Calls To Save Aunt Fanny's Cabin Come As Decision Deadline Looms

SMYRNA, GA — Demonstrators, members of the Cobb NAACP and the Coalition to Save Aunt Fanny's Cabin gathered Monday to call for the city to preserve the historic structure instead of demolishing it.

In December, Smyrna City Council voted 4-2 to demolish the historic cabin unless the city found someone to buy and move it off city-owned land, despite several residents and council members voicing opposition to its demolition.

The city is kept the proposal process for someone to buy the cabin open through end-of-business Feb. 1, but Mayor Derek Norton told the Marietta Daily Journal that the city had not received any proposals to buy and move the structure as of Monday.

“We do not want to continue to erase the history of our people,” said Jeriene Bonner Grimes, president of the Cobb County chapter of the NAACP, at a press conference Monday, the MDJ reported. “[Fanny Williams] was very significant, she was a freedom fighter, she was an advocate.”

The decision to demolish was made mostly due to the dilapidated state of the building, which was such a safety hazard that it was deemed "dangerous ... a menace to the public" and closed to visitors in 2020, Councilman Travis Lindley previously said.

The cost of preserving or renovating the structure also contributed to the decision, as it would've cost the city between $400,000 and $600,000 to renovate or rebuild the cabin — demolition is not expected to cost nearly as much.

Related:

• Aunt Fanny's Cabin To Be Demolished Unless Sold: City Council
• Fate Of Aunt Fanny's Cabin To Be Decided By City Council Monday
• Aunt Fanny's Cabin Could Be Repaired, Demolished Or Preserved

The 19th century cabin — with yellow caution tape surrounding it — sits next to the Smyrna History Museum and once housed a famous restaurant that drew in celebrities from across the country, garnering a reputation for delicious Southern cuisine.

But it also had a reputation of glorifying the "Old South" and using racist depictions of Black people to entertain dinner guests.

For example, Smyrna City Councilman Travis Lindley previously said when touring the cabin, he came across a placemat depicting children in blackface advertising Aunt Fanny's Cabin's hot biscuits, charbroiled steaks and other menu items.

The cabin was named after Fanny Williams, a longtime servant of some of Smyrna's first settlers: the Campbell family, for whom Campbell Road and Campbell Elementary School are named, Mike Terry, a former chair of the Cobb Planning Commission and unofficial city historian previously told the MDJ.

Williams was a beloved figure in metro Atlanta, and was even considered an early civil rights advocate who spoke out against Cobb County's Ku Klux Klan and helped raise money for the state's first all-Black hospital in Marietta; however, she was reduced to a mascot of sorts for the cabin, which had an Old South aesthetic that many other restaurants adopted.

The coalition argues that the cabin, despite its past, is still part of Smyrna history and should be used to honor the woman the restaurant was named for.

“This is the last of the sharecropper’s cabins, and their stories are intertwined and inseparable,” Coalition member Pat Burns said, according to the Cobb County Courier. “Although this cabin has emerged during the era of Jim Crow, Fanny Williams’ contributions became the precursor of the Civil Rights Movement.”

Several council members and a previous statement from the city said a proper memorial for Williams was always planned regardless of the outcome after Feb. 1.

"One very important piece is that there was universal agreement that a memorial — a proper memorial — be instituted for Ms. Fanny Williams and her contributions to the community. Not only Smyrna, but the county and, indeed, the region," Lindley said before the vote in December. "I have to say, for my part, that is probably the most important takeaway. Regardless of what happens to the cabin, we've got to get that right."

Former Councilmember Maryline Blackburn, Smyrna's first Black council member, said during the press conference that the city should postpone any decision until May out of respect for Black History Month in February and Women's History Month in March, the MDJ reported.