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.’”