Everything was going well until that point. All of us at the table were trying to find solutions to some long-held civic problems. Then the bomb came.
“Mobile has always been known as being a very cultured city, excepting the post-War period…”
There it was, the meme that popped up like dandelion blooms once you got east of the malls. It’s part of a big division here, every bit as relevant as the color line. Its kernel is this: Mobile was a cultural paradise until the hillbillies flooded in after the War.
I wanted to ask, “You mean the post-War period when Mobile’s opera was first established? When the museum of art was first built? When most of its public works first took off? When its symphony was finally re-established after the Depression wiped it out? When the library system finally expanded beyond downtown?” I wanted to interject, but held my tongue because it wasn’t the time or place for that debate.
I’ve heard this for years now and have always shaken my head. I always wondered how and why this could be the case. Was Mobile once drastically different than it is now? Was it overflowing with refinement and high culture from end to end, a true artistic Shangri-La in humid isolation until the rabid hordes swept in to look for jobs in the shipyards and at Brookley?
Was the Creole past eradicated? Mardi Gras is still the focal point of life here. The Catholic Church is still mighty powerful. The architecture would seem to say it’s not. It’s easy enough to find that. It’s also easy to see how truly small Mobile was in the days before World War II.
So what was different? And if Mobile was once so culturally rich, how did it defy the odds and how could we get it back?
Logically, I looked at Mobile’s history. The French put the capital of Louisiana here but knew it wasn’t permanent. They were actively looking for the mouth of the Mississippi River and after 15 years or so, they moved the seat of power to New Orleans.
Mobile languished for a century as a frontier town, a trading post where native people and explorers convened. The interior of the South was wilderness. So it wasn’t a refined cultural nexus then.
New Orleans boomed and became known as the Paris of the New World for good reason. It was at the mouth of the most important transportation system in the hemisphere. Mobile was at the mouth of a smaller river that only led into the still untamed inner-South.
The British assumed control for 17 years, then the Spanish for the next three decades. By the time the American flag was raised, the War of 1812 was over. The new owners set about eradicating the original people from the South’s interior to portion out the lands.
Then Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin and the South was revolutionized. Suddenly, the rivers north of Mobile weren’t just a gateway to wilderness, they were a conveyor to some of the most lucrative resources in the world.
As a testimony to how quickly Mobile’s fortunes ascended under the early 19th century Cotton Boom, the population in 1813 was 300 and by 1822 it was 2,800.
Despite its relatively small population as compared to the cities on the east coast, Mobile was the fourth busiest port in the nation in the years before the Civil War. Cotton made up 99 percent of the value of exports, with lumber being most of the remaining single percentage point. Only New Orleans exported more.
So there was the big move. Maybe it was then that Mobile became the cultural cornucopia some tell me it was. Well, yes and no.
Because of the ebb and flow of the cotton trade, the city’s population – about 30,000 on the eve of the Civil War – and activity followed a seasonal pattern. In the summer, before crops were harvested, the city’s port sat mostly dead. Summers were also a time of plague and swelter. The wealthier folks who lived in town retreated to Springhill.
Once the cotton crop was in and the town was flush with money in late fall, wealthy planters and their families from upstream came to Mobile for the winter and the folks in Springhill returned. Social season began and continued until the heat rose again in spring and the duties of the plantations called the seasonal residents back to the hinterlands.
But during the winter, when the mosquitoes were at bay and cash was everywhere, Mobile was certainly filled with cultural pursuits, right?
Well that depended on with whom you spoke. To those on top, yes. To those multitudes whose cheap labor manned the wagons and docks and whose numbers normally equal or exceed the ones further up the ladder, it certainly was no hidden gem. But those folks don’t write history books.
In those years, entrepreneurs came in who had no connection to the old Creole families and assembled their empires. Mardi Gras as we know started to become a reality then, far more elaborate than the version observed in the century previous.
Tales abound of Madame Octavia Walton Le Vert and the notable salon society she indulged but we need to remember, she was a socialite. She wasn’t the wife of a longshoreman, she was from the peak of the upper-crust. Her lifestyle wasn’t available to everyone. And even Le Vert’s later crusade calling to mind the deplorable living conditions of working class women would seem to indicate there was plenty of less-than-peachy living in Mobile then.
When the Civil War began, Mobile’s fortunes plummeted. The city went into a depression that lasted decades.
Finally, toward the close of the 19th century, the locals begged the federal government to dredge out a ship channel that increased shipping traffic.
While Mobile had a considerable population as compared to its colonial days — 40,000 in 1900; 60,000 in 1920 – its overall status slipped. It was the South’s eighth largest city in 1880 but was the 15th largest in 1910.
As mentioned, a local symphony had been assembled until the Great Depression ended it. There were also occasional public concerts in Bienville Square that were sponsored by groups like the Kiwanis but they featured fare like Sousa and locally penned popular tunes, not the European classical canon.
There was vaudeville at places like the Saenger and the Lyric theaters and plenty of movie houses, but that’s not exactly high-brow. There might have been occasional chamber concerts or impromptu plays, but I doubt spontaneous Shakespeare was common up on Davis Avenue or in Crichton.
So then where does this myth originate? There are some likely spots. If human psychology is any indication, it could be the result of Mobile’s fall from prominence when the capital moved to New Orleans and later, when the Cotton Boom ended.
It’s like the mind of a better-than-average adolescent athlete. He was okay in his heyday but after the bright lights fade and muscles wane, the tricks of nostalgia inflate his deeds of yesteryear. Decades go by and he’s telling himself and other unfortunate souls how great he was, that he missed his chance at the big time by some stroke of poor luck.
An esteemed local historian once told me that Mobilians did a grand job of reinventing their history and the city’s cultural renown during the post-War period, that the vision of the Azalea City as a sullied beauty emerged then. It could have been a reaction to friction from the influx of new residents.
This is a story we often see in other parts of American history, just writ larger. Immigrants come to our shores, they struggle with acceptance, then assimilate. Once a part of the mainstream, they seek to close the door behind them.
That same course is abundant here. New blood comes in, gets things moving, then becomes a part of the establishment. Look at the resurgence in downtown Mobile. The great majority of it was accomplished by those outside the traditional power structure. That’s where your pluck and fortitude is found, not in the comfort of cushy parlors but in the hunger of unproven souls.
Perpetuating the myth that Mobile was somehow more perfect, more refined before the latest injections of civic DNA does nothing but create divisions. Newer residents – as if settling here 50 years ago makes you “new” – might not be exactly like you but that doesn’t mean they don’t have anything to offer.
And if those residents’ predilections aren’t taken into account when addressing issues of how to remove downtown’s stigma and make it thrive, if you marginalize them before it’s even started, then what’s the point with trying to proceed?
All populations divide into subsets of like-minded folks. It’s human nature. But our population base isn’t large enough to allow that to continue unaddressed and still accomplish what we need to do with downtown.
Downtown Mobile needs to be the city’s living room, where we all feel our needs met and aren’t dissuaded by our slight differences. Without that, we’ve hit a ceiling on community well being.
Mobile has an intriguing and deep history that few towns can boast. Why deny it with hyperbole? Accept what we are and work with that. Use your strengths and improve your weaknesses.
When you love something or someone, you do so for what they are, not what you wish they were.
