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W
ithout Mobile, Alabama, there would be no Mardi Gras in New Orleans as we know
it.That got your attention, didn’t it?
In fact, folks argue about where Mardi Gras started in the United States: Mobile or New
Orleans. Mobile has set 1703 as the year it hosted the first celebration of Fat Tuesday in
the New World.
Frankly, I don’t get involved in that argument. To me, it’s not provable or even important
which set of early settlers got drunk, said “Joyeux Mardi Gras!” and passed out and where
they were when they did it.
The origin of modern Mardi Gras — mystic societies putting on parades and throwing
masked balls — is important, and that started in Mobile. Kind of.
Here it is in a nutshell.
Mobile is known as the Mother of Mystics because mystic societies were invented with the
founding of the Cowbellion de Rakin Society in 1831. Starting in 1840, the Cowbellions
staged a themed parade with floats through downtown Mobile on New Year’s Eve.
Afterwards, they would have a fancy dress ball.
Two other organizations, the Strikers (1843) and TDS (1845), formed and joined the
Cowbellions on New Year’s Eve.
Fast forward to 1857 in New Orleans. Mardi Gras in the city was a mess, to say the least.
Masked balls for the very rich were accompanied by street violence committed by roving
bands of street thugs. It had become something of a Devil’s Night, and the newspapers were
calling for or predicting the end of Mardi Gras in New Orleans.
Six civic-minded men called a meeting at a club room above Royal Street. Of those six,
three were formerly of Mobile and had been members of one or more of those New Year’s
Eve mystic societies.
Those six men, along with seven more who answered the invitation to that first meeting,
formed the Mistick Krewe of Comus and staged a themed parade on Fat Tuesday with
floats borrowed from the Cowbellion de Rakin Society.
Without the traditions established by that band of mystic societies in Mobile, the first
Mardi Gras krewe in New Orleans might never have been formed to not only save but
reinvent Mardi Gras.
Ironically, some years later, a founding member of Mobile’s TDS society by the name of Joe
Cain visited New Orleans and witnessed the Comus parade. That prompted him to return
to Mobile and turn Fat Tuesday into the next big parading event in that city.Today, Mobile
has more than 50 parading groups throughout the area. In downtown alone, more than 30
parades are held during the last 17 days of Carnival.
Mardi Gras in Mobile
by
Steve Joynt, Publisher, Mobile Mask
The tombstone of Joe Cain, Mobile's patron saint of Mardi Gras, on Joe Cain Day
St. Augustine Marching 100 in a recent
Mardi Gras commercial. To me, the Purple
Knights are THE SOUND of Mardi Gras.
When we called the bandleader, Jeffrey
Herbert, he said they’d been asked to do
a lot of things, but never parade through a
grocery store!
All those bands and all of those krewes
get hungry, and our delis from Lafayette
to Thibodaux to Lockport and Ocean
Springs are busy making sandwiches for
the floats all season long. You can work up
quite an appetite throwing beads! Just ask
Virginia Saussy, co-founder of Muses, one
of the biggest krewes in New Orleans
(see
story page ...)
Our bakeries are busy from
December through March with king cakes.
We bake over 300,000 of them, including
the ones served at the Washington D.C.
Mardi Gras Ball and the Mayor’s Mardi
Gras in New Orleans.
All hail Rex and Zulu!
This is our first year celebrating Mardi Gras
in Mobile, the birthplace of Mardi Gras.
We’re ready for Joe Cain Day andMoon Pies!
While everyone else is busy making costumes,
we’re making sandwiches, muffalettas, fried
chicken, and all of those other parade-friendly
foods. During parade weeks, we fry more
chicken than any one else on the Gulf Coast!
