By Annie Gasparro and Micah Maidenberg

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. Hours later, Mars Inc. said it would change its Uncle Ben's brand, and two more big food companies said they would review the packaging long used by Cream of Wheat and Mrs. Butterworth's products.

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 systemic racism. More companies are commemorating Juneteenth, and Nascar has banned the Confederate battle flag at its events in the wake of killings of African-Americans, like George Floyd, by police.

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 as well as 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 was considering how to change the Uncle Ben's brand and its imagery, which since the 1940s has featured 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.

B & G Foods Inc., which owns Cream of Wheat, told the Journal it would review the porridge's more than century-old image of a black chef "to ensure that we and our brands do not inadvertently contribute to systemic racism." Conagra Brands Inc., which sells Mrs. Butterworth's syrup in a woman-shaped bottle, said it was reviewing the brand and its packaging.

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 resembling a giant flour barrel, according to "Black Hunger" 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.

The history of Uncle Ben's dates back to a Texas rice broker who created a company to market a new parboiled rice he called Uncle Ben's Plantation Rice in 1937, according to "Food and Drink in American History," an encyclopedia by historian Andrew F. Smith.

During World War II, the broker formed a partnership with businessman Forrest Mars to sell the rice to the U.S. Army. In 1947, the company officially introduced Uncle Ben's Converted Rice. The packaging showed a white-haired man with a black bow tie. Mr. Mars changed the name of the company from Converted Rice Inc. to Uncle Ben's Inc. and later combined it with his family's candy business.

Mars said the Uncle Ben's brand dates back to the early 1940s and the brand 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.

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. Critics noted 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.

Introduced in 1896, the Cream of Wheat black chef character was referred to by the derogatory name "Rastus," according to "The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink."

Like Aunt Jemima, Rastus was a stereotypically happy character in minstrel shows. The Cream of Wheat company's early illustrated ads depicted the chef attending to the breakfast table and children; some ads depicted him as illiterate.

Unlike Aunt Jemima, the image hasn't changed much over the years, according to staff at the Jim Crow Museum.

"We understand there are concerns regarding the Chef image, and we are committed to evaluating our packaging," B & G Foods said. The company bought the brand from Kraft Foods in 2007.

Conagra said Wednesday it will review its Mrs. Butterworth's brand and packaging. The maple-flavored syrup is sold in a clear bottle in the shape of a matronly woman. Television ads have depicted a talking brown syrup bottle.

Conagra said the syrup packaging, which was created in the early 1960s, is intended to be an image of "a loving grandmother."

"We understand that our actions help play an important role in eliminating racial bias and as a result, we have begun a complete brand and packaging review on Mrs. Butterworth's," the company said in a statement. Conagra acquired the brand when it bought Pinnacle Foods in 2018.

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, according to the Smithsonian. The image was updated in the 1950s by Patrick DesJarlait, a member of the Red Lake Ojibwe tribe.

--Jennifer Maloney contributed to this article.

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