Historic Margaret Mitchell House Reopens Wednesday. Everything You Need to Know for a Visit – WSB-TV Channel 2

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The mood before the reopening was enthusiastic.

“We couldn’t be more excited to share it with you,” said Claire Haley, vice president of special projects at the Atlanta History Museum. Channel 2 Action News.

When the Margaret Mitchell House closed during the pandemic, the Atlanta History Center had a rare opportunity to renovate it and create a new exhibit, which they said would help them tell the stories of “Gone With the Wind” and American Memory, centered around the life, times and legacy of Margaret Mitchell.

“She was born in 1900, she grew up in a segregated town, she grew up with Confederate grandparents, you see all of that through her work,” Haley said.

Haley said the new exhibit showcases the legacy of Mitchell’s work in popular culture and also shows the controversy and challenges of Mitchell’s work.

“We’re not denigrating her, we’re not celebrating her, we’re talking about her work,” Haley said.

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Sheffield Hale, president and CEO of the Atlanta History Center, said that for better or worse, the ideas in Mitchell’s work, written in his downtown Atlanta apartment, have endured.

“There’s a lingering, very important, historical impact in terms of the effect of this book, for better and for worse, in terms of how people view the South,” Hale said.

Mitchell’s work also spawned one of the first events to thrust Atlanta into the international spotlight with the Atlanta premiere of “Gone With the Wind.”

“As a piece of cinematic history … it was a true cinematic extravaganza,” said Stephen Dunn, professor of film and emerging media at Morehouse College.

Dunn showed Channel 2 Action News how there were two versions of the promotional flyers, one for the segregated South, and one for the rest of the United States, featuring Oscar-winning actress Hattie McDaniel.

She said it was an example of how, even in the Hollywood spotlight, the representation and reality of race and culture in the South was complicated.

Speaking of Mitchell’s historical significance, Dunn said, “His importance to Atlanta, to American culture, is solidified, for better or for worse. Gone With the Wind is here and it’s here to stay.”

The Margaret Mitchell House reopens Wednesday morning at 9 a.m. More information about visiting the house is available online.

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