Clinging to Mammy: The Faithful Slave in Twentieth-Century America

by Micki McElya

When Aunt Jemima beamed at Americans from the pancake mix box on grocery shelves, many felt reassured by her broad smile that she and her product were dependable. She was everyone's mammy, the faithful slave who was content to cook and care for whites, no matter how grueling the labor, because she loved them. This far-reaching image of the nurturing black mother exercises a tenacious hold on the American imagination.

Micki McElya examines why we cling to mammy. She argues that the figure of the loyal slave has played a powerful role in modern American politics and culture. Loving, hating, pitying, or pining for mammy became a way for Americans to make sense of shifting economic, social, and racial realities. Assertions of black people's contentment with servitude alleviated white fears while reinforcing racial hierarchy. African American resistance to this notion was varied but often placed new constraints on black women.

McElya's stories of faithful slaves expose the power and reach of the myth, not only in popular advertising, films, and literature about the South, but also in national monument proposals, child custody cases, white women's minstrelsy, New Negro activism, anti-lynching campaigns, and the civil rights movement. The color line and the vision of interracial motherly affection that helped maintain it have persisted into the twenty-first century. If we are to reckon with the continuing legacy of slavery in the United States, McElya argues, we must confront the depths of our desire for mammy and recognize its full racial implications.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Race, Politics, Civil War History, American History, Anthropology

336 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2007

Reviews

[Anjie · Rating 4 out of 5]

MSNBC host Melissa Harris Perry recommended this book for anyone who saw "the Help" and couldn't understand why some were so viscerally opposed to the book and film. "Clinging to Mammy" explains why that bestseller struck a nerve by painstakingly detailing the sometimes brutally blunt, sometimes nuanced relationship between the black female domestic labor force and the white families they worked for post-slavery. The book starts with the mammy figure most familiar to anyone who has enjoyed a plate of pancakes: Aunt Jemima. It recounts an appalling effort to build a memorial to mammies in Washington, DC, the "mammy problem" as African Americans fled Jim Crow South for jobs in the north, and how the mammy figure evolved during the 60s. The book feels a little rushed at the end, with the 70s/80s and "now" collapsed into far fewer pages than the other eras in the civil rights struggle. Ambitious, enlightening and ultimately fulfilling.

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

So if you know someone who is like "taking down statues is changing history", just point out there was a movement to put a Mammy statue on the National Mall. I already knew this because of Melissa Perry-Harris' excellent book. McElya's book does a great job of showing the harm as well as the reason for the Mammy myth. This book is well worth reading.

[Mark Cheathem]

Excellent book on historical memory and imagery. I will be using parts of it in my Af Am history course.

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exposes how "the faithful slave narrative" had and continues to have a hold on America. I enjoyed the first 75% best- the last chapter which brings it up to the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s seemed rushed to me. Nevertheless, an excellent read about race relations and collective memory.

[Thara · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really great academic text--if you are interested in Jim Crow era racism, or really the history of advertising/exploitation, add this to your list of things to read.

[Colin Cox · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the introduction to Micki McElya’s Clinging to Mammy, she writes, “With the rise of consumer capitalism, commodity culture, and technological innovation, far from dwindling in power or quantity, stories and images of the enslaved mammy became more prevalent than ever. One would be hard-pressed to find any area of modern American culture that was not suffused with images, sounds, and stories of the faithful slave” (13). This point reminds me of Du Bois and his argument about media propaganda. In short, Du Bois argued that popular media from the late 19th and early 20th century would do Black people no favors in how they represented them; therefore, influential Black writes, essayists, and artists (today, we would call them “content creators”) must produce propaganda that challenged much of what McElya describes in Clinging to Mammy. Otherwise, as McElya suggests, “Romanticized narratives of slavery and black fidelity to white masters proliferates long after emancipation because they served a wide range of emotional, economic, and political needs for white and black Americans…Loving, hating, pitying, or pining for mammy in the twentieth century became a way for Americans to define the character of the nation, the meaning of freedom, and the racial and gender boundaries of the citizenry” (11). As McElya suggests throughout Clinging to Mammy, the terrain for defining these boundaries was media, specifically a particular representation of a fantastical slave relic: the mammy. By “clinging to mammy,” we cling to a mythical American past defined by unmovable racial and gender hierarchies (260). Therefore, progress requires interrogating the narratives we have of ourselves, our past, and the products we literally and figuratively consume. The fight for equality is, perhaps more than anything else, a narrative fight.

[Roxanne Evans]

This is exceptionally well-researched and documented but riveting and entertaining. I highly recommend it. The author takes us on a journey to meet those who created Aunt Jemima as well as those who portrayed her. She also exposes us to the inner workings of the Daughters of the Confederacy, and allows us to be spectators on a fascinating custody case involving a white child and a black adopted mother. And, the quotes from black journalists, particularly editor writers, were perfect ways to bring home some of the points made during the debate over a statue to pay tribute to the mammy. I highly recommend this book.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this for a class. This is a highly interesting look at the Faithful Slave narrative, the Mammy figure, and Aunt Jemima herself. I highly recommend this read for those looking to examine the narratives used that still impact African Americans - most especially women - to this day.

[Elly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for class.

[B · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Danielle Sanchez · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent study of harmful imagery and the “Mammy” perception in media as continuing the faithful slave narrative and used to revise and perpetuate a false history.

[Adina · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! McElya leaves no stone unturned in her deconstruction and analysis of the “Mammy” myth in American pop culture.

[Jake · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was expecting something with more breadth and depth, and this was a disappointment for me. That said, she dives headfirst into the topics she does cover in the text. It's a shame she does not discuss the damaging stereotype of the mammy with the epic scope that it deserves.

[Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent history that really is pause for reflection.

[Felicia · Rating 3 out of 5]

really eye opening facts but a bit dry as historical information goes. I suppose I was expecting more dynamics.

[Kristen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic overview of the history of the image of "Mammy" and how it has been distorted and used in 20th-century America. Very eye-opening.