Flotte’s Notes on
An Unofficial Encyclopaedia
of Mobile & Baldwin Counties
Promoting local history, culture,
outdoors, businesses, attractions, food, people, and places
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Flotte’s Notes
on Mobile are now being updated on Mod Mobilian: (www.modmobilian.com)
·
Native Americans and Spanish Exploration
·
The area around
·
Most of the early expeditions to La
·
1519 Alonso Alvarez de Pineda, with four ships, sails from
·
1528 Panfilo
de Narvaez leads an
expedition of three hundred men was virtually wiped out by Indians, storms, and
hunger as it made its way north into
·
1540 At the Battle of Mauvilla (Mobila,
Mabila) Hernando
DeSoto was brought to the town of Mauvilla by the chief Tuskaloosa, where he and his men
were ambushed and fought a battle where 20 of his men and hundreds of Indians
were killed and the town destroyed.
o The site of Mauvilla
is not known for sure, but several sites around
o 1540 Francisco Maldonado returned with
ships to remove
o DeSoto's legacy in Alabama is horses, chickens
and swine, all of which his men introduced into the area.
o Luys
Hernandez de Biedma’s account (PDF)
o
Baggett, Connnie: “Mysteries of Mauvilla”,
PR7/25/07
o
Sledge,
John: “Call of Mabila a compelling Quest”, PR7/25/09
·
1558 In advance of the colonial expedition of Tristan de
Luna, Guido de las Bazares explores the northern
·
1682 Robert Cavalier de La Salle explores
the Mississippi River, finds the Gulf of Mexico, and claims
·
1697 Under the vague terms of Peace of Ryswick, France
claimed all west of the
·
1698 The French Minister of Marine, Jerome de Phelypeaux, Comte de
Pontchartrain, also known as “Maurepas”, chooses Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville to colonize
·
1699 Iberville and a group of 100 Canadians
set sail on the French ship Badine from
o
They sighted
land at
o
After
the death of its commander, Bienville takes command of
o Iberville,
dissatisfied with the settlement at
·
1702 "Fort Louis de la
Mobile" was first established at Twenty-seven Mile Bluff on the 
French
colony of
o Beginning in 1702, the French used
small boats to shuttle people and supplies from the military outpost on
o The
settlement originally governed by Iberville.
o The Old Mobile site is located in Axis on
the
o From the 1880s to the 1940s, the site
was cleared by farmers for corn, plowed up, timbered.
o In 1902, prominent Mobilians
erected a stone monument at Twenty-seven Mile Bluff to commemorate the
Bicentennial of the founding of
o In 1977, local archaeology
enthusiasts became interested in locating the old town site. In 1989, an engineer
at the former Courtaulds, Buddy Parnell, noted the
possible presence of a historic site on the bluff.
o Old
o The University of South
Alabama Archaeology Department continues to research and study the site, lead
by Dr. Greg Waselkov: Old Mobile
Archaeology home page
o Reference:
Old
·
Iberville
sent Henri de Tonti up
the river to bring the Indian leaders to the fort for a peace meeting. He
returned with three Chickasaw chiefs and four Choctaw chiefs. After Iberville
finished addressing them and presenting them gifts of guns and ammunition, they
agreed to aid the settlers.
o Iberville left within days, but the
French alliance with the Choctaw lasted for decades and proved critical in
fending off British encroachment from the northeast. For much of the rest of
the century, hundreds and sometimes thousands of American Indians -- primarily
the Choctaw -- would arrive en masse for annual congresses at
·
There
were five Mobilian villages in 1700 and only one just
a couple decades later. Those who survived moved to the Mississippi Delta after
the French gave control of the land to the Spanish and British in 1763. Father
Le Maire, in 1714 wrote that he was amazed "to
see how death has mowed down whole tribes since the arrival of the French in
these parts."
·
At
its peak, the town covered about 120 acres and contained 80 to 100 buildings,
most of which were homes for nearly 350 people.
o The Fort, built high on the bluff
overlooking both river and town, contained the homes of colonial officials,
royal warehouses and church, as well as military headquarters
o The little village was constantly
flooded. Smallpox, yellow fever, and other diseases took a huge toll on the
local Native population, as well as claiming many colonists.
·
1704 Apalachee
Indians moved to Old
Mobile from Spanish Florida. Allies of the Spanish, they were brutally attacked
by English and Creek Indian war parties raiding their homeland in north-central
Florida near Tallahassee. They eventually found safety by resettling near the
French around
o
The
Apalachees were converted to Christianity by Spanish
priests in the early 1600s. In his description of the Apalachees,
carpenter and resident of Old Mobile André Pénigault
described them as "excellent Catholics."
·
1704 Iberville made a request to
o The ship also brought yellow fever,
which killed many of the colonists, including Tonti.
·
1706 Iberville dies of yellow fever in
o Bienville was partial to his fellow
Canadians in the camp, called "the coureurs de
bois (or 'wood rangers') and voyageurs, who neglected their church duties and
lived sometimes with the whites and sometimes with the Indians. Jesuit
missionaries and Canadian settlers sided with Bienville. Parochial priests and
seminarians opposed him, at least nominally because his men frequently had
relationships with native women.
·
1710 After floods had ruined the crops at
o
Also
in 1710,
Privateers from
·
1711 Following
a series of floods, the town was relocated to its present location on
o
Beginning in 1706, Gilbert Dardenne,
Pierre Leboeuf, Claude Parent, and Charles Rochon
began settling the present-day site of
o
Another wooden
o
The King's Wharf crossed swampland on the east side of
the fortress to the
·
1712-1717 Mobile commerce is monopolized by
merchant Antoine Crozat
who leased the
·
1713 Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac,
who had founded
o
Cadillac,
an aristocrat, loathed the frontier town. Charles Edwards O'Neill quoted
Cadillac in his "Church and State in French Colonial Louisiana: Policy and
Politics to 1732" as writing after his arrival at Mobile: "Here there
is nothing more than the piled-up dregs of Canada, jailbirds who escaped the
rope, without any subordination to Religion or to Government, steeped in vice,
principally in their concubinage with savage women,
whom they prefer to French girls." – PR 2/24/02
·
Deportation
to
·
1720 The
capital of
·
1719 With
·
1720s
·
By
1720, plantations began to appear along the Bay. One early plantation was built
by Charles Rochon at
·
In
the Mobile-Tensaw Delta, British, French and Spanish settlers also built
plantations, often settling on the sites of abandoned Indian villages. A map of
the area shows 22 plantation sites that existed by the 1770s.
·
1721 The first slave ships from the west coast of Africa
arrive in
·
1723
Construction of a new brick fort with a stone foundation began, renamed as Fort Condé in honor of King Louis XIV’s
brother.
·
1724 The king of
·
1731-1763
·
1745 census listed 150 white men and 200 Africans in the
·
1756-1763 British fleet blockades the entrance
to bay and stifles French trade.
·
Houses
were small, simple, single-story structures set close to dirt pathways. One
room deep and two or three rooms wide, the houses were often of half-timber or
frame construction and roughly plastered with a mixture of earth and lime made
from crushed oyster shells. Solid shutters covered the windows. Roofs were
usually palmetto thatch or bark, sometimes shingle. Deep covered galleries or
porches stretched across the front, the front and rear, or all the way around
structures. – Barbara Spafford, PR 2/24/2002
o While French colonial architecture at
Old Mobile did not use the oyster shell technique, it did employ the use of
half timbers with clay infilling Typically, the houses were one-room deep and
two to three rooms wide and had a porch or gallery in the front, and a gable or
hip roof ran parallel to the house, according to the book "From Fort to
Port" by Elizabeth Gould.
o In 1763, when the British took over
the fort from the French, the houses were built using the tabby construction
method -- burning oyster shells 
into a cement-type mix and the mix was
poured into wooden forms.– Kathy Jumper, PR 2/24/02
·
From
a 1760 map: – Barbara Spafford, PR 2/24/2002
o Running down the center of
o n the first block (bordered by
Government, Royal, Conti and St. Emanuel) were barracks for the soldiers
stationed at
o The second block (bordered by Conti,
Royal, Dauphin and St. Emanuel) housed the commissariat, where foodstuff for
the soldiers was stored.
o In the third block (bordered by
Dauphin, Royal, St. Francis and
o Private residences were scattered
throughout the palisaded district, and in the early
days of the colony, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac
lived in
o Outside the palisade at the northern
edge of the city, near the corner of Royal and
o At the corner of Conti and Conception
streets is the site of the Indian Council House. Indian meetings would
sometimes draw as many as 2,000 visitors from as far away as the
·
1763 The Treaty of Paris, ending the French and
Indian War, ceded 
colony (the “14th Colony”),
with
·
The
West Florida government consisted of a governor, appointed by the crown, and a
twelve-member council, which was the upper house of
·
In
1763, the estimated white population of
·
·
Mobile
harbor is reopened to seagoing trade, employing the anchorage in the lower Bay.
Major exports include indigo, hides, timber, naval stores, cattle, pecans,
corn, rice, tallow, bear's oil, tobacco, myrtle wax, salted wild beef, salted
fish, pecans, sassafras, and oranges. Trade is now largely in the hands of
private businesses.
·
The
Mobile Catholics continued to worship in their own church, which in 1768 was
the only church building in the colony.
·
The
task of governing
o Farmer declared that English law would
replace French law and the sale of land was forbidden until titles had been
duly recorded. Those who wished to remain had to swear an oath of allegiance to
King George III within three months. Farmar promised
safe transportation to those wishing to depart, but many of the Frenchmen
elected to stay. List of Mobile Inhabitants
Taking the 1763 Oath
o
Farmar
also held an Indian congress. Although opposed to the French policy of giving
presents, food, and drink to the Indians, Farmar
realized he had little choice if he wished to win their friendship. He asked
them to pay their debts but said they would be protected against dishonest
traders. He also established a policy of "an eye for an eye." If any
Indian harmed a settler, or a settler harmed an Indian, the guilty person would
be punished.
o
Farmar
got into trouble with Governor Johnstone and others
over a variety of problems and faced a general court-martial in 1768. He was
found innocent but lost his position. He returned to
·
1768 Elias Durnford, provincial engineer and governor of West
Florida, made the first survey of
·
1776
American War of
o Since 
Chester continued to run West Florida
for the Crown rom
o British Loyalists, who wanted to
escape the American Revolution, moved to
o James Willing
came to
·
1778 William Bartram,
eminent botanist, explored the plant life of this area. Bartram described
o “It has been near a mile in length,
though now chiefly in ruins, many houses vacant and mouldering
to earth; yet there are a few good buildings inhabited by French gentlemen,
English, Scotch and Irish, and emigrants from the Northern British colonies.
Messrs. Swanson and McGillivary
who have the management of the Indian trade, carried on to the Chicasaws, Chactaws, Upper and
Lower Creeks, &c., have very extraordinary improvements in buildings.”
·
Foreign
commerce languishes under mercantilist Spanish government. The Indian trade is
reorganized, with trade concessions granted to private firms.
·
There
were only four towns of consequence in West Florida in 1783:
·
1780
o Col. Bernardo
de Galvez, the 21-year-old Spanish Governor of
o Galvez erected a half-dozen batteries
trained on
·
1781 The Battle
of Mobile was part of a British counter-offensive aimed at recapturing
o In
January 1781, the British attack on “The Village” (current-day Daphne) failed.
Spanish authorities in
o
Beginning
in 1783 and continuing until 1821, the
·
In
the 1790s, several French families relocated to the Bay St. Louis area, such as
Labat, Grelot, Saucier, Nicaise and Moran
·
1791 there were 258 whites and 475 blacks in
·
1795 The Pinckney Treaty (aka Treaty of San Lorenzo) established the
boundary between the
o
President George Washington commissioned Major Andrew Ellicott, a
o
In 1798 the
o
Fort Stoddart, located on a bluff of
the upper
·
1803
·
1803-1811
The Federal Road is built connecting
·
1804
·
1805-1806
Indian cessions
opened up to white settlement large portions of western (Choctaw) and northern
(Chickasaw and Cherokee)
·
1810
American colonists led a rebellion in 1810 and the establishment for 90 days of
the Republic of West Florida.
o
In 1810,
the country of
o
Rebels overcame the Spanish garrison at
o
On
October 27, 1810, President James Madison decided to annex this “republic” to
the
·
1811
Newspapers are
established in Mobile (Sentinel May 11, 1811; Gazette 1812). Washington Academy
is the first American school in Mobile.
·
1811 Mobile County is
divided into Hancock, Jackson and Mobile counties
·
John Forbes & Company stood at At
56 St. Francis St. (NE corner of St. Francis, at
o
Panton,
Leslie and Company began trading with the Native peoples of the American
Southeast during the Revolution. It was formed by Scottish Loyalists William Panton,
John Leslie, Thomas and John Forbes, and others. As Loyalists, they fled to
o
Alexander McGillivray was a Creek chief and son Lachlan
McGillivray, a Scottish trader, and a Creek princess. By 1785, McGillivray
contracted and became a silent partner with William Panton, a long-time friend of McGillivray.
With McGillivray's assistance Panton won a virtual monopoly of the Indian trade
of
o
The
company traded European-made goods — mostly guns, powder, and flints — to the
Indians in exchange for furs, mainly deerskins, which were sent to
o
To
regain some of this money, the company brokered land deals with the Indians and
pressured the Indians into making huge land grants to the
o
At
its peak, the Indian trade company ran trading posts extending from
o
Panton,
Leslie & Co. became John Forbes & Co. in 1805.
McGillivray died in 1793, and Panton died about eight years later. It
continued to trade as John Forbes and Company until 1847
o
After Forbes retired from John Forbes & Co. and moved
to
§
Many Alabamians, including John Forbes, bought ranches in
the
United States, 1813-1861
·
1812 The remainder of Spanish
West Florida below the 31st parallel was added to the
o
In
1812, West Florida from the Pearl River to the
·
Before and during the War of 1812, the Spaniards in
·
1813 American
General Wilkinson, on
order President Madison, leads a regiment from
·
When
·
1813-1814 Creek War.
·
1818 The Bank of Mobile
is established.
·
1817 The
·
1819 Alabama becomes a state.
·
1819 Mobile is incorporated
as a city shortly after Alabama becomes a state and Mobile adopts the mayor-alderman form of government.
o
“That
the limits or boundaries of the city of Mobile, shall be as follows: Commencing
at Choctaw point and running in a straight direction, to the western banks of
the Bayou Chotage, at a point lying two hundred yards
above the place on said Bayou Chotage called the
Portage: thence down the western bank of said Bayou, to it's
mouth, thence in a straight line, to the west bank of the island, in front of
Mobile; thence along the margin of said island, to the south point of said
island, and thence in a straight line, to the place of beginning” (Bayou Chotage is now known as Three Mile Creek)
·
1819 The first
river steamboat arrives.
·
1819 A Yellow
Fever epidemic hits. Twenty percent of the population dies. Church
Street Cemetery is founded.
·
1820 Fort Charlotte is dismantled. Local
developers bought the site and demolished it since the United States Congress
agreed that the fort was no longer needed for defense. Residential and business
streets are created on the site.
·
During
the 1820s there was a considerable
immigration of people from the Carolinas and
o
Many
settled in what was then known as
o
Many
were of Scottish origin and the movement came to be known as the “Scotch invasion.” Some of the family
names were McGowin, McDuffie, McMillan, McCorvey, McIntosh, McLeod.
·
1822 Mobile's population is 3,000.
·
1826 The first public school system in
Alabama was established in Mobile. The Alabama Legislature enacted a bill
drafted by Mobile’s representative, Willoughby
Barton, establishing a board of Mobile
School Commissioners.
·
1827 Fire
consumes two-thirds of business district; the city starts to rebuild with
brick. Creole cottages are replaced by the Federal and Greek Revival
styles in the homes of cotton factors, bankers, lawyers, and merchants.
·
1829 Mobile
was declared a diocese of the Roman Catholic Church
Mobile - 1830s
·
1830s The Cotton Boom of the early 19th century
brought an explosion of commerce.
o
o
As
steamboats made upstream transportation
possible,
o
Cotton
made up 99 percent of exports from antebellum Mobile. Lumber products accounted
for only 1 percent.
o
Federal
funds are expended in dredging Mobile Bay. The port's deep anchorage continues
to be the lower part of
·
Between the early 1830s to the Panic of 1837, Mobile boomed and
the population skyrocketed. The result was the construction of Spring Hill
College (1830), Barton
Academy (1836), Government
Street Presbyterian Church (1837), Christ Episcopal
Church (1842), the Cathedral
(1835-1850). – Palmer Hamilton, MBT
o
1836 Barton Academy is constructed on Government Street
as a public free school. The construction was funded by private donations, a
city loan, a state-approved lottery, and the school commissioners’ fund and
loans. Financial problems forced the school to close several years later and
funds were channeled into church schools.
·
1830 Michael Krafft
and the Cowbellion de Rakin Society
begins carnival tradition on New Year's Eve
·
1837
A fire destroys much of Dauphin Street.
The Panic of 1837 depresses cotton prices.
Mobile - 1840s
·
1840s Mobile’s economy is depressed due to
low cotton prices. Cotton prices did not rise to 1830
levels again until the 1850s
o 1843
o 1848 The Mobile & Ohio Railroad is
begun
o Documents:
§ 1844: Declaration on the
Annexation of Texas by the Citizens of Mobile
Mobile - 1850s
·
1850s Cotton prices and Mobile’s economy recovers
o Mobile is
one of the 4 busiest ports in the US, and
is the South's second largest cotton
port, following
o To encourage diversification of the
local economy, civic boosters promoted railroads, direct trade, and
manufacturing with limited success.
o 10 percent of the whites in the city
were slaveholders. Of the city of 30,000, 25% were slaves.
o The Old City Hall
and Southern Market (1855) and most of
o
The wealth created by this trade brought the city to a
cultural
o “
o 1850s Bigotry against Catholics affects
Mobile, as it does the rest of the U.S.
§
In
the 1850s, the Know-Nothing Party organizes in Alabama, and Mobile becomes one
of their strongholds
§
In
the 1850s, a Jesuit on his way to attend one of the missions outside Mobile was
severely beaten.
§
1854 The Daughters of Charity are forced from the City
Hospital on false charges of mismanagement, with the mayor to casting the
deciding vote against the Sisters. Outraged citizens subscribed a sum of money
to build the sisters a hospital of their own, and in 1855 Providence Infirmary opens. Within five years
conditions at City Hospital had become so bad that the sisters were again
approached to take it over.
§
1855 The Know-Nothing Party captures every office in the City
of Mobile.
o 1853 The most serious antebellum yellow fever outbreak occurs
o
1859
Vick-Stith Duel is an example of the antebellum aristocratic
culture
Confederate States of America, 1861-1865
·
1865 April 12
The city of Mobile surrenders to the Union army in order to avoid destruction.
Mobile - Reconstruction
·
Mobile
languished as a result of Reconstruction
and the general economic decline of the South.
·
Mobile was the South’s eighth largest
city in 1880 but slipped to the fifteenth by 1910.
·
1866 Joe Cain parades as Chief Slacabamorinico on Mardi Gras
Day
·
1873 The
Panic of 1873 and a yellow fever epidemic compound the city's problems.
·
1874 Democrats regain political control of Mobile
·
1879 The City of
Mobile is bankrupt. The state legislature repeals the
charter of the City of
·
1884 The
depression of 1884 causes numerous business failures, including that of the
Bank of Mobile.
·
1886 The state legislature passes a bill establishing a mayor-general council
form of government
·
1887 The City of
o
While the channel was still shallow, much foreign
commerce was lost to Mobile, with exports falling off from $13 million in 1877
to $3 million in 1882, and imports fell from $648,000 to $396,000; but after
the improvement of the channel the value of the exports increased from $8
million in 1897 to $27 million in 1908, and the value of the imports rose from
$1 million in 1897 to $4 million in 1908. The foreign commerce consisted
largely in the export of cotton, lumber, timber, cotton-seed oil, coal,
provisions and clothing, and in the import of tropical fruits (especially
bananas), sisal grass, coffee, mahogany, asphalt, and manganese and sulphur ores.
·
1897 Last yellow fever epidemic occurs
·
Documents:
o
Trans-Pacific Sketches, by Alfred Falk
(1877) (pp 266-269)
Mobile - Early 1900s
·
Pre-World War I, timber was
king, replacing cotton.
o
Many of the mansions on Government were constructed in this era by
lumber barons.
o
In the 1920s, the pulp and paper industry became a major industry. Between the 1920s and the 1990s, Scott Paper
Company and International Paper combined to have one of the area's largest
workforces.
·
1901 Thanks to obstacles erected by the state constitution of
1901, few black people could vote. The poll tax shut out many poor white
people, too.
o
Vote-buying
in Mobile was common, according to Howard Barney, who joined the Mobile
Register as a reporter in 1936 and recalls getting chased out of the city's 7th
Ward by men in brass knuckles when he showed up on election
day with a box camera.
·
1911 The
mayor-council form of government is replaced with three commissioners
·
1918-1923
Prohibition and the Mobile Whiskey
Trials
·
1919 Fire
destroys forty blocks of Mobile south of Government Street
·
1920 The
population of Mobile reaches 60,000.
·
1928 The Alabama State Docks
are opened. Waterman Steamship
Company is founded. Cochrane bridge
opens. (Original Cochrane
Bridge Picture)
·
Documents:
o
The Ports of Mobile, Alabama and Pensacola,
Florida (War Department) (1922)
Mobile - World War II
·
The military buildup prior to and during World War II resulted in a massive increase in population as
shipyards produced vessels for the war effort
o
In
1942, Mobile had a population of 135,000. Between 1920-40,
Mobile’s population grew 36 percent, but in the first four years of the 1940s,
the population jumped 64 percent. – Kevin Lee, Lagniappe, 5/8/07
o More than any other Alabama city,
Mobile boomed as a result of wartime production. At the height of the war, the
two shipyards and Brookley Field employed nearly
60,000 people. Only cities such as San Diego, California, and Norfolk,
Virginia, experienced comparable population explosions and accompanying strains
on housing, education, and public utilities. – ADAH
o The federal government made a film in
1943, ‘Wartown,’ about the change the war brought to
o
Ken
Burn’s documentary “The War” highlights Mobile during WWII.
·
In 1938 the US
Army bought the municipal airport and developed Brookley Air Force Base. Brookley quickly became
the area's largest employer.
·
During the war, the influx of workers created a housing shortage.
o
Workers
settled in new suburbs such as Prichard
and Chickasaw.
o
Citizens rented out extra rooms and also converted
porches, garages and even chicken coops into rentals.
o
Several federal housing projects were quickly built.
Several of these are still to be found, notably the community of Birdville which was built just outside of Brookley Air Force base.
·
Freighters operated by Waterman Steamship
Company transported valuable wartime cargo throughout the
world.
o Alcoa Aluminum Company operated its own fleet of ships to transport bauxite (the ore
from which aluminum is made) from South America to the company's refinery on
the State Docks.
o Waterman lost 27 ships and
313 seamen's lives during World War II; Alcoa lost 8 of its own ships and 67
sailors as well as 13 chartered bauxite carriers. - ADAH
o In 1943 black workers were attacked at
the Addsco shipyard when white welders armed with bars,
clubs, and bricks assailed black welders who had been upgraded and assigned to
work in the same areas as the whites. Before it was over, eleven blacks were in
the hospital. Peace was restored and work resumed a week later after the
company announced that the black welders would be assigned to a separate work
area. The role that the CIO and the ADDSCO bargaining agent, the Industrial Union
of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America, played in that conflict
illustrates the conflicted relationship between the labor unions and the civil
rights movement.
·
Mobile
was one of a handful of sites selected for the mothball fleet after World War
II. At one point in 1946, as many as 286 ships were anchored along the
waterfront, known as the Tensaw Fleet.
·
1957 Annexation
nearly triples the size of Mobile.
o
1960 Mobile, Prichard and Chickasaw all recorded
their highest city populations.
o
Mobile and Houston are the same size.
·
1957 Springdale Mall is
built. 1967 Bel Air Mall is built.
These are signs of the western spread of
·
1964 Brookley Air Force Base
closed, and with it
17,000 jobs, and the airport returned to the
city.
o
Brookley employed 16,000 workers in 1962 and
accounted for an "estimated one-third of Mobile’s gross product" per
the Department of Defense. - Kevin Lee, Lagniappe, 5/8/07
o
The
Mobile area voted overwhelmingly for Barry
Goldwater in 1964 and Frank Boykin had
been voted out of office in 1962. President
Lyndon Johnson pulled the plug on Brookley
soon afterwards. First-year Congressman Jack Edwards,
a Republican during a Democratic administration, could do little to save the
military base. – Berson, MBT; Richard Sullivan Sr.,
PR
·
1964 The University
of South Alabama is opened. The university operates several hospitals and
medical school.
·
By
1964, ADDSCO was down to 2,300 workers and was concentrating not on shipbuilding,
but repairs. Mobile also had three smaller yards Bender Ship Repair Inc.,
Harrison Brothers Dry Dock & Repair Yard and Mobile Ship Repair Inc. But
the workload would never again approach the World War II high.
Mobile Civil Rights
·
1919 The first National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Branch in Mobile was
founded by businessman W.E. Morton and local leaders like Andrew N. Johnson, C.W. Allen, and Dr.
Thomas N. Harris.
·
1925 John L. LeFlore, a letter carrier for the United States Post
Office, along with several local leaders, initiated a second charter.
·
1940s LeFlore
aided black employees in the booming shipyards of World War II, investigated lynchings and helped integrate the state Democratic
primary.
·
1956 When state officials banned the NAACP, LeFlore and others created the Non-Partisan Voters League
in Mobile. The Non-Partisan Voters League helped blacks advance at local
industries and integrate bus terminals along the Gulf Coast. The league's
approach was to negotiate with white leaders or sue them.
·
In
the late 1950s, as black families moved into previously white sections of Toulminville, a number of their houses were dynamited.
Someone tossed a bomb onto LeFlore's front porch
1959, but the fuse burned out.
·
Rev.
Albert S. Foley, a priest and sociology professor at Spring Hill College,
believed that some Mobile officers were Klan members. Foley failed to get an
ordinance passed barring police membership in the Klan and similar
organizations in the late 1950s. – PR 6/27/07
·
During the early 1960s, public facilities were
desegregated through negotiations between LeFlore and
Joe Langan. In exchange for improved municipal
employment, city leaders asked that LeFlore distance
himself from groups that favored confrontation.
·
1964 After federal law ordered restaurants
to desegregate, the league arranged "test-ins," making appointments
with local managers and city officials for black volunteers to eat at
previously all-white establishments. It was the league that filed the Birdie
Mae Davis case, which led to the integration of Mobile County Public Schools,
and recruited Vivian Malone to apply to the University of Alabama, with league
officers even buying her luggage.
·
1963 A front-page story in The Wall Street Journal proclaimed
on July 19, 1963, that Mobile was building "racial peace." Reporter
Burt Schorr wrote that "while tensions between
Negroes and whites have exploded into headlines elsewhere in the nation, Mobile
has achieved a remarkable degree of racial harmony."
·
1964 A third charter for the Mobile NAACP, initiated by
newspaper editor Frank P. Thomas, businessman and civil rights activist
Clarence H. Montgomery, and Phil Savage of the national NAACP, was implemented.
·
1965 LeFlore's house and then-Mayor
Charles Trimmier's Dauphin Street home were fired
into on the same night, with an unknown man calling police to take credit.
·
1966 The Neighborhood Organized Workers (NOW) was established in Mobile. In
the late '60s and early 1970s, Neighborhood Organized Workers came to the fore,
giving voice to blacks who were angry about conditions in Mobile.
·
1967 LeFlore’s house was
firebombed.
o
Much
of the white establishment, eager to protect the city's image, rallied to raise
money for rewards and then to rebuild the LeFlore
house. Mayor and Police Commissioner Arthur Outlaw and fellow commissioners
Joseph Langan and Lambert Mims quickly condemned the
bombing. So did the Mobile Area Chamber of Commerce and the NAACP. A total of
$7,200 in reward money was posted by a combination of the chamber, Gov. Lurleen Wallace, Mobile County Sheriff Ray Bridges, the
city and the Press-Register. LeFlore got letters of condolence and contributions from
U.S. Rep. Jack Edwards, First National Bank executive Austill
Pharr, Mobile County Commissioner Leroy Stevens and Merchants National Bank
chief Ernest Cleverdon.
o
But
the attack, for which no one has ever been arrested, heralded an uglier time in
local race relations. By the next summer, a younger, aggressive generation of
black Mobilians under NOW would be grabbing
headlines, and white responses would harden. – PR 6/27/07
o
Frank
Boykin wrote to LeFlore. "You and so many of our
other good colored people, who have kept things on an even keel here, and you
have no idea, unless you could get all over the country like I have to do and
talk to the people, what it means to know that we have had no racial trouble
here," Boykin wrote Aug. 25. "I am not unmindful of the fact that all
of us must continue to work for progress in race relations if we hope to
successfully avoid the cataclysms that unfortunately damaged the image of many
other communities," he wrote in his Oct. 5 reply to Boykin. "Please
rest assured of my wholehearted cooperation toward the end of maintaining peace
and tranquility in our city."
·
1969 NOW urged the black community to
boycott the 1969 elections, contributing to the defeat of Langan,
the most racially liberal of the three commissioners.
·
1969 There were 96 reported firebombings in the Mobile area, including many of
white-owned businesses along St. Stephens Road, according to a count by
historian Nahfiza Ahmed.
·
1970 Foley began an investigation into a
resurgence by white supremacist groups and found plenty to report. Some
white radicals rallied to the defense of the city commission, by then under
legal siege from the last of the Non-Partisan Voters League's big lawsuits.
·
Mobile
fought desegregation hard, appealing federal court orders no fewer than eleven
times.
·
School
Board President Charles McNeil finally decided that "the people were tired
of going to court all the time." In numerous meetings with 22 civic
groups, he and School Superintendent Harold Collins worked out an integration
plan. Black leaders agreed to let nine of Mobile's all-black schools remain
segregated until 1973.
o Another key to the Mobile's plan was
its system of "split zones," a zone that includes black and white
neighborhoods is drawn around each school, permitting the majority of students
within the area to attend it.
o
Mobile's
white leaders quietly discouraged Governor Wallace from trying to upset the
plan. “Partly because Mobile's community pride determined that integration was
going to work, it seems to have done so. There are occasional fistfights
between blacks and whites in high schools, and some disgruntled whites have
withdrawn their children to enter them in private academies. Basically, though,
the chips are mostly gone from shoulders. At a recent post-football-game dance,
a black boy danced with the daughter of one of Mobile's wealthiest whites, and
everybody else tried to follow his new and so far unnamed dance.” – Time
·
1975 The Non-Partisan Voters League filed
lawsuits that led to black members being elected to the Mobile County school
board and Mobile County Commission.
·
1976 Eight white city police officers placed a noose around
the neck of a 27-year-old black man, Glenn Diamond, threatening to lynch him if
he didn't confess to an armed robbery. The incident fueled racial turmoil in
the city and the police department for years.
·
1976 Civil rights leaders, including lead
plaintiff, Willie
Bolden filed Wiley L.
Bolden v. City of Mobile that forced the City of Mobile to change its
form of government to seven council members, elected from districts that ensure
at least three black members. The city
appeals but courts eventually uphold the ruling. Until 1985, three
commissioners were elected at-large, virtually guaranteeing a black member
would never have been elected.
·
1981 Two local members of the United Klans
of America randomly lynched 18-year-old Michael
Donald in retribution for the mistrial of a black man accused of killing a
white police officer in Birmingham. They hung Donald’s body from a tree on
Herndon Avenue near his home. Eventually both were convicted of the crime;
Knowles was given a life sentence and Hays was executed. Civil lawsuits filed
by the Southern Poverty Law Center successfully destroyed the United Klans of America.
Mobile 1970s-1980s
·
“From
the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, the result of no significant leadership and no
strategic foundation left the door wide open. It was open to an assortment of
mayors, city commissioners, county commissioners, judges and others who ended
up in prison for different lengths of time, for one reason or another. Mobile
had hit rock bottom. Arthur Outlaw, who in the late 1960s had served on the
Mobile City Commission, was dragged out of mothballs to be mayor and to
spearhead a change in government from the three-person city commission to an
urban-enfranchising city council.” – Richard Sullivan Sr., PR 4/22/07
·
1988 The U.S. Navy announced a homeport in Mobile. The state
of Alabama spent about $30 million to dredge and widen ship channels and build
docks. The city of Mobile and Mobile County spent nearly $8 million to buy 200
acres of land, and the federal government spent more than $40 million to build
the base. When Naval Station Mobile opened in 1992, four ships were stationed
there with 1,105 active personnel. Naval Station Mobile was closed in 1994.
Mobile 1990s-2000s
·
1989-2006
Mike Dow is mayor. He spearheads many development efforts,
including the “string of pearls”.
·
1990s The pulp and paper industry declines,
with International Paper closing its mill in 2000, and Kimberly-Clark closing
its pulp mill in 1999.
o
Many other
business closed or left and Mobile’s population stagnated.
o
Mobile's seafood
industry rose waned almost to the point of extinction in the last quarter of
the 20th century.
·
1993 The Arthur A. Outlaw Convention Center
opened, but failed to deliver on the volume of visitors touted
·
1993 A tugboat operator plows into a railway bridge over
Bayou Canot, sending Amtrak’s Sunset Limited passenger train into the bayou, killing 47 people
·
2000s New
industries were recruited including Thyssen-Krupp and
EADS/Northrop Grumman.
·
2005 Sam
Jones is elected Mobile’s first African-American mayor
·
2006 The RSA Battle House Tower is completed
·
Colonial Mobile by Joseph Hamilton.
·
Press-Register Mobile Tricentennial Series, 2002 (“A Sense of
Place”), 2/24/2002
·
Mobile Public Library Local History and Genealogy
·
Alabama Department of Archives and History
·
Mobile Area Convention
and Visitors Bureau Mobile History
·
Historic Mobile Preservation Society
·
University of South Alabama Archives
Revised
1/20/08
Text
Copyright 2008
