My Sweet Mammy
Posted by: 3FromTx
N 31° 28.674 W 091° 22.285
15R E 654702 N 3483715
Cool looking building.
Waymark Code: WMHRVR
Location: Mississippi, United States
Date Posted: 08/10/2013
Views: 6
Mammy's Cupboard (founded 1940)is a roadside restaurant built in the shape of a mammy archetype. The woman's skirt holds a dining room and a gift shop. The skirt is made out of bricks, and the earrings are horseshoes. She is holding a serving tray while smiling. Mammy's Cupboard has been through several renovations, the exterior has been repaired and the interior refurbished. The restaurant currently serves lunches and desserts.
The restaurant's founder was originally a tour guide of Natchez's nearby antebellum mansions and she believed tourists would also be interested in this type of restaurant. Also a mammy character had been portrayed in the very popular 1939 film Gone With the Wind, about the same time plans for the restaurant were being made. During the Civil Right Movement of the 1960s the Mammy's skin was repainted a lighter shade. The current owner said of the Mammy, "There is honor in everything you do and for those who have young people. You have a crying child. Who are they going to run to? Nine times out of ten, they are going to run to the mammy...I want people to look at her and see that."
The author of Crossings: a white man's journey into Black America described the restaurant as "a massive statue—twenty-eight feet high—of a black woman dressed like Aunt Jemima, wearing a red scarf, a white blouse, and a red hoopskirt that actually houses a restaurant", while the authors of Frommer's USA said that if you want to visit the restaurant, "you need to check your political correctness at the door". The restaurant's homemade pie was covered in the book American Pie and the newspaper The Press Democrat for National Pie Day.
To log this please email the number of windows, not counting the door, that surround the bottom of Mammy's skirt. Also please post a pic our you or someone in your group with Mammy.
Building Address: 555 Highway 61 S Natchez, ms usa 39120
Is it open to the general public?: yes
When was it built? (Approximate if you must.): 03/03/1940
What is the name of this building?: Mammy's Cupboard
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