Colgate Agrees to Change Name of ‘Darkie Black’ Toothpaste

After a year of church pressure, Colgate-Palmolive has agreed to change the name and eliminate the package design of a blackface AL Jolson on Darkie Black and White Toothpaste, a product it helps market in the Far East, corporate documents show.

In return, three Roman Catholic religious orders have agreed to withdraw a shareholder resolution challenging the company practice.

Darkie Black and White Toothpaste, with a package design featuring a likeness of a grinning Al Jolson in blackface and top hat, has been a popular product in the Far East and Southeast Asia for 60 years, where it is marketed by the Hawley & Hazel Co., a Hong Kong-Taiwanese firm in which Colgate is a 50% partner.

The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, a coalition of Protestant and Roman Catholic religious groups active in pressing social responsibility issues on U.S. companies, first raised the “Darkie” issue in late 1985, charging it promoted an offensive racial sterotype.

At that time, the company said that if the toothpaste were marketed in the United States “our position . . . would be different” but that the product name and design were not offensive in the Asian context.

But in a Jan. 15 letter to ICCR Executive Director Timothy Smith, Reuben Mark, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Colgate Palmolive, acknowledged: “I and Colgate share your concern that the caricature of a ministrel in blackface on the package and the name ‘Darkie’ itself could be considered racially offensive.

“I also share your strong feelings that any business has a clear moral obligation to avoid racial stereotying of any kind.”

Mark said Colgate hoped “to eliminate any offensive implications as rapidly as possible within the constraints of the existing business situation,” a reference to its being only a 50% partner in Hawley & Hazel and that its agreement with that company gives Hawley & Hazel “total operational control of the company.”

But Mark said the company has undertaken a series of market research tests to “gauge initial consumer reaction to alternatives to both name and illustration.”

One possibility being considered, according to the Mark letter, is substituting “a young, modern, well-dressed black” for the minstrel. The letter also suggested that the company is considering name changes such as “Darbie” or “Hawley” for the toothpaste.

Mark’s letter, dated Jan. 15, said the company hopes to complete consumer testing within 90 days and then “enter at least one and probably several geographic test markets, in one or more Far Eastern countries to determine actual market reaction to either a name change, a package change or both.”

Mark estimated the test marketing phase of the operation would last a year and “will help us convince our partners and allow us (to) follow our plan to make appropriate changes on a broad scale throughout the locations where the toothpaste is sold.”