"I found a little Aunt Jemima mammy figure, a caricature of a Black slave, like those later used to advertise pancakes. She had a broom in one hand and, on the other side, I gave her a rifle. In front of her, I placed a little postcard, of a mammy with a mulatto child, which is another way Black women were exploited during slavery. I used the derogatory image to empower the Black woman by making her a revolutionary, like she was rebelling against her past enslavement." In the book Parodise of Ownership by Richard Schur states, "Saar deployed Aunt Jemima's image to promote cultural nationalism during the 1960s and 1970s[…] sought to correct the injustice done by over one hundred years of stereotyped advertising and depicts Aunt Jemima in an angry, defiant, and/ or rebellious poses." She wanted to promote support for political independence and break stereotypes used to describe Black women. The artwork was originally inspired by the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In "The Women's Art Journal Betye Saar: Extending the Frozen Monument", James Cristen Steward states: "Against the backdrop of pancake packaging is a grinning popped-eye 'Mammy" with a broom in one hand and a rifle in the other. In the foreground another vintage caricature of a jaunty, almost flirtatious Mammy, one arm balancing a willing white child against her corset hourglass waste she simply allows the derogatory images to speak for themselves". The broom symbolizes the domesticity that Black women were forced to occupy jobs in serving, confining them to specific places. White people's perspective on Black women was that they were only good for serving others. She portrays through her art the two representations of Black women, how stereotypes portray them, defeminizing and desexualizing them and reality. Saar's intention for having the stereotype of the mammy holding a rifle to symbolize that Black women are strong and can endure anything, a representation of a warrior. Saar has stated, that "the reasoning behind this decision is to empower Black women and not let the narrative of a white person determine how a Black women should view herself". Film In 1971, Saar created a film entitled Colored Spade. Following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, Saar began to work with the racist images of Black individuals that had become so popular in American culture. Saar decided to compile such images