One of the more controversial groups of Americana collectibles is Black Americana, also referred to as Black Memorabilia, Afro-Americana, and Black Face Collectibles; phrases used to describe memorabilia or ephemera that relates to African American history. The derogatory nature of specific items, especially those mass-produced in the first half of the 20th century for commercial purposes, reflect a very different time in American history when it was acceptable to have black stereotypes not only in the home but everywhere.
Who would have ever thought of salt and pepper shakers as being controversial? Something so small and innocuous could be patently offensive and representative of racial turmoil, strife and stereotype. Black Americana, the nice neat name given to these shakers represent Black people in a less than positive light.
For years it was perfectly permissible to poke fun at any ethnic group that was not White, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant, through cinema and down to trivial little salt and pepper shakers. Black people were a convenient target group and helpless to defend themselves. Political correctness aside, I feel no ill-will towards the creators and manufacturers of Black Americana shakers. I have long since gotten past that ugly part of America’s history.
The people using them found them to be a source of ignorant humor. I have often wondered if they thought these items should not just appear in their kitchens as functional pieces of tableware, but also as a source of amusement and ridicule. The bulk of these sets are cooks wearing pristine aprons and chef’s hats. I don’t know how true that depiction is, but I have never seen a set with the people wearing tattered, patched clothing with their hair tied up in the ragged scarves much more likely to have been worn by black slaves in America.
I guess realism would not have sold as well. Lots of these sets show people eating watermelon. Thousands of sets of benign male and female cooks exist, all are identical except for the color of their aprons. Some are gold-trimmed, some with matching grease jars. When these sets were popular, I think it was the desire of every white, middle-class housewife to have a black woman in her kitchen.
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Changing attitudes with regard to race and political correctness led to the reduced popularity and widespread sales of these shakers and other Black memorabilia. If you check listings on eBay, you will find that until recently, these sets were still described with derogatory terms like Mammy and Sambo. eBay has since restricted some of the words that can be used when listing Black Americana items. One recent set of a maid and chef shakers described the man as a blackamoor. I almost snorted coffee through my nose. It was like being back in high school, reading Shakespeare’s Othello.
There are many black collectors, like Oprah Winfrey and former Atlanta Mayor and Georgia Congressman Andrew Young, who have growing collections of Black Memorabilia. Others include Bill Cosby, Spike Lee and Billy Dee Williams. Since Oprah said she buys items on eBay, I am sure I have bid against her.
No matter how personally repugnant I may find some of these Black Americana sets, words cannot describe the horror I felt when seeing the U.K. version of how blacks are portrayed in caricature.
Aunt Jemima and Uncle Mose shakers and other items were Quaker Oats premiums made by the F & F Mold & Die Works of Dayton, Ohio, in the late 1940s, but the characters have a long history. Aunt Jemima pancake mix was first made in 1889 by Pearl Milling Company. It was the first pancake mix. The name “Aunt Jemima” was based on a song performed in vaudeville. Pearl Milling Company was sold to R.T. Davis Mill and Manufacturing Company in 1890 and Nancy Green, a former slave, was hired to represent Aunt Jemima. The company name became the Aunt Jemima Mills Company in 1914. Quaker Oats bought the company in 1926.
Unlike Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben who were entirely fictional characters, it was not until 2007 that Frank L. Friday at Auction Finds is readers’ questions day. I try to guide readers to resources for them to determine the value of their items. I’m not able to appraise their treasures, but I can do some preliminary research to get them started. I have a salt and pepper shaker - the bottoms are stamped Japan and the salt shaker is a black man’s head and the pepper shaker is a slice of watermelon. Black Americana salt and pepper shakers for sale on eBay.
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An auction house was selling shakers - 24 trays with 10 pairs per tray - that had obviously been someone’s collection. I don’t buy any items with these types of images because I deplore them. They seem to be. The reader didn’t send photos, but I found a pair on eBay that were similar to hers. The top bid was at $49.99 with two days to go on the auction. There were plenty of other derogatory shakers of black boys and girls in pairs or singly with watermelons.
I know that Japan was not the only foreign country that made money off these items (I found some on the web that were said to be marked Germany). A palm-size ceramic doll with a "Made in Japan" mark. The African American writer of the 2011 Antique Trader Black Americana Price Guide wondered where the Japanese got these images. consumers, so they created images that would sell and was selling here in the 1940s.
Here’s what the Chicago Tribune noted in a 1997 article: “Instead of embodying Asian cultural traditions, Occupied Japan merchandise mimics American and European models. Japan began exporting these products after its surrender to Allied forces at the end of World War II in 1945. The country was devastated and its industries lay fallow. These were mostly dime-store products that could be gotten cheaply, although some major companies were producing better-quality products. All were required to be stamped “Occupied Japan” or “Made in Occupied Japan,” and collectors of these items today insist on those two markings for authenticity.
Apparently, not many of the items survived in Japan itself. Last year, an exhibit held in Seto, Aichi Prefecture, Japan, featured 170 items that were said to be considered rare. As for the reader’s salt and pepper shakers, I would suggest more research on the web and on eBay. She should first make sure the shakers are authentic and beware of fakes and reproductions.
A couple of days ago, I sat with others in a room called “Cloud of Witnesses.” We had just been through the Jim Crow Museum on the campus of Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Mich. The visit was sponsored in part by Congregations Organizing for Racial Reconciliation (CORR). Among other things, CORR puts on antiracism training for CRC congregations and various organizations. Many of the people in the group I was with are African American. They were troubled and surprised. A couple said they had no idea that these everyday objects found in homes, restaurants, and businesses had been so prevalent.
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Before we went on the tour, our tour guide told us that Dr. By 1996, the collection had grown to over 2,000 pieces, and Pilgrim decided to donate the collection to Ferris. In 2012 the museum was opened to the public in its current space in the basement of the Ferris library. We learned that Jim Crow was a fictitious name popularized by a traveling minstrel in the mid-1800s. The term was used as an offensive name for black people and became linked in the post-Civil War era to the segregation laws that emerged in the 1870s.
As we started the tour, we saw vintage “mammy” salt and pepper shakers showing stout, personable African American women wearing white aprons over red dresses and wearing kerchiefs on their heads. Seeing these “mammy” themed items hit me hard, because they looked familiar. I am certain, though, that we frequently ate pancakes from a box like the one we saw behind glass in the museum. For me as a kid growing up, that was simply the way things were.
Growing up, one of my favorites was Amos ’n’ Andy, featuring two “colored fellows” (as they were referred to at the time). I remember it was hilarious. The two of them were happy-go-lucky guys who seemed to be enjoying their lives in a place called Harlem.
We also saw photographs of African American men who had been lynched, and another showing a man with scars webbing his back from having been whipped. Then there was the FBI ballistics target of an African American man in a baseball cap pointing a gun. There were some familiar faces - those of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X, for example. But there were also many I didn’t know.
Displaying racist objects is a matter of debate and sensitivity. Some people feel very strongly that documents and items associated with slavery should never be sold or displayed for any reason while others contend their presence in the marketplace is a reminder of our history, however sorted and distasteful, and are important artifacts that therefore have intrinsic value.
In an article for Folklife, Black Americana collector David Pilgrim states, “At a time when many Americans are destroying racist objects, I am taking a different approach. I have spent more than four decades collecting Ku Klux Klan robes, segregation signs, and thousands of everyday objects that portray African Americans as dutiful servants, childlike buffoons, exotic savages, hypersexual deviants, and most disturbingly, menacing predators who must be punished. I collected these items because I believed-then later, knew-that objects, even hateful ones, can be used as teaching tools. In the mid-1990s, I donated the artifacts to Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan, where I was a sociology professor.
Arranged on shelves and hung on walls, smiling black faces wearing checkered head kerchiefs stared out at me in all sorts of configurations from teapots and cookie jars to salt and pepper shakers. At one time Barbie and Ken shared display space with Aunt Jemima and Uncle Mose. They are also called contemptible collectibles. Like ghosts of Jim Crow past, they were a sober reminder how insidious racism was in our country. And still is.
Weekends were spent scouring second-hand shops, tag sales, and flea markets, casting a wide net for some hidden gems I didn’t know I needed. What was it about Americans as a consumer culture to think it necessary to produce tens of thousands of racist images across virtually every inconceivable form of pop culture? Racism came in the form of ceramic ashtrays and glass figurines, tin signs and sheet music, children’s toys, and a whole lot of kitchenware. Beginning in the 1930’s it was Aunt Jemima who cornered the market in kitchen kitsch, swamping the marketplace in her likeness.
Here in the form of baubles, knick-knacks and trinkets was a hidden history hiding in plain sight. It was the story of Jim Crow made manifest in the middle of a flea market on Sixth Avenue in NYC. Displayed in front of me were white people’s anxieties and fears about black people projected onto a tea cozy, a spoon holder, cast iron banks, wind-up toys, and paperweights. These nearly forgotten cheap household goods had helped justify and maintain a repressed system.
Removed from their ordinary uses, these objects were reframed as collectibles . The cheerful designs of household items which depict black people have made them collectable to a wide group today. Prompted by nostalgia and memories of warm households peopled by loving black hands these kitchen tools with cute expressions so pleasant to have around are used as decorations in many homes.
My kitchen cluttered with racial kitsch could be hard to digest. It inevitably sparked a conversation about race. These “tchotchkes” made the past tangible and undeniable. When I questioned myself about owning such objects it helped me to remember there is in fact is a Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University in Michigan.
But in recent years, as the Black Lives Matter movement helped raise awareness on racial injustice and inclusion, America’s shameful racial past has become more of our national daily dialogue.
H x W x D (2007.7.6.1): 4 7/8 × 1 7/8 × 1 7/8 in. H x W x D (2007.7.6.2): 5 × 2 1/4 × 1 3/4 in.
Ceramic salt shaker (2007.7.6.1), in the form of "Chef," who is depicted wearing a white chef's uniform, an apron outlined in gold, black shoes, and a white chef's hat with a red mark on the hat rim. "Chef" is holding a red spoon with his proper right hand. There is a gold [S] painted on the bottom center edge of the apron. Ceramic pepper shaker (2007.7.6.2), in the form of "Mammy," who is depicted wearing a white dress, white apron edged in gold and a white scarf with gold decoration and a red kerchief covering her head. “Mammy” is holding red spoon with her proper left hand. There is a gold [P] painted on the bottom center edge of the apron.
Objects depicting racist and/or stereotypical imagery or language may be offensive and disturbing, but the NMAAHC aims to include them in the Collection to present and preserve the historical context in which they were created and used.
Collection of James M. Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of the Collection of James M.
Here's what one eBay user said about eBay's policy of offensive materials:
I placed a lot of 2 miniature cloth black Americana dolls (grandpa and grandma) on eBay and after they were sold I received a notice from eBay that my listing was removed as per their offensive material policy.However, comments following the thread question why eBay has a Black Americana category in the first place if they do not allow for the sale of such items. Posted one respondent to answer that question, “The category exists to list Black Americana which is not offensive.” Quipped another, “So they can more easily find offenders.”
The Museum of Salt and Pepper Shakers
The next time you knock over a salt shaker and throw a pinch of the spilled grains over your left shoulder to ward off bad luck, bear in mind that at one time they would have formed part of someone’s wages. It’s amazing the things you learn when you least expect it. I’m getting an in-depth lecture about the world of salt, salt and pepper shakers, and salt cellars from Andrea Ludden, her son, Alex, and her daughter, Andrea, at their Museum of Salt and Pepper Shakers in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. And jolly interesting it is.
Andrea Ludden’s collection of over 40,000 pairs (half in the family museum in Gatlinburg and half in its new museum in Guadalest, in eastern Spain), started completely by chance, when Andrea bought a pepper mill at a garage sale in the mid-1980s. It didn’t work, so she bought a couple more. “I used to stand them on the window ledge of my kitchen, and neighbors thought I was building a collection. Nothing could have been further from my mind!” They started bringing her new ones, and eventually, she says, “I had about 14,000 on shelves all over the house, even in the bedrooms.” That’s when her husband, Rolf, told her, “‘Andrea, you either find somewhere to put these things or it’s a divorce!’ So we decided to create a museum.”
The Salt and Pepper Shakers Museum
Wander around the museum and you’ll find it hard to believe that the 20,000 pairs of shakers-fat chefs, ruby red tomatoes, guardsmen in bear skins, Santa’s feet sticking from a chimney, pistols and potatoes, a copy of the salt-and-pepper-shaker cuff links worn by Lady Diana-have any reason for being together other than as someone’s idea of being collectibles, but they do. An archaeologist by training, Andrea spent many years working in South America, where her main interest had been in how people traveled and communicated. When she and her family moved to the United States, she couldn’t find work in her field so she turned her attention to social anthropology, studying everyday life since the early years of the 20th century as seen through her growing collection of salt and pepper shakers.
“It’s often by looking at the apparently more mundane articles in everyday life that you can build up a broad picture of a specific period,” Andrea says. “There’s almost nothing you can imagine that hasn’t been copied as a salt and pepper shaker, and many of them reflect the designs, the colors and the preoccupations of the period.”
Salt shakers came into existence in the 1920s, she says. Previously, salt was typically served in a small bowl or container (the original salt cellar), usually with a spoon, because it had a tendency to attract moisture and become lumpy. Then, Chicago-based Morton Salt introduced magnesium carbonate to its product, which prevented caking and made it possible to pour salt from a sealed container. Pepper never suffered from the same susceptibility to dampness and, like salt, had also been served from a small container. But as it was habit to serve salt and pepper together, they became a pair, usually the salt shaker with only one hole and the pepper shaker with two or three.
Morton’s development may have been the beginning of the salt and pepper shaker, but it was the automobile that led to its becoming a collectible item, says Alex. “It was because people could travel more freely, either for work or on vacation that the souvenir industry came about. Salt and pepper shakers were cheap, easy to carry and colorful, and made ideal gifts.”
“Imagine you lived in an isolated village somewhere,” he continues, “and your son or daughter brought you a set in the shape of the Golden Gate Bridge when they came on their annual visit home. It wouldn’t get used, it would be carefully kept as a decorative item. That’s how, in the main, many of the early collections began.”
Among the earliest producers of salt and pepper shakers was the German fine pottery maker Goebel, which introduced its first three sets in 1925. (Today its Hummel shakers, introduced in 1935, are highly collectible.) Ironically, it was the Great Depression of the 1930s that gave a major boost to the popularity of salt and pepper shakers as both a household and collectible item. Ceramics producers worldwide were forced to restrict production and concentrate on lower-priced items; an obvious product was the salt and pepper shaker. Bright and cheery, it could be bought for a few cents at most local hardware stores.
Soon other ceramics companies got into the act. Japanese firms had a large share of the market from the late 1920s through the 1930s, as well as from the late 1940s through the 1950s. (Production was halted during World War II.) The shakers they produced in the postwar years, labeled “Made in occupied Japan,” or simply “Occupied Japan,” are extremely rare and highly sought after.
In the 1950s and ’60s, companies began producing salt and pepper shakers made from plastic. Plastic then was fragile, so fewer of these examples exist, making them extremely valuable. “I love the plastics,” says daughter Andrea as she walks me around the museum. “They were the first ones that could have some sort of mechanism, and one of my favorites is a lawn mower with the salt and pepper shakers in the shape of the pistons.” When the driver pushed the mower, the pistons went up and down.
At first glance, the museum seems bright and happy, if a bit haphazard. But the displays are actually well thought out and organized, especially considering the many models on display. “It’s almost impossible to categorize them,” the younger Andrea said, “because you can work by style, age, subject matter, color, etc., but we try and do it to combine all these elements at the same time. There are literally hundreds of themes, and in those themes there will be many colors, but Mom has a way of laying the displays out that are very highly planned, so that the colors within a theme are displayed together. For example,” she continues, “all the greens, yellows and reds of the vegetables are arranged in vertical rows, so you get bright color bands, but all the shakers are on the same theme. It’s a lot more complicated than it sounds because there are so many of them.”
A large number of the shaker sets are humorous in their design: an aspirin salt shaker and a martini-glass pepper shaker. And when displays are set up, there is sometimes an opportunity to create a visual joke. But behind them are two UFOs that have crashed and two aliens that glow in the dark. It’s the Roswell UFO crash in the 1940s. It’s amazing how many of the shakers tell a tale that isn’t obvious to everyone.
One of her favorites is a chef holding a cat in one hand and a cleaver in the other. “I always thought it was just a fun item,” says Andrea, “but my mom explained that it was very significant to older people who had been through the Depression and major wars. Food was short, but you still had to eat, so if a cat strayed by, it went into the pot and came out as ‘chicken surprise.’”
As I continue the tour, I’m absorbed by all the weird and wonderful shakers: Coca-Cola cans; Dolly Parton’s photo on a souvenir from Dollywood-“The Smokies most fun place”; Mickey and Minnie in chefs toques and aprons; the Beatles with the cropped hair and collarless jackets of their early days (George Harrison and John Lennon joined together as salt and Paul McCartney and Ringo Star as pepper); a turquoise TV with Lucy Arnaz and her neighbor, Ethel Mertz, on the screen (the salt) and a sofa with an “I love Lucy” heart-shaped cushion (the pepper); alligators with sunshades from Florida; bullfighters and bulls from Spain; kangaroos from Australia; a bobby and double-decker bus from London; before-and-after versions of Mount St. Helens made from the actual volcanic ash.
There are also familiar ones: shakers your grandmother used to have, or you saw when you went on vacation somewhere, or you gave as a gift once. “People come back over and over again and think that we are adding to the displays,” says Andrea, “but we aren’t. It’s just that they didn’t see them the first time around.”
The museum doesn’t display all the shakers it owns. But it does exhibit a few Aunt Gemima and Uncle Tom shakers, the cook and butler stereotypical characters from the 1950s, knowing some people might be offended by the negative portrayal of African-Americans. “They are part of the history of salt and pepper shakers, so we display them, but we do it discreetly,” she says. “You can’t change history by simply pretending it didn’t happen or ignoring it.” But the museum draws the line at pornography. “There are a lot of pornographic models available,” says Andrea. “We’ve got about 60 pairs, ranging from a bit cheeky to quite explicit, but ours is a family museum, so we prefer not to put them on display.”
Here is a table summarizing key aspects of Black Americana salt and pepper shakers:
| Aspect | Description |
|---|---|
| Era of Production | Primarily from the 18th through the 20th centuries, with mass production in the first half of the 20th century. |
| Common Depictions | Often portray African Americans in stereotypical roles such as "Mammy," cooks, or caricatures eating watermelon. |
| Materials | Ceramics, plastics, and other inexpensive materials. |
| Manufacturers | Produced by American companies and also by foreign countries such as Japan and Germany. |
| Collectibility | Highly sought after by collectors, including celebrities, due to their historical significance and rarity. |
| Controversy | Considered offensive by some due to the perpetuation of negative racial stereotypes. |
| Museum Representation | Displayed in museums like the Jim Crow Museum to educate about racial history and stereotypes. |
