Hendler Creamery

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Hendler Creamery in 2011

Hendler Creamery is an ice cream company in Jonestown, Baltimore, Maryland. Besides producing one of Baltimore's favorite brands of ice cream, it played a major role in the development of the nation's ice cream business. The adjoining building at 1107 East Fayette Street, built in the 1920s as part of the Hendler Creamery complex, is also significant, notably in the creation of one of the nation's first ice cream delivery systems by refrigerated truck. As the Maryland Historical Society noted in a blog posting, The Velvet Kind: The Sweet Story of Hendlers Creamery, "The ice cream was virtually everywhere in Maryland, as it was distributed to over 400 stores at the company’s peak, which kept the production lines humming. The factory ran six days a week with vanilla ice cream being made almost everyday. Vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry were production mainstays, but the creamery dabbled in more exotic flavors as well.

The creamery closed in the 1970s.[1]

Hendler Creamery ads for sweets in the 1920s

Racist Ads

One campaign for Hendler Creamery Co.'s Picaninny Freeze clearly depicts a dark-skinned girl in what looks to be a field hillside, childishly eating the watermelon-shaped frozen treat. The girl's skin and hair are completely black, with her twists looking more like spikes protruding from her head than natural hair. Her lips are cartoonishly large and red, as she grins in a field with her five-cent Freeze.[2]

Confectioners in the 1920s drew on long-standing racial stereotypes in their joint advertising campaigns. One of the more grotesque examples: ads for Picaninny Freeze, a 5-cent frozen dessert from the Hendler Creamery Co. (Picaninny is an offensive term for a small black child.) Though the product was a strawberry ice cream dotted with chocolate seeds, the ad featured a caricature of a young black girl, with oversized red lips, chomping on a huge slice of watermelon – a fruit laden with racist associations — with the slogan: "Eat, seeds 'n all!"[3]

Copy of this ad displayed on Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia.

References

  1. Hendler Creamery. Retrieved January 12, 2021.
  2. Fehd, Samantha.The Candy Industry Has a Long History of Racism That We Can't Ignore. Spoon University. Retrieved January 12, 2021.
  3. Martyris, Nina.Tainted Treats: Racism And The Rise Of Big Candy. NPR. 30 October 2015. Retrieved January 12, 2021.