The Margaret Mitchell House reckons with legacy

In June of 2020, HBO pulled the 1939 classic film “Gone With the Wind” from its streaming service. 

The decision came after John Ridley, the Academy Award-winning screenwriter behind “12 Years a Slave,” wrote an op-ed for the LA Times calling out the film’s racism and sanitization of the institution of slavery. Later that month, HBO re-released the film on streaming, now with an accompanying video from African American cinema scholar Jacqueline Stewart breaking down the context surrounding the release of the film. The new version also included a written disclaimer prior to the film’s beginning that includes the words: “To create a more just, equitable, and inclusive future, we must first acknowledge and understand our history.” 

Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name by Atlanta-born Margaret Mitchell, “Gone With the Wind” has been a mainstay of popular culture since the novel’s release in 1936 – exactly 90 years ago this year. It follows Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh in the film), the daughter of a Georgia plantation owner, and her life through the years of the Civil War and Reconstruction. 

Despite its ever-present popularity, there is no doubt that both the novel and the film are racist. While conversations about the work’s depictions of Black people and the institution of slavery have been ongoing since the novel’s release, Ridley’s essay – which published just after George Floyd’s murder on May 25, 2020 – sparked a larger conversation about how to reckon with influential works of art that make us uncomfortable or angry. 

The Margaret Mitchell House in Atlanta is a part of that conversation. The museum revamped its exhibit in 2024 and functions as an examination of Mitchell, her life, and her creation of “Gone With the Wind.” This includes close looks at both the book and the film’s portrayals of slavery and the Reconstruction period after the Civil War. 

Claire Haley, the vice president of special projects at the Atlanta History Center, recently took me on a tour of the exhibit, which starts in the two-bedroom, 650-square-foot apartment where Mitchell wrote most of “Gone With the Wind” before extending into other rooms in the house. In the early parts of the exhibit, you see the actual desk where Mitchell worked (it’s one of only a few original pieces of furniture left), learn about her time as a journalist for The Atlanta Journal, and learn why she began writing the novel in the first place. 

You also learn about her grandparents, who served as the basis for her knowledge about the Civil War and the Antebellum period in the South. Both of Mitchell’s grandfathers fought for the Confederacy, and letters from Mitchell detail how she spent much of her youth listening, rapt, to stories about the war from her grandparents and their friends.

“When we’re trying to understand why Margaret Mitchell channeled the version of history that she did in ‘Gone With the Wind,’ I go right back to these four people you see on the wall,” Haley said, pointing to photos of Mitchell’s grandparents. “They brought a very specific perspective about the conflict and about what it meant – or didn’t mean – that she heard growing up.”

By Mitchell’s own admission, she was 10 years old when she finally learned that the South lost the war, and it came as a “violent shock.”  And growing up as a white person in a very segregated Atlanta, she wouldn’t have necessarily come across different perspectives about slavery and the war from the city’s Black community – even if one of those leading perspectives was only a few miles away. 

Always controversial 

While it might be true that Ridley’s piece had a further reach than most, he is not the first person to publicly quarrel with “Gone With the Wind.” Far from it. During my tour, Haley showed me letters that Walter White, the head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) at that time, wrote to producer David O. Selznick when the film adaptation was announced. 

White implored Selznick to hire a Black historian to offer some advice on how to approach the film (Selznick did not), and he also suggested that Selznick read “Black Reconstruction in America” by activist and historian W.E.B. Du Bois. 

Du Bois’ book was published the same year as “Gone With the Wind,” and when he lived in Atlanta (he taught at Atlanta University), he and Mitchell lived about 4.5 miles away from each other, according to Haley. There is no evidence that the two ever met or that Mitchell ever read “Black Reconstruction in America,” and their shared interest in Reconstruction led them down two divergent paths. 

When she was researching for “Gone With the Wind,” Mitchell relied heavily on C. Mildred Thompson’s book “Reconstruction in Georgia.” Thompson was part of the Dunning School, a school of thought that saw Reconstruction as a failure because of the ostensible ineptitude of formerly enslaved Black people and the imposition of their civil rights upon the South. Du Bois argued that newly freed slaves were the primary agents of democracy during the time and frequently denounced the Dunning School and its views on Reconstruction, including at the American Historical Association’s annual conference in 1909.  

“The version of Reconstruction that Du Bois presents very thoroughly in this [book] is largely what historians today recognize as being the correct version,” Haley said. 

While conversations about the depictions of slavery and Reconstruction were ongoing in conjunction with the novel and the film, the Black community was also heavily invested in the Black actors who chose to participate – namely, Hattie McDaniel. 

McDaniel, who became the first Black person to win an Oscar for her role in “Gone With the Wind,” plays Mammy, a character steeped in racist stereotypes. Although she won an Oscar, McDaniel was not allowed to sit with her white castmates during the ceremony. Although she is one of the film’s main characters – and certainly the film’s main Black character – when the film premiered in a segregated theater in Atlanta, the program did not include a photo of McDaniel. She was included in the program for the New York premiere. 

McDaniel herself is a fascinating figure. Her parents were born into slavery, but she was born after the war in 1893. By 1914, she and her sister Etta made names for themselves by mounting an all-female minstrel show designed for Black audiences. According to McDaniel’s biographer Jill Watts, the point was to poke fun at white minstrel shows and offer a cultural critique of racist stereotypes. Throughout her movie career, McDaniel often played a “Mammy” type figure – becoming most famous for the stereotype she spent her early career critiquing. 

McDaniel seemed to see these roles as a way to support herself and continue to work in a field she loved. According to Watts, she once said: “I can be a maid for $7 a week, or I can play a maid for $700 a week.” Some members of the Black press, understandably, did not take kindly to that sentiment. For the Pittsburgh Courier, Earl Morris wrote:  “It means about $2,000 for Miss McDaniel in individual advancement…[and] nothing in racial advancement.”

“There were conversations happening in the Black press, in particular about how should they think about these types of roles?” Haley said. “That on the one hand were reinforcing inaccurate narratives about the South, about the Civil War, about race relations and slavery, but on the other hand were offering visibility, and real paychecks and real money to Black artists.” 

Jade Petermon, a professor in the School of Film, Media, and Theatre at Georgia State University who is working on a book about Black women in film and television in the Obama Era, compared the conversation around McDaniel’s decision to take the role to Viola Davis’ decision to play a maid in the 2011 film “The Help.” In 2020, Davis expressed regret over taking the role. 

“They’re navigating being artists in a system that wasn’t built for them. So, do they just not do their art? They’re faced with this impossible choice,” Petermon said. “I personally don’t think it’s fair to condemn them for doing the work that’s available to them in the way that makes sense to them.”

Watching “Gone With the Wind” – as I did leading up to my visit – it’s impossible to ignore the stereotypes that the character of Mammy upholds. But McDaniel herself is a wonderful performer, and you can see her trying her hardest to imbue the character with any sort of humanity where none is given to her freely. 

“Mammy in the movie, in my personal opinion, has a lot more … autonomy than the Mammy character in the book,” Haley said.  “I credit that a little bit to the writing, but I mostly credit that to Hattie McDaniel.” 

Continuing popularity 

I hadn’t seen “Gone With the Wind” since college when I sat down to rewatch it a couple of weeks ago. It certainly has things to recommend – the production design and scale are tremendously impressive, and as Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler, Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable burn up the screen with their chemistry. But at every turn, you’re hit with a moment of racism that’s deeply upsetting or completely divorced from reality. One of the scenes that stood out most to me was a moment where Ashley (Leslie Howard) expresses discomfort about using forced prison labor instead of paying people to work in Scarlett’s mill. When Scarlett reminds him that he didn’t care so much when it was slave labor, he says, with great earnestness: “That was different. We didn’t treat them that way.” 

“Gone With the Wind” is filled with depictions of happy, smiling slaves, with moments so obvious in their inaccuracy that it’s almost laughable. But watching these types of movies gives us a window into the past and also reminds us of our societal and cultural values now – how those values have changed, and how they’ve stayed the same.  

“Yes, things are very different now, but they’re also, in a lot of ways, not, if you look at the political landscape of the moment” Petermon said. “I do think it’s important that we have these texts, because they reveal to us why – why things have changed a lot, and not a lot at the same time.” 

“Gone With the Wind’s” continuing popularity despite its racism offers a window into that question. While “Gone With the Wind” has always been popular among white southerners, those are not its only champions. The book was a national hit, Haley said, selling over a million copies in just six months. While not every part of the country had the South’s strict Jim Crow laws, large portions of the national population turned a blind eye – whether due to ignorance or apathy – to the book and film’s racism. 

According to Haley,  “Gone With the Wind” tends to become popular in other countries after moments of great national strife – the movie was immensely popular in the United Kingdom during World War II, and became equally as popular in Japan when it was released there in 1952. When it comes to its popularity in America, Haley thinks that some of the book’s and film’s themes, particularly Scarlett’s determination in the face of poverty, spoke to the national feeling at the time.

“The country was in the middle of the Great Depression. I think that the story of resistance and perseverance and survival [was appealing],” Haley said. “Scarlett is a very modern woman, so she’s an appealing character in that sense – I think all of that really spoke to people during a very difficult time in their personal lives.”

Haley first read “Gone With the Wind” when she was in elementary school (she doesn’t recommend this – it’s not a hard read, but young kids might not understand the context). She also read Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women” that year, a book that takes a look at the Civil War from a vastly different point of view, following a group of sisters whose father is serving in the Union Army. 

“I remember thinking that there must have been two Civil Wars, because they presented the war so differently,” Haley said. 

I’ve never read “Gone With the Wind,” but Haley has several times. She maintains that Mitchell is an excellent storyteller – but it’s that prowess that makes it easy for some to dismiss the novel’s inaccuracies. 

“Because she’s such a great storyteller, it can mask a lot of the historical inaccuracies and give people a perspective of the war, of slavery in the south, that’s just not accurate,” Haley said. 

Debunking the myth 

The end of the exhibit takes visitors through several different storylines and plot points that appear in the novel and film, contextualizing them in historical fact and debunking where Mitchell went wrong. According to Haley, the opulence of the Tara plantation – moonlights and magnolia, cavaliers and cotton fields – was played up in the film to make it more visually attractive for audiences (Mitchell was not happy about this, Haley said). But through that romanticized Antebellum lens, the film matches the book’s watered down view of slavery. 

“’Gone With the Wind’ presents a very paternalistic version of slavery,” Haley said. “Very two-dimensional, very stereotypical, and very much reliant on tropes.”  

According to Haley, the movie softens some of the book’s racist language and, in particular, attempts to make the hefty section of the book that focuses on Reconstruction more palatable to a national audience. In the film, Scarlett is nearly raped by a poor white man. In the book, the attacker is Black. In the film, the men in Scarlett’s circle go out to find the man and defend Scarlet’s honor. In the book, they are called out as part of the Ku Klux Klan. 

“Margaret Mitchell is quite explicit that the men were part of the Ku Klux Klan,” Haley said. “And not only was she quite explicit that they’re part of the Ku Klux Klan, she presents a narrative of the Klan that portrays this first iteration … as being honorable and upholding the honor of the white women of the South, to protect them and protect the homeland.”

Both the film and the movie also perpetuate the Lost Cause myth, which is the idea that the South seceded not due to slavery, but to protect states’ rights (“It was states’ rights – a state’s right to have or not have slavery,” Haley said.) But this is also where, in Haley’s view, Mitchell represents a branching off from traditional beliefs about the Lost Cause myth. In “Gone With the Wind,” slavery is inaccurately portrayed as a benevolent system, and the Antebellum period is most certainly romanticized. But Mitchell presents an evolution of the Lost Cause viewpoint in Scarlett and Rhett. 

“[Mitchell] doesn’t fall as directly in line with some of these Lost Cause ideas as a lot of other writers do, I would say,” Haley said. “[Rhett] gives that speech about – all you have in the South is cotton and slaves and arrogance, I think is the line. He and Scarlett are both shrewd and very clear-eyed about the war in a way that a lot of other Lost Cause tellings of the war are not.” 

Mitchell herself complicates the legacy of “Gone With the Wind” even further. Mitchell’s blind spots and internalized racism are obvious in her work – this is a woman who, in “Gone With the Wind,” calls the KKK a “tragic necessity.” But later in her life, Mitchell began donating to Morehouse College, a local HBCU, and established a scholarship for students who wanted to become doctors. According to Haley, Mitchell started the scholarship when one of her Black household staff members couldn’t find adequate care for a cancer diagnosis due to segregation. 

I think it’s relevant that Mitchell only came to this realization because a Black person who worked for her was affected. But, it still complicates the legacy of someone who, for better or for worse, is an Atlanta icon – someone who published a work that, 90 years later, is something we can hopefully look at to understand where we’ve come from, how we’ve grown, and how much work we still have to do. 

The Margaret Mitchell House wants to be part of that conversation.

“It’s pretty amazing, some of the conversations we’re still having. Looking at when the book came out, some of the objections that were raised, I think it just shows that history is still that means that we can use to talk about things that make our history and our country complicated,” Haley said. “A way for us to understand one another, to understand why we are where we are, and maybe have some inspiration on how to find a solution to solve it.”