In 1972, the Rainbow Sign in Oakland — a cultural center for the Black community — invited assemblage artist Betye Saar to submit a piece about a hero. She decided to choose a heroine and made the counter-intuitive decision to highlight Aunt Jemima, a stock figure from the history of 20th century pancake advertising. The “Mamie” figure of Aunt Jemima evoked the stereotype of Black women as enslaved cooks on the master’s plantation. Similar “mamies” had been used to sell various kitchen products in the past, as they appealed to white housewives’ nostalgic notions of comfort, servitude, and respectability. Such racialized objects denied the humanity of Black women by reinforcing their subservience, their inferiority, and their proper “place” in white homes. Saar, instead, refashioned Aunt Jemima as a warrior who dropped the ladle in favor of a rifle. In this piece, Aunt Jemima is a freedom fighter, fending off oppression from both racism and the patriarchy.