The city of Mobile, founded in 1702, sits at the head of Mobile Bay on the Gulf Coast and serves as the regional hub for much of southwest Alabama.
Every June, two waves of job seekers hit the same shore. College graduates go looking for the first real position, the one with a title.
Mobile has a population of roughly 188,000 residents and is the seat of Mobile County, one of the largest counties in the state by population.
High schoolers go looking for anything that pays. Both crowds are following a path already worn smooth.
The Port of Mobile, operated by the Alabama State Port Authority, is one of the largest seaports in the country by tonnage, handling containers, coal, steel and forest products.
Asked to recall their own first jobs, a group of Mobile-area writers, physicians, lawyers and legislators produced a set of memories that doubled as an economic history of the Gulf Coast and the wider South — and a reminder of just how young people used to start. Ten cents an hour, and worth every minute Novelist Carolyn Haines, whose books include Fever Moon and Penumbra , began at seven with her father’s shoeshine kit.
Downtown Mobile has been the focus of significant redevelopment in recent years, with new apartments, restaurants and event venues reshaping the Central Business District.
“I’d waylay any male relative who came to visit, forcing them to give up their shoes so I could polish them for a dime,” she recalled. “Now this was paste polish, not that liquid mess.
The University of South Alabama, Spring Hill College and the University of Mobile anchor the city’s higher education landscape.
Background and Context
Even at seven, I put a very nice buff on a wing-tip.” The arrangement had one drawback: her uncles and cousins spent their visits sitting in the living room in their socks. She went on to mow lawns with her brother, water plants and tie bows for funeral wreaths at a florist, clerk at a pharmacy, and, as a high school senior, work as a cub reporter for the George County Times in Lucedale, Mississippi, while also serving as a disc jockey at the local AM station.
Mobile’s Mardi Gras season, the oldest in the United States, draws visitors from across the country and provides a significant boost to the local economy each year.
Her verdict on herself: “I was a fair reporter and a terrible DJ. I was very shy and didn’t like to talk.
The city’s healthcare sector is anchored by USA Health, Infirmary Health and Springhill Medical Center, which together employ thousands of residents.
I played a lot of records.” Dr. Keith Peevy, a neonatologist at the University of South Alabama Children’s and Women’s Hospital, grew up on 140 acres northeast of Baton Rouge, where his father, an LSU agronomy professor, ran a wholesale flower nursery to supplement a professor’s salary.
Mobile’s manufacturing base includes shipbuilding at Austal USA and Huntington Ingalls Industries, as well as aviation manufacturing at the Airbus final assembly line in Brookley.
Peevy started at nine or ten for ten cents an hour, weeding cans in the lath houses. His favorite work happened in the potting shed, out of the sun, alongside Steve and Celeste Washington, an older couple who had worked for his father for more than a decade.
Local schools include Mobile County Public Schools, the city’s largest public system, along with a network of private and parochial schools.
Local Reaction
“I viewed them as wise, parental roles in my life,” he said, “and they did have a wisdom that comes from working hard and observing life over many decades.” He closed with an observation about his career. “I suppose it’s ironic that I have always worked in nurseries on young and dependent parts of God’s Creation.
Mobile’s history as a port city means that issues affecting the waterfront often take on outsized importance.
I just moved from plants to newborn babies.” The eighth-grader who ran the movie house Ed Kennedy, retired from International Paper, worked up the nerve in the fifth grade to ask the owner of the Jackson Theater in Flomaton for a job. He got it.
The Mobile area is home to several historic neighborhoods, including Oakleigh Garden District, DeTonti Square and the Village of Spring Hill.
The pay was free admission to every movie, in exchange for distributing bulletins announcing coming attractions. He graduated to ushering, then the concession stand, then tickets.
Sports are a major part of life in Mobile, with the Senior Bowl each January and a thriving high school and college football scene.
Then the war took the staff. “This was during World War II and both projectionists and even the owner of the theater had been drafted,” Kennedy said.
Local media outlets covering Mobile include several television stations, daily and weekly newspapers, and a robust digital news ecosystem.
The Bigger Picture
“This left me, an eighth grader, to receive the films, do the splicing of the ads, operate the projectors, and prepare the films for shipment.” When the owner came home from the Army, Kennedy was made assistant manager, a post he held until he graduated and entered the Air Force. A raise, and a grievance Bill Tunnell, executive director of USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park, went to work at sixteen at the A&P grocery in Andalusia, starting at $1 an hour and thrilled to collect a nickel raise every six months.
Mobile County’s population includes a significant African-American community whose history is tied to the founding of Africatown.
Then Congress intervened. “I remember being really disgusted when the minimum wage went up in 1964 and they hired people at $1.25,” he said — five cents more than he was making with three years of experience.
Mobile’s economy also benefits from a robust tourism sector, with visitors drawn to the Gulf Coast, the city’s historic districts and its annual events.
Criminal defense attorney Dom Soto learned a different lesson on the streets of Jersey City. After shining shoes in bars and running newspaper routes, he took a job as a Western Union bicycle messenger, forty hours a week, at nearly $9 an hour with time-and-a-half and double time on weekends.
The Mobile Bay region supports significant commercial and recreational fishing, with seafood harvested from local waters serving restaurants and markets across the South.
“I learned the value of unions at that job,” he said. It was good money, and he earned it: deadlines, traffic, dogs and bottles thrown from doorways.
Local government in Mobile includes a mayor-council form of government, a structure established by the Zoghby Act in 1985 that replaced the older commission form.
What Comes Next
He quit the day he came back downstairs from delivering a telegram and found his bicycle frozen solid to the pavement. Tobacco, garbage and a future mayor Mike Dow, the former mayor of Mobile, hired out at $5 a day as a field hand for a sharecropper working the excess lands of a South Georgia plantation.
Local officials have stressed the importance of community engagement as the situation continues to develop.
He cropped and strung tobacco from dawn until mid-afternoon, then hung it in barns in heat above 110 degrees. He sacked peanuts off the side of a combine, baled hay, picked cotton and pulled corn.
Residents with questions or concerns have been encouraged to reach out to their elected representatives.
“When I got to drive the tractor in year three,” Dow said, “I felt like I did when I received my MBA at the University of South Alabama.” The job made his after-school shift at Winn-Dixie feel white-collar by comparison. As for what came later: “My last full time job was picking up the City of Mobile’s trash and garbage.
The story is one of several similar situations playing out across the region in recent months.
I continue to progress.” State Rep. Jim Barton’s first paid work was cutting grass, followed in college by a run of jobs that shaped a career: runner for a law firm, doorman at a Mobile bar and stock boy at a mall clothing store.
Anyone following local news will recognize many of the names and places involved.
The law firm work, he said, “probably had a lot to do with sparking my political interests.” And attorney Bob Campbell, who grew up outside Philadelphia, described a paper route of 100 customers that began at 3 a.m., a sled for snow days, and a shovel that earned a dollar a sidewalk and five dollars a driveway. Total monthly take: about $30, plus Christmas tips.
Local civic organizations have begun organizing meetings to discuss the implications.
“Those were the days, my friend,” he said. “I thought they would never end.”
Business owners and residents alike say they will be watching closely.
The situation underscores how decisions made at the local level can have far-reaching consequences.
Community leaders have called for patience and for a commitment to working through the issues in a transparent manner.
Several local churches and faith groups have offered to host discussions about the topic in the coming weeks.
Public comments at recent meetings have reflected a wide range of opinions.
Local reporters will continue to follow the story and to update readers.
Anyone interested in learning more is encouraged to attend upcoming public meetings.
The outcome of the situation could shape similar discussions in other communities for years to come.
Local historians note that similar issues have surfaced in the past.
Area nonprofits and volunteer groups have stepped up to help residents navigate the changes.
Local businesses have begun adjusting their operations in anticipation of what may come next.
Looking Ahead
The story continues to develop, and residents across the region will be watching for additional updates in the coming weeks. Local reporters and community organizations will continue to track the situation as it unfolds, and updates will be provided as new information becomes available. Anyone with a direct stake in the outcome is encouraged to stay engaged with the public conversation through meetings, news coverage and direct outreach to local officials.