SMYRNA, GA. -- During a heyday from its 1941 opening in a former slave quarters to the mid-1980s, Aunt Fanny's Cabin was one of well-heeled, white Atlanta's favorite spots to entertain friends and family and to celebrate debutantes. Celebrities visited in droves.
Young black "menu boys" with boards around their necks greeted customers at the plantation-theme restaurant with a spirited dance and a grin, asking, "Howdy, folks. What'll it be?" For black Atlantans, it revived painful memories as the city struggled through the civil rights movement.
Nostalgic Atlantans again are flocking here to this fading symbol of the city's antebellum past. It is expected to close this month after being sold at auction June 25 for a fraction of its value.
Located outside Atlanta on part of the old Campbell Plantation, the restaurant originated around Fanny Williams, a former Campbell slave born in the 152-year-old cabin around which the restaurant has grown. In the early days, the elderly Aunt Fanny rocked on the porch. Wearing a calico dress and head rag, she recalled for customers her memories of Union Gen. William T. Sherman's burning of Atlanta.
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Black waitresses in pinafore dresses still serve up her recipes. The menu boys were banned in 1987 when the state labor board invoked child labor laws.
Touted for its authentic Old South atmosphere and food in publications such as the New York Herald and Collier's magazine, Aunt Fanny's Cabin was by the 1950s a haven for the stars, whose hundreds of autographed photos cram the lobby's faded wooden walls.
Their pictures include those of Ty Cobb, Jackie Gleason, Liberace, James Cagney, Walt Disney, Martha Raye and Susan Hayward, who met her last husband here.
More recent diverse additions include Billy Graham, Tim Conway and the Beach Boys, who, according to owner Gretna Poole, once performed an impromptu number around the restaurant's rickety piano.
Poole, 57, found herself with a restaurant and a $300,000 debt when her husband, George "Pongo" Poole, died in 1988. After 3 1/2 years on the market with no takers, Aunt Fanny's Cabin went to auction last month.
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Many people have called Aunt Fanny's Cabin a demeaning anachronism amid increased social sensitivity. But Poole said the restaurant has remained profitable and could be restored to its former glory by someone like her husband, a gregarious, consummate public-relations man.
"It could be a gold mine for the right person," Poole said, explaining that, after 27 years as a mother and housewife, learning to run a business has taken a toll. "I don't want to spend the rest of my life here."
"Someone just stole a gold mine," Poole said, shaken after the auction brought only $335,000 for the 10,000-square-foot restaurant and 6.9 acres of land encroached by suburban sprawl. Although the auction had been advertised and featured in local media reports, only two people bid on the property that one bank assessed at $1.3 million.
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C. Miles Smith, a black local talk-show host known on the radio as "Ralph from Ben Hill," said such restaurants as Aunt Fanny's Cabin "placate the Old South bigot mentality" and are highly offensive to blacks.
"It's pitiful. . . . The overt thing of the little black menu boys and nannies {waitresses} is very insulting to black people," Smith said. "I wouldn't take my kids there even for a history lesson. I'd rather show them in books than have them see it in reality."
Poole, who plans to operate the restaurant until the sale is finalized, said the historical significance of the restaurant is not an issue with her and the 40 predominantly black employees who have worked here for as long as 41 years.
"The part of history means nothing to us," she said. "These are my friends. We can discuss it as equals, and we're glad it no longer exists."
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Jo Ann Young, 48, an Aunt Fanny's Cabin waitress for 17 years, said she has enjoyed working with the Pooles and meeting celebrities and customers from around the world. She has made enough money, she said, to send her daughter to Tuskegee Institute's school of veterinary medicine.
"There are positive and negative aspects to any heritage," Young said. "It's just a part of history that I've never understood, and sometimes it hurts to think back on it. But I'm not embarrassed by my heritage. There are no chains or slavery here."
Neither auctioneer Joe Tarpley nor buyer Frank Johnson, a real estate broker who once listed the restaurant, could explain the lack of interest in the sale. Johnson acknowledged that the sale price was far less than the land value.
Johnson said he is talking with restaurateurs about running Aunt Fanny's Cabin and that it could continue to operate as is. With proper promotion, he said, he believes that the operation can be successful.
"A lot of people would like to see a flavor of the Old South," Johnson said. "I feel that we've gone past the point where the stigma of slavery is a factor in this sort of thing. That is a part of our history."
Smith disagreed.
"We aren't past the stigma of slavery," he said. "Not until every black person in America gets equal opportunity, straight, period, without a doubt, no."
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