Gordie Howe International Bridge, Detroit, Michigan*

Nancy Green, World's First Living Trademark

Nancy Hayes (or Hughes) was born enslaved in the Antebellum South on March 4, 1834. Montgomery County Historical Society oral history places her birth at a farm on Somerset Creek, six miles outside Mount Sterling in Montgomery County, Kentucky. With George Green, she had at least two and as many as four children (one of whom was born in 1862). Local farmers from that area named Green raised tobacco, hay, cattle, and hogs. There were no birth certificates or marriage licenses for enslaved people.

Nancy Green has been variously described as a servant, nurse, nanny, housekeeper, and cook for Charles Morehead Walker and his wife Amanda. She also served the family's next generation, again as a nanny and a cook. Walker's two sons later became well known as Chicago Circuit Judge Charles M. Walker Jr., and Dr. Samuel J. Walker.

By the end of the American Civil War, Green had already lost her husband and children. She lived in a wood frame shack (still standing as of 2014) behind a grand home on Main Street in Covington, Kentucky. She moved with the Walkers from Kentucky to Chicago in the early 1870s, before the birth of Samuel's youngest child in 1872. The Walker family initially settled in a swank residential district near Ashland Avenue and Washington Boulevard called the "Kentucky Colony," then home to many transplanted Kentuckians.

On the recommendation of Judge Walker, she was hired by the R.T. Davis Milling Company in St. Joseph, Missouri, to represent their trademarked "Aunt Jemima," an advertising character named after a song from a minstrel show. They were looking for a mammy-archetype to promote their ready-mix pankake mix and table syrup products. At the age of 59, She became the advertising world's first living trademark, making her debut as Aunt Jemima at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition held in Chicago. She stood beside the "world's largest flour barrel" (24 feet high) and operated a pancake-cooking display, sang songs, and told romanticized stories about the Old South (claiming it was a happy place for blacks and whites alike).

After the Expo, Green was reportedly offered a lifetime contract to adopt the Aunt Jemima moniker and promote the pancake mix; however, it is likely the offer was part of the lore created for the character of Aunt Jemima not for Green herself. This marked the beginning of a major promotional push by the company that included thousands of personal appearances and Aunt Jemima merchandising. She appeared at fairs, festivals, flea markets, food shows, and local grocery stores. Her arrival was heralded by large billboards featuring the caption, "I's in town, honey."

Despite her "lifetime contract," she portrayed the role for no more than 20 years. She refused to cross the ocean for the 1900 Paris exhibition and subsequently was replaced by Agnes Moodey, "a negress of 60 years," who was then reported as the original Aunt Jemima.

In 1910, at age 76, Green was still working as a residential housekeeper according to the census. Few people were aware of her role as Aunt Jemima. Green lived with nieces and nephews in Chicago's Fuller Park and Grand Boulevard neighborhoods into her old age. At the time of her death, she was living with her great-nephew and his wife.

Green was active in the Chicago Olivet Baptist Church. During her lifetime, it grew significantly, becoming the largest African-American church in the United States, with a membership at that time of over 9,000. She used her stature as a spokesperson to advocate against poverty and in favor of equal rights for individuals in Chicago.

Green died on August 30, 1923, at the age of 89 in Chicago, when a car driven by pharmacist Dr. H. S. Seymour collided with a laundry truck and "hurtled" onto the sidewalk where she was standing. She is buried in a pauper's grave near a wall in the northeast quadrant of Chicago's Oak Woods Cemetery. Her grave was unmarked and unknown until 2015. Sherry Williams, founder of the Bronzeville Historical Society, spent 15 years uncovering Green's resting place. Williams received approval to place a headstone. Williams reached out to Quaker Oats about whether they would support a monument for Green's grave. Their corporate response was that 'Nancy Green and Aunt Jemima aren't the same – that Aunt Jemima is a fictitious character." The headstone was placed on September 5, 2020.

In 2014, a lawsuit was filed against Quaker Oats, PepsiCo, and others, claiming that Green and Anna Short Harrington (who portrayed Aunt Jemima starting in 1935) were exploited by the company and cheated out of the monetary compensation they were promised. The plaintiffs were two of Harrington's great-grandsons, and they sought a multi-billion dollar settlement for descendants of Green and Harrington. The lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice and without leave to amend on February 18, 2015.

Due to the "mammy" stereotype's historical ties to the Jim Crow era, Quaker Oats announced in June 2020 that the Aunt Jemima brand would be discontinued "to make progress toward racial equality," leading to the Aunt Jemima image being removed by the fourth quarter of 2020. In June 2021, amidst heightened racial unrest in the United States, the Aunt Jemima brand name was discontinued by its current owner, PepsiCo, with all products rebranded to Pearl Milling Company, the name of the company that produced the original pancake mix product. The Aunt Jemima name remains in use in the brand's tagline, "Same great taste as Aunt Jemima."

(Source: Wikipedia)

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A feat of manpower is inching closer to completion on the Detroit, Michigan's southwest side and over the Detroit River.

The $5.7 billion Gordie Howe International Bridge, when completed with a total length of 1.5 miles and a main span of 0.53 miles, will have the longest main span of any cable-stayed bridge on the continent and the 10th longest in the world. This summer, crews in each country are building toward the sky, inching the bridge towers to 656 feet as of mid-July, just 66 feet away from the towers' final height of 722 feet, which they are expected to reach by year-end.

Crews are also installing anchor boxes along the towers. These boxes are what secure the cables to the towers. The bridge needs 216 cables total, 108 cables on each tower, to maintain stability and hold the entire structure to the tower through tension.



According to the government of Michigan, the U.S. port of entry will be near Zug Island in Detroit, bounded by Fort Street to the north, Jefferson to the south and Green Street and Campbell to the west and east. At the 167-acre U.S. port of entry, located on the city's southwest side between the west and east Delray neighborhoods, 13 buildings and structures are coming, along with plumbing, drywall and steel installations underway.

The bridge is anticipated to be open for public use in December 2024.

(Source: Miriam Marini, Detroit Free Press, Aug. 9, 2023)