Aunt Fanny's Cabin to be sold or demolished

Chart Riggall, Marietta Daily Journal, Ga.
·2 min read

Dec. 21—SMYRNA — Aunt Fanny's Cabin, the 19th century house in downtown Smyrna and former home of a restaurant which glorified the antebellum South, will soon be gone — one way or another.

The Smyrna City Council voted 4-2 Monday night to accept the recommendations of a task force formed to decide the fate of the property. The city will wait until Feb. 1, 2022 to see if a private individual or group will purchase the home and move it elsewhere.

If the city doesn't receive any "acceptable proposals" by that date, the building will be demolished.

Council members Charles "Corky" Welch and Susan Wilkinson dissented on the vote. As late as last week, Welch said he believed the building's historic value made it worth restoring, but couldn't justify the estimated $400,000 price tag. But having been reminded of the city's multimillion dollar effort to restore the historic Reed House, Welch said Monday he would drop his support of the task force's recommendation on the basis of consistency.

The fate of Aunt Fanny's Cabin attracted widespread attention in the weeks prior to the vote, as opponents of its preservation cited its decades-long history as a restaurant which played on racist stereotypes to build its renown and success.

Supporters, however, said restoring the building was not just a worthy historic effort, but could pay tribute to the home's namesake: Fanny Williams, the housekeeper of Smyrna's wealthy Campbell family, which owned the property. Williams has been credited by all parties as an early civil rights icon in Cobb County who took on the Ku Klux Klan and helped found the Cobb Cooperative in Marietta, the state's first all-Black hospital.

A number of residents turned out to Monday's meeting to support preservation, charging the city was trying to bury its racist past by demolishing the building. Shaun Martin was among those who wanted to see the city use the site to honor Williams, who she called "a victim turned victor."

But it was precisely on those grounds, said Councilman Travis Lindley, that the city should invest in a proper memorial to Williams, not in restoring an establishment where her image was exploited.

"We've got to get that right," Lindley said.