Philly’s African American Museum eats its Wheaties in new pop art exhibition

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For 90 years, Wheaties boxes have showcased America’s greatest athletes, beginning in 1934 when baseball hero Lou Gherig first graced the orange package known as the “Breakfast of Champions.”

But for decades, General Mills excluded Black athletes from the celebrated cereal boxes. Josh Gibson, aka the “Black Babe Ruth,” and pitcher Satchell Paige, the first Negro leagues player inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, would never be featured.

Artist Shaheed Rucker re-imagined the iconic cereal box with equally iconic Black athletes as eight posters now on view at the African American Museum Philadelphia, in the exhibition “Shaheed Rucker: (re)Covering the Iconic.”

“I thought it was a cool way to put some of the athletes that may have never graced the cover, on the box,” he said.

He started with local baseball players from the Negro leagues, like Paige, who briefly played with the Philadelphia Stars, and Stars catcher Bill “Ready” Cash, who had a reputation for being a bit hotheaded, getting his nickname for being restless when his manager benched him.

Cash once complained, “When I put on a uniform, I’m ready to play!”

The selection of athletes expands across the state. Rucker included Jim “Cool Papa” Bell of the Pittsburgh Crawfords, known as the fastest man ever to play baseball, who stole 175 bases in less than 200 games.

“You have Josh Gibson, who played in Pittsburgh for the Negro leagues, and you have Roberto Clemente playing for the [MLB] Pittsburgh Pirates,” Rucker said, referring to the Black Puerto Rican who was the first Latin American player to be inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1973.

“And then Willie Mays who has no connection to Pennsylvania,” said Rucker. ”But he’s such an icon we felt like we had to embrace him.”

Rucker further expanded his lineup to include Toni Stone, the first woman to play in the Negro leagues with the Indianapolis Clowns in 1953 and the Kansas City Monarchs in ’54, playing 50 league games on second base with a respectable .243 batting average.

“Wheaties, that graphic look with the statement ‘The Breakfast of Champions,’ what does it mean to focus on that when it comes to the Negro leagues?” said curator Michael Wilson. “It’s really a dynamic history. Pop art was a way to unpack some complexities.”

Surrounding the display of Wheaties box posters are dozens of reimagined covers of Jet magazine from the 1960s, featuring prominent Black personalities from across centuries. These include 19th-century political activist Octavius Catto, turn-of-the-century painter Henry Ossawa Tanner, Motown singer Tammi Terrell, contemporary singer Jill Scott and rapper Tariq Trotter, aka Black Thought of The Roots.

Jet stopped publishing physical magazines in 2014. Since then, there have been several attempts to resurrect the brand online. Rucker briefly worked for Jet as a designer in 2018 when he came up with the concept of putting contemporary black-and-white faces on vintage covers.

He said it was a tribute to the early, mid-century style of Herbert Temple, the longtime art director of Ebony and Jet magazines who gave the magazines their look for over 50 years. At the height of their popularity, Ebony and Jet reached over 40% of African American adults in America.

“Because I’m a graphic artist, I wanted to pay my respects and reimagined it,” Rucker said. “It was actually a strategy to engage the Jet brand with a younger audience.”

While Ebony has become a sustained online magazine, Jet has not found its digital footing. The historic photographic archive produced by both magazines over most of the 20th century, representing the largest visual collection of African American life, was sold at auction in 2019 to a consortium of museums and foundations planning to digitize and make all of its contents publicly available.

Wilson saw what Rucker was doing with vintage Jet cover designs and asked him to make a set representing Philadelphia and Pennsylvania Black history and culture.

“Aesthetically, the works are beautiful, the bold colors, the patterns and designs,” Wilson said. “But also, how can we highlight the dynamics of what Pennsylvania is, who Philadelphians are? What Shaheed does with Jet magazine was a perfect way to challenge him to step into that role.”

“Shaheed Rucker: (re)Covering the Iconic” is on view in the downstairs Jack T. Franklin Gallery at the African American Museum Philadelphia for an open run.