Smyrna down to four finalists for memorial to Fanny Williams

Jake Busch, Marietta Daily Journal, Ga.
·2 min read

Mar. 17—SMYRNA — A city committee is considering four proposals from artists for a monument to Fanny Williams, namesake of Aunt Fanny's Cabin.

Williams, a cook and maid for Smyrna's Campbell family in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, has been credited 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.

She also helped establish the comfort food outpost that came to be known for its mouthwatering home cooking and glorification of the Old South.

The committee, chaired by Smyrna Mayor Pro Tem Tim Gould, budgeted $125,000 for the memorial, which Gould said will be adjacent to the Smyrna History Museum on Atlanta Road.

On Thursday, the committee presented four artists it has chosen as finalists for the project to the City Council.

They include Vinnie Bagwell, a Yonkers, New York-based sculptor whose work includes a Sojourner Truth statue in Highland, New York; the team of David Wilson, Stephen Hayes and Michael Gonzalez, who have worked on memorials in North Carolina and Texas; Frederick Hightower, a West Virginia-based sculptor, and Martin Dawe, whose Atlanta-based Cherrylion Studios is responsible for the bronze Martin Luther King Jr. statue at the Georgia State Capitol.

Penny Moceri, Smyrna's deputy city administrator, told the council the four finalists will present their concepts to the committee on April 26, which will then be displayed the following week in City Hall.

At the council's May 11 work session, the committee will present its recommended artist and concept, and the council will then vote on that recommendation at its May 15 meeting.

Gould's hope is that the tribute could be completed by the end of this year.

When the dilapidated cabin bearing Williams' nickname was torn down by the city in August, there was outcry from some community members, led by former Smyrna Councilwoman Maryline Blackburn, that the demolition was a destruction of history.

Others, like Lisa Castleberry, a member of the committee organizing the tribute to Williams, were glad to see the cabin go.

"Friday was a good day for me. I was happy. I wanted that building demolished," Castleberry said just days after the cabin was torn down.

Castleberry at the time also expressed her excitement for the committee's work, which had already been underway for months: it was established by Mayor Derek Norton on Valentine's Day 2022, and its first meeting was a week later.

Throughout the process of determining how best to honor Williams, the committee has been assisted by an expert panel in reviewing proposals from artists "as local as Smyrna and as far away as Spain," Moceri said.