolina. That tribe, or most of its people, are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon). Those Indians, at least as many as I have observed, were white and delightsome, as white and fair as any group of citizens of our country. I know of no prophecy, ancient or modern, that has had a more literal fulfillment" (emphasis his).

It has also been taught in Mormonism that opposite repercussions could result when a white man abandoned his Mormon faith. For instance, the "Juvenile Instructor" (26:635) reads,

"From this it is very clear that the mark which was set upon the descendants of Cain was a skin of blackness, and there can be no doubt that this was the mark that Cain himself received; in fact, it has been noticed in our day that men who have lost the spirit of the Lord, and from whom his blessings have been withdrawn, have turned dark to such an extend as to excite the comments of all who have known them."

In 1857, Brigham Young declared that apostates would "become gray-haired, wrinkled, and black, just like the Devil" (Journal of Discourse 5:332).

Despite the comments from past Mormon leaders, skin color has nothing to do with a person's spirituality. To say 2 Nephi 30:6 was altered merely for clarification and had nothing to do with skin color is without merit. It was a false prophecy, nothing more, nothing less.

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