Miss Hattie. Miss Butterfly. Your Room Is Ready!

Luxurious Memory

I really don’t remember the first time I heard about the Georgian Terrace hotel...it feels like I’ve always known it, the way you know a place before you’ve ever been there. Like a story your family members told you so many times it becomes your own memory.

And then I walked through the doors.

The lobby opened around me like a held breath. Chandeliers caught the afternoon light and scattered it across marble floors, and I immediately felt at home. The air smelled like old wood, fresh flowers, some Burberry Her perfume, and something unnameable that I couldn't quite describe. 

I stood still for a long moment while my husband parked the car in the garage. I knew this would be the first of many stays.

The hotel didn’t feel new to me. It felt familiar, in a way I couldn’t explain. Like I had been coming here for a hundred years. Like I belonged here, among the tall windows and the sweeping staircases and the ghosts of glamour that linger in every corner. 

And that’s when I thought of them. Miss Hattie and Miss Butterfly.

The Women in My Bag

Before every trip to the Georgian Terrace, I do the same ritual. I open my drawer, unwrap the tissue paper, and take out two small frames.

Butterfly McQueen. Hattie McDaniel.


I’ve been carrying them with me for years. Not because I’m a collector of memorabilia, but because something in me refuses to let them be forgotten. Not as characters. Not as footnotes. But as women.

Butterfly and Hattie were in that film. They gave it some of its most memorable moments. But they were not invited to the premiere. They were excluded from the very night their work helped make possible.


I think about that every time I walk through those doors. I think about them dressing up in their finest, hoping, maybe, that they’d be included, only to be turned away. I think about the injustice of giving your gift to something and then being told you don’t belong at the celebration.


And that’s why I bring them with me now.


I place their frames bold and visible in the main space in the room. Butterfly on the left. Hattie on the right. So they can finally see the chandeliers. So they can rest in a place that once shut them out, now holding space for them through me.
I can’t change what happened that night in 1939. But I can make sure that every time I check into that hotel, they walk through those doors with me.I pack them carefully, nestled between my clothes, like I’m bringing family photos to a reunion.

Because in a way, I am.

The Spell

People ask me why I love this hotel so much. They expect me to talk about the architecture, the history, the elegance. And all of that is true. But the real reason is simpler, and stranger. When I sit in the lobby, watching the light shift across the marble floors, I feel something I rarely feel anywhere else.

I feel like I’ve been here before. A hundred years before. Like my feet were always meant to find these floors. Like the hotel remembers me, even though we’ve only just met. Maybe it’s the ghosts. Maybe it’s the history. Maybe it’s the weight of all the Black women who passed through these doors, as guests, as workers, as performers, as survivors of a world that didn’t always see their brilliance.

Or maybe it’s just me, finally standing in a place that feels like it was built for someone like me to return to.
I don’t know how to explain it. I just know that when I’m there, with Butterfly and Hattie keeping watch on the nightstand, I feel a kind of peace that doesn’t follow me home.

It only lives in that hotel.
And I keep going back, because I think the spell is still working on me.

I hope it never stops.

Love & Light

Angela