Mobile AL: Two Different Mardi Gras

            I decided to do a little research to learn more about how segregation shaped the culture of my hometown.  For those who may not know, my hometown is Mobile, Alabama which is a port city close to the beaches of Gulf Shores.  Besides being known for its seafood, ports, and driving distance to the beach, Mobile is also known as the birth place of Mardi Gras; a major local holiday where hundreds of people gather in the streets to see parades and catch flying beads thrown from floats.  The article I found describes a white man’s experience of Mardi Gras in the early 1960s when segregation was still heavily enforced in Mobile, and the influence segregation still has on Mardi Gras in the 21^st century.

            Charles J. Dean was a high school student who attended McGill Institute and like everyone else, he went to Mardi Gras parades in February.  Dean was used to a Mardi Gras that involved elaborately designed floats with white people tossing moon pies, beads, and toys to a white crowd.  White Mardi Gras was something Dean never noticed until some of his African American friends from school convinced him to attend a black Mardi Gras; of course, his African American friends “knew there were two carnivals, the one where their parents and grandparents could ride on “floats” and the one they could not.”1  Black Mardi Gras did not have large, elaborate floats, and the loot thrown to the crowd was limited.  However, what made black Mardi Gras so lively was the music.  You could find jazz bands, church choirs, and people who played the blues performing as people danced in the streets and others cooked barbeque.¹ What black Mardi Gras lacked in material was outweighed by the lively spirit in the African American community. 

            Even though it has been several decades since segregation and the Jim Crow laws were outlawed, Dean raised the question of why Mobile is still polarized in race.  African Americans and whites usually live in separate neighborhoods, and there is still a black and white carnival during Mardi Gras. This question made me reflect on a lecture given by Dr. Perry (a Rhodes Professor in sociology) on her book Live and Let Live: Diversity, Conflict and Community in an Integrated neighborhood.   In her book, she discusses how a difference in power, race, and class makes integration almost impossible. African Americans were expected to move into white neighborhoods which may not have been economically possible, or they had no desire to move.  Even though it is the 21^st century, it can be quite rare for a neighborhood to be thoroughly integrated; this is something we have struggled to do as nation since segregation was outlawed.    

---

1 Dean, Charles J, “Segregated Mardi Gras shows Mobile still has a long way to go,” AL.com, March 01, 2015, Accessed March 2 , 2018, http://www.al.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/03/black_mardi_gras_and_white_mar.html.