By Micah Maidenberg and Annie Gasparro

The PepsiCo Inc. unit that sells Aunt Jemima products said it would retire the brand because of its origins in racist imagery of black people, while Mars Inc. said it would change its Uncle Ben's brand.

The owners of the supermarket staples, much like the owners of classic films like "Gone With the Wind" and popular police TV shows, are rethinking their products and marketing as the U.S. confronts racial disparities following the killing of George Floyd. More companies are commemorating Juneteenth, and Nascar has banned the Confederate battle flag at its events.

PepsiCo's packaged-foods unit said Wednesday it would remove imagery of the black woman from the Aunt Jemima brand's pancake mixes, syrups and other products, and change its name. The company didn't disclose the new name but said packaging changes would appear throughout the fourth quarter.

Mars told The Wall Street Journal it is considering how to change the Uncle Ben's brand and its imagery, which features a white-haired black man. "We don't yet know what the exact changes or timing will be, but we are evaluating all possibilities," the closely held food giant said.

The Aunt Jemima brand dates back to 1889. It was inspired by a popular song, "Old Aunt Jemima," typically performed in minstrel shows by a white man in blackface.

The creators of the pancake brand hired a former enslaved woman, Nancy Green, to be its spokeswoman. She made her debut as Aunt Jemima at the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, singing, telling stories and making pancakes outside a booth designed to look like a giant flour barrel, according to "Black Hunger: Soul Food and America," by Doris Witt. Early magazine ads for the pancakes promoted the brand's slogan, "I'se In Town, Honey" and directed readers to send 4 cents in stamps for a life history of "Aunt Jemima and her Pickaninny dolls." The pancake's packaging featured an image of a black woman wearing a head scarf.

Three years after Ms. Green's death, Quaker Oats bought the business in 1926 and hired a new spokeswoman, Anna Robinson, a heavier woman whose appearance was closer to the "mammy" stereotype of the minstrel shows. The company redesigned the brand around her likeness. In 1989, Quaker Oats updated the brand's imagery, replacing a head scarf with pearl earrings and a lace collar. PepsiCo bought the business in 2001.

"We recognize Aunt Jemima's origins are based on a racial stereotype," Kristin Kroepfl, chief marketing officer at PepsiCo's Quaker Foods North America business, said. "While work has been done over the years to update the brand in a manner intended to be appropriate and respectful, we realize those changes are not enough." The unit also sells Quaker Oats and Rice-A-Roni.

Adweek earlier reported on Quaker's plans.

Mars said the Uncle Ben's brand dates back to the early 1940s and was inspired by two people. The name came from a black Texan farmer, known as Uncle Ben, who grew high-quality rice, the company said. The face that appears on boxes and that has come to personify the brand was a Chicago maître d' named Frank Brown, Mars said. "Since then we have evolved and modernized the iconic logo," Mars said.

Originally, the image showed a white-haired black man in a blue suit with a black bow tie. Mars revamped the brand in 2007, elevating Uncle Ben to chairman of an imaginary rice company as part of an online ad campaign that showed the character in an opulent office. The effort to reinvent Ben received mixed reviews, with critics noting he still had the black bow tie evoking servitude as well as the "uncle" honorific, reflecting a period when white Southerners used "aunt" and "uncle" because they didn't want to address black people as "Mr." and "Mrs."

David Pilgrim, founder of the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University, said that historically commercial images like Aunt Jemima and others reduced African-Americans to one-dimensional servants who were happy to be serving white people.

The Aunt Jemima image ties into the history of portrayals of black women as "mammies," while the "aunt" and "uncle" modifiers in that brand and in Uncle Ben's products dismissed black people of their identities, he said.

"The fact that a company is willing at this point to not just revisit it but remove it means they've had some really intense conversations and they've come to a conclusion that a lot of us came to a long time ago -- that these are vestiges of the Jim Crow era and you are using vestiges of the Jim Crow era to sell your products," Dr. Pilgrim said.

Earlier this year, dairy co-op Land O'Lakes dropped the indigenous woman, Mia, it had long featured on its packaging. The company said the change was meant to better reflect its culture. The image, which first appeared in 1928, showed a kneeling woman in stereotypical garb and holding a Land O'Lakes container. It was updated in the 1950s by Patrick DesJarlait, a member of the Red Lake Ojibwe tribe, according to the Smithsonian.

Since a police officer in Minneapolis killed Mr. Floyd, a black man, on May 25, sparking protests across the country, companies ranging from Walmart Inc. to Comcast Corp. have announced new efforts to promote racial justice. Executives have faced new pressure from employees to demonstrate how organizations are prepared to change internal practices.

Some other firms have also moved to change their products. "Magic: The Gathering," a fantasy card game owned by Hasbro Inc., this month removed several cards it said were racist or culturally offensive, including one with figures in pointed hoods.

Ms. Kroepfl said Quaker would gather diverse perspectives from within its organization and broader black communities to "further evolve the brand and make it one everyone can be proud to have in their pantry."

PepsiCo declined to say what percentage of its sales the Aunt Jemima brand represents. Cowen analyst Vivien Azer estimated that Aunt Jemima products account for less than 1% of the company's sales, which totaled more than $67 billion last year.

The brand will donate a minimum of $5 million over the next five years to support and engage with black communities, Quaker said.

--Jennifer Maloney contributed to this article.

Write to Micah Maidenberg at micah.maidenberg@wsj.com and Annie Gasparro at annie.gasparro@wsj.com