Cover Story: This house is on fire

Consider the Margaret Mitchell House as a symbol for the city of Atlanta. Both have risen from devastating fires to become something much greater than they were before. Both have been caught in the crossfire between developers and preservationists, relics of the Old South pitted against New South progress. And both are now struggling with their own identities, striving to prove that they are more than just apathetic yokels, that high culture does exist in the South, that the sins of slavery and segregation really can be forgiven.

By now the story of Mary Rose Taylor’s efforts to preserve the crumbling apartment building where Margaret Mitchell wrote much of Gone With the Wind has ascended past the realm of anecdote and into local folklore. The fight to save the house — first from the wrecking ball, and later from two fires — has been cast in increasingly mythic terms, with Taylor herself alluding to the phoenix rising from flames as a symbol for both the house and the city itself. Some writers have drawn parallels between Taylor and Mitchell — both journalists, both Catholic, both passionate mid-life philanthropists. Others see Taylor as a sort of modern Scarlett O’Hara — albeit with Melanie Hamilton’s grace — who has dug her heels in with an “I will not be hungry again” resolve.

That comparison might not be too far from the truth. After almost five years of operation, the Margaret Mitchell House and Museum has firmly established itself as a hot tourist destination. With more than 50,000 visitors yearly, it would seem that Taylor’s dream has come true. House restored, shrine built, end of story.

Not entirely.

What many Atlantans probably don’t realize is that Taylor and her supporters are not done yet — far from it, in fact.

With its new programming arm, the Center for Southern Literature, the Margaret Mitchell House is emerging as a literary crossroads, a cultural center as well as a roundtable for discussing the city’s racial rift. Events at the house — ranging from author meet-and-greets to panel discussions — have taken on a certain town hall quality, with folks speaking openly on subjects that, traditionally, Atlantans just don’t talk about.

It’s either extremely ironic or astoundingly appropriate that this type of dialogue is taking place under the auspices of Mitchell’s name. Though a champion of racial integration and a secret donor to Morehouse, the author in some circles still symbolizes the Old South’s glorification of slavery, a shadow that almost prevented the house from being restored in the first place.

The nonprofit institution is making strides to get past its divisive image — co-hosting events with the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site and bringing in a diverse slate of speakers. But Taylor and her backers face a city sometimes embarrassed to address its own racial history and a community not known for its love of literature. To Taylor, those two issues are inexorably linked.

“I think race makes everything very complicated in Atlanta,” she says. “Therefore literature and the embrace of literature takes on that sort of complexity. I think Atlanta is not comfortable with controversy. And literature provokes. Really good literature can be purposefully controversial.”



At 4:59 a.m. on the morning of May 12, 1996, the Atlanta Fire Department responded to a call at 1069 McMillian St., a few blocks off Northside Drive. The fire, some speculate, was set as a diversion because 20 minutes later, firefighters were dispatched to the corner of 10th and Peachtree streets. The Margaret Mitchell House was burning again — just 40 days shy of its renovation being complete. A similar blaze had erupted in 1994. Both were ignited by flammable liquids poured on an upper floor of the house.

Taylor is convinced the fires had nothing to do with race and everything to do with real estate. The former news reporter for WXIA says her sources have assured her that the arsonist will never be caught because there were so many middlemen involved.

“They said the reason the house was burned was because someone wanted to build a large luxury hotel,” she says. “What makes that so plausible is not only the credibility of my sources, but also the fact that the day after the fire, I had three offers on the property, for in excess of twice what we’d paid for it.”

Journalistic curiosity turned Taylor’s attention to the dilapidated house in 1987, after another restoration group had disbanded its efforts.

The three-story apartment building the author called “The Dump” (a moniker Mitchell applied to several of her residences) was known as the Crescent Apartments when Mitchell and husband John Marsh moved there in 1925. The couple lived in Apartment No. 1 until 1932, during which time the former Atlanta Journal reporter quietly wrote most of Gone With the Wind.

By the time Taylor started researching the house, it already had achieved a label of controversy, some seeing it as a reminder of the city’s racist history. With demolition imminent, Mayor Andrew Young declared the house a city landmark in 1989. Taylor credits Young and former mayor Maynard Jackson as the real forces who saved the house.

“They each understood that if you don’t save the house, that if you don’t offer the people a place to learn about this woman, this book, this phenomenon, it begs the question, ‘Why, Atlanta? Why does this business of ‘G-W-T-W’ make you uncomfortable?’” she says.

In 1991, Taylor became chairwoman of the Margaret Mitchell House Inc. and began raising funds to restore the house. The project drew criticism early on. Curmudgeonly AJC columnist Celestine Sibley lamented that “Peggy,” as she referred to Mitchell, “didn’t want ‘The Dump’ or any place where she ate, slept, brushed her teeth or wrote her book stripped naked to sightseers.”

Others in the community continued to see the house as a racial flashpoint.

Enter the arsonists. Though the building’s upper two floors were decimated in both infernos, Mitchell’s ground-level apartment remarkably survived both attacks. Critics of the house took public pleasure in the setbacks.

“I was not sorry to see the Margaret Mitchell House burn to the ground,” local author and playwright Pearl Cleage wrote in the Atlanta Tribune in 1996. “I was, in fact, delighted that someone had taken direct action against what I consider to be an insult of monumental proportions to African-American people.”

But Taylor held to task, and German automaker Daimler-Benz, which had hoped to use the house as a presence during the 1996 Olympics, made good on its $5 million promise to restore the building once again. The fully refurbished house finally opened to the public in May 1997.

From the start Taylor carefully assembled a diverse board of directors. Longtime board chairman Dr. Otis Smith, former president of the Atlanta NAACP, also happens to be one of the recipients of the scholarships Mitchell donated to Morehouse in the ’40s.

Today, the house itself is largely empty, its top two floors rented out for events. Below, Mitchell’s shotgun-style apartment has been filled with period furniture and photos. A gallery beyond the apartment offers a permanent display of the author’s letters and a rotating exhibition space. Behind the house, the old BankSouth branch building holds the Gone With the Wind Movie Museum, filled with Herb Bridges’ collection of film memorabilia.

Twelve bucks will get you a tour of the house and museum, as well as a chance to peruse the assortment of Rhett and Scarlett collector’s plates, Christmas ornaments and other knickknacks in the gift shop. And therein lies the question: How can the house serve the dual purpose of tourist attraction and venue for the serious discussion of literature?

To Taylor, the answer is the Center for Southern Literature. Formed last February, the center is associated with author appearances and other literary events.

“When it comes to developing the branding identity — if you will — of the Margaret Mitchell House, hence the Center for Southern Literature, I think we’re evolving,” Taylor says. “I think our focus on literature beyond Gone With the Wind can only help us to communicate the message of who we are to the larger community. And to that extent, I think it’s beginning to work.”

The challenges facing the house as a center for cultural reconciliation were all too obvious on a hot July evening last summer when Alice Randall blew into town. The controversial author of The Wind Done Gone drew a crowd too big for the Margaret Mitchell House’s Visitor’s Center, so her speech was moved to the front lawn. From the house’s front porch, Randall addressed a racially mixed group of almost 300. Meanwhile, a small handful of protestors dressed in Confederate garb stood on the street outside the house, challenging Randall’s skewering of Scarlett.

The atmosphere was charged as Randall sparred angrily with audience members. When Kelsey Aguirre, an African-American docent from the house, argued with Randall’s assertion that Mitchell was a racist, the Nashville author launched into a fiery attack and told Aguirre to sit down.

Randall’s book, a retelling of Tara through the eyes of former slaves, was then entangled in a First Amendment lawsuit with the Margaret Mitchell Trust, the legal protectors of Mitchell’s estate. The Trust, which is not formally associated with the Margaret Mitchell House, had temporarily blocked publication of Randall’s book, claiming copyright infringement. But Randall and her publisher, Houghton Mifflin, declared the book a parody and argued that it offers a much-needed new perspective on Mitchell’s work.

Perhaps more than any other event since the nonprofit’s inception, the Randall appearance put the Margaret Mitchell House’s mission statement to the test. Though Taylor had pledged to encourage open dialogue among people of diverse points of view, she surprised some members of the community and angered members of The Trust by giving Randall such a symbolic podium.

“I think eyes have been opened, perhaps, to what we’re trying to do,” Taylor says. “I know that when we held firm on our invitation to Alice Randall, I got a call from Pearl Cleage. ... Pearl had been reluctant to speak at the Margaret Mitchell House. But she said, ‘The next time you issue an invitation, I’ll accept.’”

But Cleage remains skeptical of the house’s basic symbolism. The Atlanta playwright (and Oprah author) has a hard time getting past what she views as the inherent pro-slavery message of Gone With the Wind. To Cleage, the book abides by the notion that slavery was a benign institution where good masters looked out for their childlike slaves.

“I know — we should all know — this wasn’t the case,” she says. “So, as a piece of pro-slavery propaganda, it is effective because it puts forward such a dynamic main character in Scarlett that you have to remember that she’s a slaveowner, otherwise you’ll be sucked into the story and not hold her responsible.”

So does the appearance of Randall alter Cleage’s perspective on the house? Not entirely.

“I think it’s great they had Alice Randall, but I still don’t honor Gone With the Wind,” she says. “It’s pro-slavery propaganda — exciting pro-slavery propaganda, but definitely propaganda. And good propaganda is always seductive. That’s what makes it good. Sort of like Leni Reifenstahl’s Triumph of the Will. You can’t consider the filmmaking without acknowledging that it was pro-Nazi propaganda.”

Taylor says she still receives hate mail from both Gone With the Wind enemies and virulent defenders of the book. She doesn’t shy away from the task of finding neutral ground between the two camps.

“There are those who might have been comfortable with Gone With the Wind but are uncomfortable with our embracing those who may have problems with Gone With the Wind, or who may be chronicling their own particular perspective on race relations,” she says. “On the other hand, there are those on a more radical bend, who still see us as an institution that would use Gone With the Wind to celebrate the antebellum South. And nothing could be further from the truth.”



Tom Payton, president of Hill Street Press in Athens and a longtime observer of Atlanta’s book scene, wonders if the city is ready to support the kind of literary center that the Margaret Mitchell House wants to become. Hill Street has launched two books there, both explorations of Mitchell’s life before she became world famous, and currently is partnering with the house in producing the memoirs of Dora McDonald, longtime aide to Martin Luther King Jr.

But Atlanta often is dismissed as just “not a book town,” a reputation Payton says the city has mostly deserved. “To me the question remains, for a city of 4 million, I’m not sure that Atlanta is the book town that it should be. I’m not sure that Atlantans support writing and authors and books like they should.”

The problem, he suggests, lies partly in the transient nature of the city, a place where people don’t stay put long enough to become part of a rich local book scene. And he shares Taylor’s view that race plays a role in the equation.

“I think for too long Atlanta was associated with just a handful of prominent literary lions who quickly became controversial, like Margaret Mitchell. Every time you thought of Atlanta and books, people around the world said, ‘Oh, Margaret Mitchell,’ and then half the room was taking a deep sigh.”

Taylor sees similar difficulties with the local literary scene. She tells the story of Atlanta in the ’50s and the ’60s, when the white establishment called the racial problem “the situation.” There was a feeling that if you didn’t talk about “the situation,” it would go away. Even today, she suggests there’s a feeling among the establishment to “sort of keep the lid on the pot.”

“But I’m a product of the ’60s,” she says. “I’m a firm believer that if you take the lid off the pot, the boiling begins to dissipate. But if you keep the lid on the pot, you just cede those controversial waters to extremist groups. Make controversy more mainstream, so that everyone is talking about it. And that way we grow, and hopefully we grow together, rather than grow apart.”

The Margaret Mitchell House is most recently “taking the lid off the pot” through a speaker series co-sponsored by the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site. “Agents of Change,” which kicked off last fall, features writers focusing on the Civil Rights movement. Philip Dray, author of At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America, spoke at the house in mid-January, and after his speech, audience members began discussing their own family histories with lynching.

“The audience was easily 60 percent black and 40 percent white,” she says. “And the fact of the matter is, if you’d announced you were going to have a forum on race relations or a forum on lynching, no one would have communicated openly. They would have come with inhibitors. But when you can use a body of academic work or a body of literature to begin to draw people out, it’s a wonderful catalyst that works miracles.”

Other events have had a similar effect on their audiences. Before his September appearance at the house, Emory professor Mark Bauerlein received an ominous voicemail message saying he shouldn’t speak at the house, and that Margaret Mitchell was a racist. Bauerlein went ahead with the engagement, talking about his book Negrophobia: A Race Riot in Atlanta, 1906 for maybe 30 minutes. But the next two hours were taken up with questions — “some difficult and tense, but all of them intelligent,” he says.

“Some people offered accounts of their own experience with racism, and others noted grandparents who endured the violence of Atlanta’s past,” he says. “The two hours passed as if they were 10 minutes.”

Bauerlein notes that Taylor has done a lot to help the house shed its racial stigma, including inviting Alice Randall. And he agrees with Taylor that creating a venue for diverse opinions is the wisest course to widespread acceptance.

“It will take time, a long time, to defuse racial tensions, or perhaps to show that many social conflicts that look like racial tensions are, in fact, tensions of a different kind. But one can certainly see improvements in recent years,” he says.

And race relations isn’t the only subject under the microscope. After the events of Sept. 11, the house hosted a series of panel discussions with topics ranging from bioterrorism to Muslim views of America. It also commissioned large-scale installations of public art as a sort of memorial on the lawn.

So has the Margaret Mitchell House become a public venue for a kind of group therapy for the city? Taylor bristles.

“Group therapy — I guess the word is so much a word of the ’60s, and I think we’ve advanced so much beyond that. But it is a kind of healing, it’s a dialogue. And where else in Atlanta can you go and have this kind of open dialogue?”

It’s the belief that they are creating something both unique and necessary for the city that keeps Taylor and her staff going. Taylor envisions building a new facility for educational outreach in the block behind the house, home now to the movie museum and a parking lot.

The goal is two pronged: First to expand the center’s creative writing workshops, both for children and adults. The second is to offer an Atlanta version of the Princeton Center for Leadership, a conflict-resolution training program for students that happens to be run by Taylor’s college roommate, Sharon Powell.

Sheffield Hale, board member of the Margaret Mitchell House, says money is definitely an issue standing in the way of meeting such lofty goals.

“It would help us to have an endowment,” he says. “What the house has been fantastic at is attracting high visitation. But it still has capital needs.”

Taylor also would like for the house to expand its slate of cultural offerings. She envisions exhibits focusing on topics from civil wars to racial tolerance.

“I think it’s good for the civil rights story to be told in both sections of the community,” she says. “We don’t do nearly as good a job as the Historic Site does, but we don’t have the resources. But we certainly have a vision of being able to do it.”

And of course, the essential literary mission remains a top priority. This week, an exhibition of Curt Richter’s photographs of Southern writers goes on display at the house. It’s another partnering with Hill Street Press, which published Richter’s A Portrait of Southern Writers last year. Taylor says literary events like this one help keep her and the staff motivated.

“I think the lectures and the interaction with the audience that we have three or four nights a month really reinforce our mission. We’re inspired by the writers and by the dialogue. It reinforces our feeling that we’re on the right track, that we’re pursuing something that doesn’t exist in Atlanta, and something that an increasing number of Atlantans are looking for.”

But in a city that frankly doesn’t seem to give a damn about literature, what are the long-term prospects for a cultural center like the one Taylor seems determined to build?

As Payton of Hill Street puts it, the outlook is actually pretty good. He says the Margaret Mitchell House is beginning to meet its long-term goals “whether people like it or not.”

“There seems to be the social commitment, there seems to be talent, there seems to be the infrastructure, there seems to be everything in place for that place to become a major Southern cultural institution,” he says. “The only thing standing in its way is Atlantans and all their baggage about the name Margaret Mitchell, which they just need to get over.”

tray.butler@creativeloafing.com??