The Wren’s Nest house museum is ‘Reckoning with Remus’
Have you heard of Brer Rabbit? He’s the fictional trickster in books by the late Atlanta author Joel Chandler Harris and became well-known in Disney’s controversial 1946 film adaptation, “Song of the South.”
Spun by fictitious narrator Uncle Remus, these stories have drawn criticism over the years for their portrayals of slavery as well as for the source of the tales themselves — coming not from Harris, who was white, but from Black folktales told to him.
A new tour script at the West End museum and home where Harris wrote the stories aims to “reckon” with the problematic history of the author’s Uncle Remus, as well as the origin of the fiction that made him famous.
The Wren’s Nest will host “Reckoning with Remus: Reinterpreting the Wren’s Nest” at 2 p.m. Saturday, a special program launching a revised script for all of its future tours as well. The event includes a moderated community conversation about the revision project, as well as a guided tour highlighting new themes in how the museum tells its story.
A new tour script at the former Harris residence — a rustic farm home built in 1870 and renovated in 1884 to the ornate Queen Anne-style architectural marvel — has been a long time coming, organizers believe.
“There have always been guided tours that put Harris, his life and Brer Rabbit at the center,” said Jim Auchmutey, a veteran Atlanta journalist and author and former Wren’s Nest board member who is helping lead the revision. “It’s not that we don’t want to keep talking about those things, but we want to put them in a broader context. We want to talk about where the stories came from.”
In addition to detailing the Black and West African roots of most of the stories, Auchmutey noted other objectives.
The revised script aims to examine “the ups and downs of the reputations of these stories and how they were used differently in different eras,” he said, “and a large part of that is going to be ‘Song of the South.’”
After its 1940s release, Disney pulled “Song of the South” out of U.S. circulation, and it has never received a home video release in this country.
“Even when it came out in 1946, it was criticized,” Auchmutey said, adding that while it was a groundbreaking movie, combining live action with animation, the film “got into hot water … because the guy who plays Uncle Remus (James Baskett) just seemed happy to have been a slave.”
Auchmutey said the third objective of this revised tour script involves the evolution of the Wren’s Nest itself “as a cultural institution in Atlanta and how it’s changed … and how that’s a pretty fascinating story in and of itself.”
Because the Wren’s Nest presents no traditional museum panels on its walls to describe rooms or exhibits, those who wander the home’s interior during Saturday tours are reliant entirely on their tour guide for historic information. So, a new script will be significant.
To help guide script rewrites, the Wren’s Nest convened a panel of historians and advisers, including Stephane Dunn, a Morehouse College media studies professor.
Dunn, who also served on an advisory committee to help the Atlanta History Center revamp interpretation at the Margaret Mitchell House in 2020, said to understand “the man (Harris) himself, you have to understand the story.”
A majority of the tales written by Harris originate with African folklore and storytelling.
Storytelling is a family tradition for Ra Malika Imhotep, fellow advisory committee member and daughter of the late Akbar Imhotep — a longtime resident storyteller at the Wren’s Nest.
Ra Malika Imhotep said the original Wren’s Nest tour script “didn’t touch on the more sensitive matter of this place’s history, and it was really important for me to bring my knowledge and scholarship to this and also to make sure my father’s legacy was uplifted as well.”
A Spelman College assistant professor of international and African diaspora studies, Imhotep said being on the panel is a dream come true.
“I was always dreaming of being able to bring my grown-up self to the Wren’s Nest in a substantive way, to be able to use all of this schooling … in service to this space that I grew up in,” Imhotep said. “When I got this opportunity, I was overjoyed.”
The panel Imhotep and Dunn serve on began work last year after the Georgia Humanities Council awarded the Wren’s Nest a cultural program grant to overhaul the script.
The advisory group met several times over the last few months. Also serving on the panel was Claire Haley, the Atlanta History Center’s vice president of special projects who worked on the Margaret Mitchell House revamp.
Haley said she reviewed the Wren’s Nest tour materials, offering historical commentary as well as finding ways to make the content relevant to guests who will tour the home.
“One of the challenges of house museums … (is that) they are saved because of the people who lived in them, but they often have the capability of representing lots of different stories,” Haley said. “It gives you an opportunity to look at what life was like then.”
One of the biggest enhancements to the revised tour, according to Haley and other panel members, was including more background about the West African roots of most of Harris’ stories.
Additionally, the tour includes information about the Black people who first told the tales to Harris.
The new tour will also cover how the Wren’s Nest has continued to transform over the years, from a segregated facility in the 1960s to its present maturing cultural profile, changing with the city of Atlanta.
“We wanted to give more context about these stories, about Harris’ role in popularizing them and about their complicated legacy,” Auchmutey said. “There are many twists and turns to this saga, and they say a lot about how Atlanta and the South have evolved.
“The story behind the Brer Rabbit stories is an epic tale,” he added, “and we’re just the place to tell it.”
IF YOU GO
“Reckoning with Remus: Reinterpreting the Wren’s Nest”
2 p.m. Saturday. $17.85. The Wren’s Nest, 1050 Ralph David Abernathy Blvd. SW, Atlanta. 404-753-7735, eventbrite.com.
House tours and live storytelling at the Wren’s Nest
11 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturdays (with storytelling at 1 p.m.). $15, $12 students and seniors, $10 ages 3-10. 1050 Ralph David Abernathy Blvd. SW, Atlanta. 404-753-7735, wrensnest.org/plan-your-visit.
