The Bitchionary

About The Bitchionary

Defining our own terms. The Bitchionary is the dictionary of bitches, a history of women who are complicated and messy, brilliant and overlooked, terrible and monstrous, and all things that humans are. This podcast seeks to give nuance to women by defining our own terms. We tell stories of awesome women who have been overlooked by history, but we also tell stories of complicated and messy women. We tell stories of women who have committed terrible acts, both personally and politically. We tell stories that have happened to women and causes that women have championed.

Publisher

The Bitchionary

Category

history

Language

en

Explicit

Yes

First episode

12 Dec 2024

Latest episode

21 Aug 2026

Latest episodes

23 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   21 Aug 2026

   Inventing Aunt Jemima (PART 5): Her Name Is Nancy Green

   For four episodes we've been building context—the machinery of modern branding, the minstrel stage, the taxonomy of caricature, the fair and its gate. All of it was in service of this. Now we come back to the woman. The part people sort of know is that Nancy Green walked into a casting call in 1893 and spent the next thirty years traveling the country as the living face of a company's invention. This episode is about everything else. She was a founding presence at what became the largest Black congregation in the United States. She put her money into missionary work and anti-poverty programs. She was involved in anti-lynching crusades, which is to say she was doing, with the wages the costume paid her, a version of the work Ida B. Wells was doing outside the fair's gates. The two of them lived in the same city for decades. They are buried in the same cemetery. She died in 1923, at eighty-nine, still working, struck by a car on a Chicago street. She was buried in an unmarked plot because there was no money for a stone and no family left to arrange one. It stayed unmarked for ninety-seven years. In 2020, asked whether they would help mark that grave, the company said: "Nancy Green and Aunt Jemima aren't the same. Aunt Jemima is a fictitious character." This episode is partly about why they say it exactly that way, and what it has cost to keep saying it. This is the last episode of the arc, and it is a heavy one. In this episode we: Follow Green after the fair, the thirty-year contract, the county fairs and grocery demonstrations, and the format the company built by lifting the minstrel character off the theatrical stage and putting it to work in retail Tell the other half of her life: the church, the funding, the anti-lynching work, and the Chicago she shared with Ida B. Wells Follow the fifteen-year search for Green's grave, the five more years it took to find a descendant and get a headstone approved under Illinois law, and who finally paid for the stone Name the women who came after her—at least nine over seventy years, including a blues singer with her own recording career, a woman whose face the company redesigned the logo to resemble without ever putting her name on the box, and one who worked a pancake house at Disneyland Lay out the labor the Mammy image was built to conceal: roughly 90 percent of employed Black women working as domestic laborers, and the deliberate exclusion of domestic and agricultural workers from the New Deal protections, which was the price Southern Democrats charged for their votes Connect the 2014 lawsuit to the 2020 answer at the gravesite, and to the trademark PepsiCo still owns and has no intention of releasing There is no justice at the end of this one. There is a name, and the fact that we now know it, and what we do with that kind of looking from here. If you're just finding us, start at Part 1. Content note: This episode discusses slavery, racial caricature, lynching, racialized economic exploitation, and the legal and policy structures that excluded Black women from labor protections. We have approached this material with care and encourage listeners to do the same. Connect with Us! Patreon: ⁠patreon.com/TheBitchionary⁠ (http://patreon.com/TheBitchionary) Instagram ⁠@theb.chionary⁠ (http://instagram.com/theb.ichionary) Substack: ⁠https://thebitchionary.substack.com/⁠ (https://thebitchionary.substack.com/) Apple Podcasts: ⁠The Bitchionary⁠ (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-bitchionary/id1786884396) Email: ⁠admin@thebitchionary.com⁠ for general inquiries. Email Becca at ⁠becca@thebitchionary.com⁠ or Lily at ⁠lily@thebitchionary.com⁠. Sources available in the show notes for parts 1-3.

2. 

   21 Aug 2026

   Inventing Aunt Jemima (PART 4): The White City

   In Part 3 we mapped the architecture—where the controlling images came from, what they were built to do, and where they went when the minstrel stage went dark. This episode goes back to the place where the pancake brand was launched, and to the three people standing in three different positions relative to the same gate. In the spring of 1893, Chicago built a city out of plaster and painted it white. Twenty-seven million people came to see it over six months. It was America announcing itself as a modern civilization that had arrived, and like every vision, it was a set of decisions about what to include and what to leave out. Black leaders had been lobbying for years for a place in it—a commissioner, a department, some way to show what Black Americans had built in the not-quite-thirty years since emancipation. They were refused. Not carelessly, and not once. Three Black Americans were at that fair anyway, and they gave three completely different answers to the same impossible question. Ida B. Wells stood outside the gates handing out a pamphlet about why they weren't inside. Frederick Douglass was inside at seventy-five, representing Haiti, because his own country wouldn't have him. And Nancy Green was inside too, in an apron, making pancakes and telling stories about how much she had loved the plantation. Do you take the platform you're offered and try to work from within it, or do you refuse it and fight for a different one? There is no correct answer. There is only what each of them did with what was available to them. This one is heavy. In this episode we: Walk the World's Columbian Exposition. 690 acres of marshland turned into a city in under two years, electric light most visitors had never seen, the first Ferris wheel, and the hamburger, Cracker Jack, and Aunt Jemima pancake mix all launched in the same six months Trace the multi-year campaign by Black leaders for representation at the fair, the specific refusals that met it, and the incoherent reasoning offered for each one Cover Jubilee Day—the single day set aside for Black visitors—and the watermelons someone arranged to distribute at the gate, including where that particular piece of racist iconography actually came from, which is the opposite of what you'd assume Read from Frederick Douglass's speech that day, which began as prepared remarks and became something else entirely after a white man in the crowd heckled him about "the Negro problem" Meet Ida B. Wells properly: the train, the bite, the lawsuit, the lynching of her three friends in Memphis, the destruction of her newspaper office, and the pamphlet she wrote, funded, translated, and handed out at the fair's gates Look at the Dahomey Village, one of the fair's most popular attractions, and what it was built to prove about the distance between "there" and "here" The White City burned in 1894. The structure it was built to display did not. Next time, we close the arc: the rest of Nancy Green's life, the women who played the role after her, the labor the whole apparatus was designed to conceal, and what the company did with the brand after it announced it was done with it. Content note: This episode discusses slavery, racial caricature, lynching and the systematic terror of the post-Reconstruction era, racist iconography, and the public display of human beings as ethnographic exhibition. We have approached this material with care and encourage listeners to do the same. Connect with Us! Patreon: ⁠patreon.com/TheBitchionary⁠ (http://patreon.com/TheBitchionary) Instagram ⁠@theb.chionary⁠ (http://instagram.com/theb.ichionary) Substack: ⁠https://thebitchionary.substack.com/⁠ (https://thebitchionary.substack.com/) Apple Podcasts: ⁠The Bitchionary⁠ (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-bitchionary/id1786884396) Email: ⁠admin@thebitchionary.com⁠ for general inquiries. Email Becca at ⁠becca@thebitchionary.com⁠ or Lily at ⁠lily@thebitchionary.com⁠. Sources listed in the show notes for Parts 1-3.

3. 

   26 May 2026

   Inventing Aunt Jemima (PART 3): Controlling Images and Modern Minstrelsy

   In Part 2, we walked through the minstrel show and met its cast of characters. This episode picks up exactly where that left off, and asks the harder question: what were those characters for, and where did they go when the minstrel stage finally went dark? The answer is that they didn't go anywhere. They just got new costumes and they're still all around us. This episode is a direct continuation of Part 2, and it is a heavy one. Content note: This episode discusses slavery, sexual violence, racial caricature, and racist stereotypes in historical context. It includes discussion of lynching, the systematic terror of the post-Reconstruction era, and modern racialized violence and policing. We have approached this material with care and encourage listeners to do the same. Connect with Us! Patreon: ⁠patreon.com/TheBitchionary⁠ (http://patreon.com/TheBitchionary) Instagram ⁠@theb.chionary⁠ (http://instagram.com/theb.ichionary) Substack: ⁠https://thebitchionary.substack.com/⁠ (https://thebitchionary.substack.com/) Apple Podcasts: ⁠The Bitchionary⁠ (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-bitchionary/id1786884396) Email: ⁠admin@thebitchionary.com⁠ for general inquiries. Email Becca at ⁠becca@thebitchionary.com⁠ or Lily at ⁠lily@thebitchionary.com⁠. Sources ABC News. "The untold story of the real 'Aunt Jemima' and the fight to preserve her legacy." (https://abcnews.go.com/US/untold-story-real-aunt-jemima-fight-preserve-legacy/story?id=72293603) African American Registry. "Nancy Green, The Original 'Aunt Jemima' born." (https://aaregistry.org/story/nancy-green-the-original-aunt-jemima/) Allrecipes. "The Brand Formerly Known as 'Aunt Jemima' Becomes Pearl Milling Company." (https://www.allrecipes.com/article/aunt-jemima-pearl-milling-company/) Banks, Nina. "Black women’s labor market history reveals deep-seated race and gender discrimination." (https://www.epi.org/blog/black-womens-labor-market-history-reveals-deep-seated-race-and-gender-discrimination/) Economic Policy Institute. Bogle, Donald. “Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films.” 1973. CBS News Boston. "Aunt Jemima Brand And Logo Being Retired By Quaker Oats, Acknowledging Racial Stereotype." (https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/aunt-jemima-syrup-logo-retired-racial-stereotype/) Collins, Patricia Hill. “Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment.” 1990. EBSCO Research Starters. "Mammy archetype" (https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/women-s-studies-and-feminism/mammy-archetype) by Elizabeth Mohn. Fiveable Class Notes. "Domestic work and labor exploitation | History of Black Women in America." (https://fiveable.me/history-black-women-in-america/unit-10/domestic-work-labor-exploitation/study-guide/iRHjUpmFSIBersMq) Kentucky Center for African American Heritage. "Nancy Green." (https://kcaah.org/women-in-history/nancy-green/) Kentucky Historical Society. "Civil War to Civil Rights: Nancy Green, Aunt Jemima." (https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/LegislativeMoments/moments14RS/web/legislative%20moment%2044.pdf) Lee, Jon J. "Racism and Trademark Abandonment." (https://www.gwlr.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/91-Geo.-Wash.-L.-Rev.-932.pdf) The George Washington Law Review. London College of Contemporary Arts (LCCA). "A history of branding." (https://www.lcca.ac.uk/blog/education/history-of-branding/) Morrison, Toni. “Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination.” 1992. New-York Historical Society. "Aunt Jemima." (https://wams.nyhistory.org/industry-and-empire/labor-and-industry/aunt-jemima/) Women & the American Story. New-York Historical Society. "Black Domestic Workers." (https://wams.nyhistory.org/industry-and-empire/labor-and-industry/black-domestic-workers/) Women & the American Story. Richardson, Riché. "Can We Please, Finally, Get Rid of 'Aunt Jemima'?" (https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/06/24/besides-the-confederate-flag-what-other-symbols-should-go/can-we-please-finally-get-rid-of-aunt-jemima) The New York Times. Roberts, Sam. "Overlooked No More: Nancy Green, the 'Real Aunt Jemima'." (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/17/obituaries/nancy-green-aunt-jemima-overlooked.html) The New York Times. Pearl Milling Company. "Our History." (https://www.pearlmillingcompany.com/our-history) PR Newswire. "Aunt Jemima Brand To Remove Image From Packaging And Change Brand Name." (https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/aunt-jemima-brand-to-remove-image-from-packaging-and-change-brand-name-301078593.html) The Quaker Oats Company. US Legal Forms. "Aunt Jemima Doctrine: Understanding Trademark Protection." (https://legal-resources.uslegalforms.com/a/aunt-jemima-doctrine) Legal Resources. University of Washington Digital Collections. "Early Advertising of the West, 1867-1918." (https://content.lib.washington.edu/advertweb/index.html) Wikipedia. "Aunt Jemima." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aunt_Jemima) Wikipedia. "Mammy stereotype." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammy_stereotype) Wilmington College. "Powered by Pancakes: Debra Faulk to Share the True Story of Aunt Jemima." (https://www.wilmington.edu/news/powered-by-pancakes-debra-faulk-to-share-the-true-story-of-aunt-jemima) World’s Fair Chicago 1893. "Remembering Nancy Green, Aunt Jemima, and the 1893 World’s Fair." (https://worldsfairchicago1893.com/2020/09/09/remembering-nancy-green-aunt-jemima-and-the-1893-worlds-fair/) "The Enduring Iconography of Exploitation: Aunt Jemima, Racial Mythology, and the History of American Consumption." Research Summary. "The Real Aunt Jemima." Podcast Script/Research Materials. "The Real Aunt Jemima: Nancy Green’s Story and the Legacy of a Stereotype." Historical Research Analysis.

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

13 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

20 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 15 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

10

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

51

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