MOBILE, Ala. (WKRG) — The Mobile Area Mardi Gras Association consistently draws huge crowds to downtown Mobile on Fat Tuesday spreading revelry with its ‘Mammoth Parade.’

To truly appreciate the spirit of carnival shared by its participants, you have to travel back to a much different time. If you saw Black people in a Mardi Gras parade, they were working as torch carriers or guarding mules to pull the floats for all white organizations.

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“When the Colored Carnival Association was started, Jim Crow was king,” MAMGA spokesperson Eric Finley said. “There was no integration. There was no collaboration.”

Then, in 1938, a small group of Black professionals started The Colored Carnival Association, which would later be renamed the Mobile Area Mardi Gras Association.

“We have to put ourselves in the climate of the thirties and the forties,” Finley said. “There were really not a lot of people encouraging blacks to do things. So, they took that upon themselves to say, ‘hey…we are successful and it is our duty to encourage students at the local schools and community to be successful.’”

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The founders were W.L. Russell, a dentist; J.T. McInnis, a mortician; Sam Besteda, a tailor; and Dr. James Alexander Franklin, a medical physician. Finley refers to them as “mentors before their time” saying they wanted black children to experience the joy of Mardi Gras and know they too could be kings and queens, but, it would require a process.

“They put me to work,” Thomas Michele Withers said. “I just didn’t go in there, you know, as a member.”

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At 89, he is MAMGA’s oldest living member. He’s been a member for 65 years, 40 of those as a marshal.

Growing up in Mobile, he admired the founding members and what they were doing in his hometown while attending what is now Tuskegee University.

“I used to watch them all through college,” Withers said. “What they were doing in Mobile Alabama, and of course, they were on television and they were always doing something for the community.”

He recalls a time when members had no place to meet. When they gathered, they brought their own chairs.

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“Old timers called it the den on the dump,” said Withers.

The ‘old timers’ as he calls them, mentored younger members to be civically minded and seek higher education while providing carnival activities.

In 1939, MAMGA paraded down then-Davis Avenue…Now MLK Avenue with two floats. A year later, MAMGA presented its first royal court.

Finley shared his memories not only as a past president but, as the grandson of Dr. Franklin.
In the doctor’s home on N. Ann Street in Mobile, he recalled his amazement of the royal court in all their regalia and members gathering for a toast on Fat Tuesday.

“Even as a kid, even in the family, I would see them and be one day I’m going to get me one,” Finley said. “One day, I’ll have me one of those red jackets because it’s a prestigious organization, and so here we are today continuing with that legacy.”

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A legacy of monarchs, grand marshals and esteemed members including sports legends Hank Aaron and Tommie Agee. Former U.S. Secretary of Labor Alexis Herman, former Prichard Mayor AJ Cooper, Hall of Fame broadcaster Mel Showers, inventor Lonnie Johnson, college president Dr. Yvonne Kennedy and McDonald’s Franchisee Al Joyner.

“Even though Mardi Gras is about fun, revelry… It’s also telling the history of our community…of African Americans,” said Finley while giving a tour of the organization’s float den in Downtown Mobile.

Walking through the den is a colorful and artistic lesson in black culture in Mobile.

He references one float dedicated to Africatown.

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“This float is just symbolic of the message from the beginning,” Finley said. “The organization always wanted to better the community and find a way for the participants to continue the processes in life to be successful, and so we correlate that philosophy with the beginning of Africatown. It falls into place as to what we’re doing today.”

MAMGA marries Mardi Gras fun with its history pridefully putting on display what members have overcome and where they want to go.

“Oh, I’m just bubbling with where we need to go,” Finley said. “The transformation, you know, so we got to keep moving it forward.”

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