Although the South still deals with issues when it comes to racism, the current times are nothing like how things were during the Pre-Civil War Era.
Unfortunately a monument called Aunt Fanny’s Cabin from that time period still stands in Smyrna, Georgia, which operated as a restaurant with extremely racist imagery until closing in 1992. Now, a task force of community leaders is seeking to have it permanently demolished in order to rid the area of an era we’d all rather not reminisce on.
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As reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the 70-year-old cabin has been decaying over the years and would cost upwards of $500,000 to renovate. However, many feel that its history is just too complicated and filled with an abundance of racist undertones to ever bring back into business.
Take a look below at just some of the operations that went on at Aunt Fanny’s Cabin, via the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
“Task force members were also unable to get past Aunt Fanny’s Cabin’s sordid history. The restaurant became world famous in the 1940s, hailed for its southern recipes and family-like atmosphere.
But it was notorious as a themed diner that used racially demeaning stereotypes from the “Old South” to entertain guests. Black boys hired as servers wore wooden menu boards around their necks. There were reports that framed slave advertisements decorated the walls. And city officials recovered some racially derogatory relics from the past inside the cabin.”
Not everyone has sordid memories of the place however. Jane Farmer, a longtime resident that grew up in the cabin when her grandmother ran it, told AJC, “Aunt Fanny’s wasn’t just a place, it was much more … the countryside, gospel singing, the friendships, the laughter, the blaring loud kitchen radio, kids playing outside. It was the happiest time in my life.” She say the more race-themed practices didn’t come until the late ’60s when its third owner George “Pongo” Poole bought the place and added slave ads and menu boards around the necks of servers.
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The task force, which is comprised of a racially-mixed team of city councilmen, citizens and a historian, hopes to build a monument in its place to honor the Black civil rights activist the cabin was named after, Fanny Williams. They plan to preserve the fireplace and chimney and find a better way to honor her legacy the right way.
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Aunt Fanny’s Cabin, A Racist-Themed Monument In Georgia, Receives Votes For Demolition was originally published on blackamericaweb.com
