What Youth Groups Can Learn About Reputation and Legacy from Nancy Green's Story

 

The Kentucky Faith and Public History Education Project is committed to telling the stories of famous Kentucky Christians who were public about their Christian faith. This week we consider one woman whose reputation is controversial today because it intersects with the racial divisions and the way they have been articulated over the past 200 years in America. By sharing this information with your youth group, perhaps you can guide the conversation to be about reputation and legacy – how to live so that what people remember about them is consistent with their core values and commitments.

It was 1893 in Chicago. Grover Cleveland was the president of the United States. The Civil War was over. Formerly enslaved African Americans had been emancipated thanks to President Lincoln for thirty years. The Chicago World’s Fair was the main event, at least for white people. Very few African Americans were able to enjoy it. Some African Americans worked at the fair doing menial jobs. A few Black performers were more prominent. Frederick Douglass, the famous abolitionist, spoke there. Some people remember what he said. But everyone in attendance saw one woman, who had been born into slavery in Mt. Sterling, Kentucky, telling stories and cooking pancakes. Her name was Nancy Green. More than 50,000 people got a pancake she made in the exhibit for Aunt Jemima Pancakes. She was so popular that, after the fair was over, she received a lifetime contract to travel throughout the United States representing that brand. Her fame helped her raise over $3 million for charities like the Rock Island, Illinois Boys Club. She was a leader at her church, the largest Baptist church in Chicago, Mt. Olivet Church. Many African Americans had moved to Chicago to find work. The church was where they learned the ropes of living in the city, where they found new friends, and where they were led to commit to live a Christian life. She died after being hit by a car.

The problem is that Nancy Green’s life was forgotten so much that she was buried without a tomb-stone. What people remember is the character she played. It offends people today because they feel that she allowed herself to become a racist symbol that the Quaker Oats Company exploited for the money. The Ferris State University’s Jim Crow Museum includes Aunt Jemima as an example of “Anti-Black Imagery”[1].

What do you think Nancy Green would have said if someone accused her of being a symbol of “anti-Black” propaganda? In 2017 Lexington’s Lyric Theatre hosted a performance, “Nancy Green: Being Aunt Jemima the Pancake Queen” starring Debra Faulk. The promotional literature about the performance states- “She was a real Kentucky hero: a community activist, philanthropist, and church missionary”[2]. The article goes on to say: “Green became one of the first prosperous African American women in the United States, and she used her wealth to empower her community.”[3]

The president of the Bronzeville Historical Society told NPR journalist, Katherine Nagasawa that “removing the Aunt Jemima image could erase Green’s legacy – and the legacies of many Black women who worked as caretakers and cooks for both white families and their own”. She said, “I look at Nancy Green as a Black mother figure, and Black women are the lifelines for generations, both Black and white”[4].

We’d love for you to post comments telling us what your youth group members say when you ask them what there is to learn from Nancy Green’s story and what they want to be remembered for.

By Lesley Barker ©2020

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[1] https://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/antiblack/. ACCESSED 12/17/2020.

[2] Lyric Theatre and Cultural Arts Center. “Nancy Green: Being Aunt Jemima the Pancake Queen”. ONLINE at https://www.lexingtonlyric.com/event.php?id=1118. ACCESSED 12/17/2020.

[3] IBID

[4] Katherine Nagasawa. “The Fight to Preserve the Legacy of Nancy Green, the Chicago Woman Who Played The Original ‘Aunt Jemima’”. Chicago’s NPR News Source WBEZ. June 19, 2020.

How a Movie Star from Kentucky Shared Her Faith

This week our famous Kentucky Christian is the actress and movie star from Louisville, Irene Dunne, who starred in the picture, I Remember Mama. Her life was not the easiest. Her father died when she was a child. Her mother brought her up in church where she decided to follow God. She said that she never strayed from His paths.  Her faith became much more central to her life later, after her mother died. Writing about her faith for Guideposts Magazine in 1951, Dunne posed the essential question she tried to answer regarding each of her relationships. She wrote: “How can I find a simple, uncomplicated, sincere way of telling others about the richness, satisfaction, and joy that my religion brings to my life, so that they, too, may desire to open the door and let God in?” [1]

How would your students answer that question if you put it to them in a children’s church or youth meeting? Would they point to ways that their faith is a source of richness, satisfaction and joy? Do they think about how to talk about their faith with their friends? Have they figured out how to introduce their faith in ways that make their friends want to experience it too?

Can you model your own experiences in sharing the Christian message with others? Can you find words that are not christianese or that do not presume that the other person understands that many Christians consider what is in the Bible to be their final authority on matters of faith and behavior?

Irene Dunne gave an example of how she talked about her faith with people who did not share it.  She said that “it was something like seeing your friends for the first time since your return from a wonderful trip—let’s call this a heavenly trip. You had such a glorious time, you’ve already sent post cards, saying, ‘Wish you were here.’ If you have the gift of words, your description of the place will make them want to go.”[2]

Comparing her faith to a wonderful trip was a clever way to start a conversation about God. By itself, it did not explain how Christians enter into a faith-walk. It did, however, make it possible for her friends to ask a question that could lead to more explicit information about what she believed. This is how a Kentucky movie star baited her conversation hook so that her friends might want to know more about what she believed. Is hers an example that your students might want to follow?

By Lesley Barker ©2020

 

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[1] Irene Dunne. “Irene Dunne on Her Faith Journey”. Guideposts. 1951. Reprinted 2015.

[2] Ibid.

What Makes a Famous Kentucky Christian?

Each Monday we use our Facebook Page to introduce another famous Kentucky Christian from the past. By a famous Kentucky Christian we mean someone who was born in or worked in Kentucky, whose accomplishments were meaningful within the community, and who gave specific testimony to their faith in the Christian message. We are being intentional to include both men and women from every race and ethnicity that we can find. This is a kind of treasure hunt through Kentucky’s history. Famous Kentucky Christians have been presidents and slaves. They have risen from adversity to become prosperous entrepreneurs. They have served in faraway places, in the military and at home. We are looking for these people to build a who’s who of Kentucky’s Christian history. Our children need to see examples of people whom they resemble who overcame challenges and made history happen.

This week we introduced Albery Allson Whitman. He faced more adversity than most of your students can imagine as you can see in his own words:

“I was Born in Green River Country, Hart County, Kentucky, May 30, 1851. I was a slave until the Emancipation. My parents left me and went to the Good Land when I was yet a boy. My chances for education have not been good. In that matter, however, I have done what I could. I have labored with my hands, taught school and preached a RISEN, present Savior – not a bad lot after all”[1].

Whitman was 26-years old when he wrote those words in the preface of the first of six volumes of his poetry. He had finished a degree at Wilberforce University and would go on to plant and pastor churches in Georgia, Kansas, Ohio and Texas. His poetry was popular enough for him to have been invited to read one at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. Some even called him the “poet laureate of the Negro race”.

What do your students make of Whitman’s words? If their parents had both died and left them enslaved, would they push themselves through college? Would they find comfort in the Christian message enough to continue to make it known to others? Why or why not?

Do your students know about any famous Kentucky Christians that we may not yet have discovered? If so, how have their lives been impacted by them? If not, do you know who their heroes and role models are?  

When your youth group or children’s club visits the Kentucky Faith and Public History Education Project’s Walking Trail (expected to open in 2021) in Paris, Kentucky, they will encounter information about the Christian religion and its history, especially in Kentucky starting in the early nineteenth century with the camp meeting revivals such as the 1801 Cane Ridge Revival in Bourbon County. Each child will also be challenged to play an Eye Spy game in which they must find seven clues hidden along the Walking Trail in order to learn about a famous Kentucky Christian. At the end of the trail, they will receive a trading card about their person. Trading cards will also be available soon in sets on our website. Famous Kentucky Christians are also the subjects of the FKCC book series. So far there are four books. Big Bully is the story of Simon Kenton. New Boots is the story of Elisha Green. Hurt Feelings is the story of Dottie Rambo and Picked Last is the story of Effie Waller Smith. Each book is a high-interest easy-reader beginning chapter book written at the 2^nd through 4^th grade reading level. If your church has a children’s book section in its library, these books should be available. They make affordable gifts too.

 

By Lesley Barker c. 2020

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[1] Albery Allson Whitman. Not a Man and Yet a Man. 1877.