Salt and pepper shakers, seemingly innocuous household items, can sometimes be controversial and representative of racial turmoil, strife, and stereotypes. Black Americana, the term often used to describe these shakers, represents Black people in a less than positive light.
For years, it was acceptable 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 Rise of Salt and Pepper Shakers as Collectibles
Salt shakers came into existence in the 1920s. 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."
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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. The shakers they produced in the postwar years, labeled “Made in occupied Japan,” or simply “Occupied Japan,” are extremely rare and highly sought after.
The Depiction of African Americans in Shakers
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.
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.
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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.
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.
Examples of Black Americana Shakers
- Ceramic salt shaker in the form of "Chef" 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.
- Ceramic pepper shaker 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.
These shakers were made in Japan during the 1950's and were souvenirs from Memphis, Tennessee. The shakers are in the shape of black Americana cooks holding large red spoons. They are dressed in black clothing with white aprons and on the bottom read Memphis, Tenn. in metallic gold lettering. The cooks have round faces with wide eyes and lush red lips. The man is wearing a white chefs hat on his head and the woman is wearing a white scarf with red bow on top.
The Controversy and Collecting of Black Americana
Objects depicting racist and/or stereotypical imagery or language may be offensive and disturbing, but museums aim to include them in collections to present and preserve the historical context in which they were created and used. Many in the antiques trade question the ethics of placing a value on, making money from, or collecting items that reflect such a painful and shameful part of our history.
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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 most common forms of Black Americana include such items as Black Face Mechanical Banks, Cookie Jars, Boot Scrapes, Ceramic Novelties, Folk Art, Pickaninny Dolls, Illustrations & Prints, Advertising, and Children’s Books depicting negative connotations and stereotypes that today are seen as cruel and insensitive; however, not all Black Americana collections have a negative connotation nor are they amassed due to bigotry.
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.
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. Many African Americans began aquiring these materials as a reminder of the dark period of their history.
Collected as a means of preserving history, museums, auction houses and national associations of black collectors escalated the price of these objects.
In 2022, Elizabeth Meaders, a 90-year-old retired teacher, auctioned off her personal collection of 20,000 artifacts documenting Black history for $1.5 million to a single buyer through Guernsey’s Auction House, keeping the collection intact. The assortment of pictures, posters, signs, statues, and memorabilia, amassed over seven decades, tell a comprehensive history of the Black American experience.
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, Pilgrim donated the artifacts to Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan, where he was a sociology professor. The Jim Crow Museum on the campus of Ferris State University uses these objects to teach about the history and mistakes of history.
