Aunt Jemima and Uncle Mose Travel the USA: The Marketing of Memory Through Tourist Souvenirs.

This paper extends an earlier analysis of black collectibles to the realm of tourism. It argues that the elite practice of bringing back cultural trophies from travels abroad has been replaced by the phenomenon of middle class tourists returning home with souvenirs. One particular type of memorabilia in the United States is the portrayal of Afro-Americans on a number of tourist-related items. The article traces their origin, continuation and decline within an ideological framework that both promotes and institutionalizes racism. The slave-like images of mentally deficient, indolent, though happy blacks, as epitomized in the stereotypical figures of Aunt Jemima, Uncle Mose and their pickaninny offspring, while predominant from post-emancipation to the 1950s, have not entirely disappeared today. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]