GMSPunishTheWicked, Jun 9, 2019
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This YouTube video has the title "Mammy Two Shoes Esau Clowning Eve"
There are no comments for this video as of October 17, 2025 at 8:51 PM EDT
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Edited by Azizi Powell
This pancocojams post presents some history of the English word "mammy" and showcases two YouTube videos about the American "Tom & Jerry" cartoon character "Mammy Two Shoes".
This post also presents information and comments about this cartoon character.
The content of this post is presented for historical, socio-cultural, and linguistic purposes.
All copyrights remain with their ownets.
Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post and thanks to the producers and publishers of these showcased videos
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Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2025/10/coulters-candy-allee-ballee-allee.html for an example of the English word "mammy"in the Scottish song "Coulter's Candy" (also known as "Allee Ballee, Allee Ballee Bee") which was originally composed in the 19th century.
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DEFINITIONS FOR THE ENGLISH WORD "MAMMY"
ONLINE SOURCE #1
From https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mammy
"mammy
noun
mam·my ˈma-mē
plural mammies
Synonyms of mammy
1
: mama
2
offensive : a Black woman serving as a nurse to white
children especially formerly in the southern U.S."
[...]
Recent Examples on the Web
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to
show current usage.
"These include typecasting Black women as jezebels, sapphires
and mammies; these depictions, combined with the law enforcement they may be
exposed to, increase their vulnerability under the law."
—Kerry Lester Kasper, Chicago Tribune, 22 Aug. 2025
**
"The mammy stereotype, which desexualized both dark skinned
enslaved and free women (who were often in domestic roles), made muting Black
beauty the norm."
—Brooklyn White, Essence, 30 Nov. 2022
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ONLINE SOURCE #2
From https://boards.straightdope.com/t/southern-mammy-irish-mammy-why-the-same/679716/7 "Southern Mammy-Irish Mammy: Why the same?"
1.CC, Jan 2014
"I’m reading Philomena, set in 1950’s Ireland, and come
across many references to “Mammy,” as…mommy. I’m also aware that in the 19th
century, the term, mammy, was used by many people to refer to a black woman
whose responsibility was to raise and deal with white children. Those are the
only two instances I can think of in which that term is used. Is there some
connection? I am assuming the term migrated somehow from Ireland to America.
Anyone know how? Or, how to explain the coincidence? Thanks, C"
**
2.
"Many Irish and Scots-Irish migrated to America all up and
down the Eastern Seaboard, and particularly in the Appalachians and New
England.
I’ve read that “ma ma” is the easiest thing for a newborn to utter so the variations of that (mama, momma, mommy, mummy, mammy, and on and on) get to be the name of that woman who keeps poking a titty in their mouth and it doesn’t really go away but just gets dressed up to Mom or Mother or one of those fancier utterances.
What was it you wanted to know?"
**
3. CC, Jan 2014
"I think that “mammy” is not particularly widespread, and is
notable for that. I understand the etymology of mama, etc. as a commonly voiced
sound of newborns. What is still not clear is why southern whites, some of
whose ancestors came from Ireland, did not use the term, mammy, themselves, and
how and why it got applied the way it did, to black women who cared for their
children. Certainly, as late as the 1950’s, the term was still in use in
Ireland, and was used by the Irish to refer to their own mothers. How did it
come to apply NOT to Irish-Americans in the south? And why to their slaves?"
**
Reply
4. Exapno_Mapcase, January 2014
"Language evolves at different rates. Some words linger,
others change over time. The change is far more likely to occur if there is a
reason to differentiate the word from older senses. (The parallel to new
species arising only if a new niche is created is fairly exact.)
I’d say that’s the situation here. Over time, people would
want to distinguish the white mama from the black mammy so it’s to be expected
that a different word would arise. But Irish mothers are continually Irish
mothers without a second, separate group, so there wouldn’t have been pressure
in the 19th century to create a new word. In today’s more homogenized culture,
standard terms have been driving out dialectical variants and the loss of mammy
may be one of them, especially as it developed negative associations in
American culture."
**
Reply
5.An_Gadai, January 2014
"It is still commonly used in Ireland. In fact there’s
recently been a series ofIrish Mammies books. I suppose to some it sounds
infantile but it is no danger of dying out any time soon. I have been trying to
find out but I suspect its use within Ireland is regional though."
**
Reply
6. Exapno_Mapcase,January 2014
[Quote: CC]
"Assuming this hypothesis is correct, it doesn’t explain why
the Irish women didn’t KEEP mammy and assign or use a different term for their
slaves. In an imaginary family, I’d see the white mother saying, “I’M your
mammy, and this black woman here who’s raising you is your (say) black momma.”
Why would they abandon a term that’s associated with their own experience? Not
only abandon it, but transfer its use to their putative inferiors? I know it
happened, but there’s something a bit peculiar about it."
-end of quote-
"There’s a lot of assumptions here. You’re assuming that mammy must be Irish, that Irish people were a dominant ethnicity in the South, and that they kept the earlier word only to transfer it later.
I don’t know if any of those is true. What I can say with some certainty is that mam was used more often than mammy, mama, or momma in the early 19th century. It’s entirely possible that mammy in the American South was an independent reinvention from mam.
You can never make assumptions about word history. It always surprises you."
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ONLINE SOURCE #3
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammy_stereotype
"A mammy is a U.S. historical stereotype depicting Black
women, usually enslaved, who did domestic work, among nursing children.[2] The
fictionalized mammy character is often visualized as a dark-skinned woman with
a motherly personality. The origin of the mammy figure stereotype is rooted in
the history of slavery in the United States, as enslaved women were often
tasked with domestic and childcare work in American slave-holding households.
The mammy caricature was used to create a narrative of Black women being
content within the institution of slavery among domestic servitude. The mammy
stereotype associates Black women with domestic roles, and it has been argued
that it, alongside segregation and discrimination, limited job opportunities
for Black women during the Jim Crow era (1877 to 1966).[3]
History
The mammy caricature was first seen in the 1830s in
Antebellum pro-slavery literature, as a form to oppose the description of
slavery given by abolitionists.[4] One of the earliest fictionalized versions
of the mammy figure is Aunt Chloe in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin,
first published in 1852.[5]
Some scholars see the mammy figure as rooted in the history of slavery in the United States. Enslaved African American women were tasked with the duties of domestic workers in white American households. Their duties included preparing meals, cleaning homes, and nursing and rearing their enslavers' children. Out of these circumstances arose the image of the mammy."...
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INFORMATION ABOUT THE FICTIONAL CHARACTER "MAMMY TWO SHOES"
SOURCE #1
from https://heykidscomics.fandom.com/wiki/Mammy_Two_Shoes
"Mammy Two Shoes
Tom and Jerry character
First appearance Little Ol' Bosko and the Pirates (May 1, 1937)
Last appearance - Push-Button Kitty (September 6, 1952)
Created by William Hanna [and] Joseph Barbera
[…]
Mammy Two Shoes (sometimes Mrs. Two Shoes) is a fictional character in MGM's Tom and Jerry cartoons. She is a heavy-set middle-aged black woman who often has to deal with the mayhem generated by the lead characters.
As a partially seen character, she was famous for never showing her face (except very briefly in Saturday Evening Puss). Mammy's appearances have often been edited out, dubbed, or re-animated as a slim white woman in later television showings, since her character is a mammy archetype now often regarded as racist.[1] Her character was greatly inspired by Oscar-winning black actress and singer Hattie McDaniel, best known for playing "Mammy" in MGM and David O. Selznick's 1939 film Gone with the Wind.
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SOURCE #2
from AI Overview [the result of my Oct. 17, 2025 question: "Was the original Mammy Two Shoes
White?"
"No, the original "Mammy Two Shoes" character was an
African-American woman, a racial caricature from the Tom and Jerry cartoons.
Later versions of the cartoon replaced her with a different character, a thin
white woman, because the original character was considered racist.
Original character: The original character was an
African-American woman, based on the "Mammy" archetype prevalent in
the US during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Her face was rarely shown, but
her voice was performed by actress Lillian Randolph.
Replacement character: In the 1960s, her image was
changed to a slim white woman in some versions to make the character less
offensive.
Censorship and editing: Over time, many instances of
the character have been edited, censored, or re-dubbed to remove the perceived
racist stereotypes."
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SHOWCASE YOUTUBE VIDEO #2 - Lillian Randolph on Mammy Two-Shoes (1976)
Real Roberto, Sep 28, 2024
A clip from Chuck Schaden's interview with the late Lillian
Randolph, circa 1976. Randolph was an African-American actress during both the
Golden Age of Hollywood and the Golden Age of Radio, most famously portraying
Birdie on The Great Gildersleeve and the housemaid Mammy Two-Shoes in MGM's Tom
& Jerry cartoons. A lot has been said about her latter role, but I can't
help but feel there's not a lot about what she personally thought of it, both
at the time and later in life. There's also not a lot of interviews with Mrs.
Randolph, but thankfully this interview did briefly cover it
If anyone knows more about her personal thoughts, please let
me know!
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Here are some selected comments from the discussion thread for this video. All of these comments are from 2025. Numbers are added for referencing purposes only:
1. @jpsimmons5100
"Fans of Tom and Jerry have remembered the black maid, but
they did not know who her original voice artist was."
**
Reply
2. @hurricanefury439
"she's the homeowner, not the maidd"
**
3. @AriesSuperLove
"Fun Fact:she was on Sanford and Son as aunt Hazel and she
was also on The Jeffersons."
**
4. @The_GWPabst
"What an amazing and pioneering woman. She’s been let down
over the last 70 years by attempts to overdub her performance in the timeless
Tom and Jerry cartoons she gave her voice to. Attempts to change her voice so
that the character appears less stereotypical are the totally wrong approach.
The cartoons should be embraced and treasured as a relic of a bygone time and a
brief snapshot into how entertainment has matured over time. God bless you
Lillian Randolph, the voice of Tom and Jerry"
5.
"Nowadays her character gets flack. While I can understand why, I thought she was hilarious. Lillian Randolph had a great vocal delivery that said, "If you cross me, you're going to be sorry!" She deserves more credit than she's given both as an actress and as a person."
**
6. @Fred-dn7nk
"Watching the uncut episodes back in the 70s (yes I'm old) we all thought the house was hers! We just thought she was cleaning and living in her house like everybody else. And we all loved her! It's a damn shame this womans legacy has been dubbed over"
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