A coalition of secular and humanist organizations based in Mobile rolled out a series of new billboards in early 2015, part of a regional push to give nonbelievers along the Gulf Coast a visible sense of community. The Gulf Coast Coalition of Reason, a joint effort bringing together several local groups, put up four billboards in the opening weeks of the year, including one prominently placed along Interstate 10 in west Mobile County.
The coalition brings together the Greater Mobile Atheists, the Mobile Atheist Community, the Secular Student Alliance chapter at the University of South Alabama, the Southwest Alabama Freethinkers and the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Mobile, working alongside a dozen similar organizations across Florida and Mississippi. Funding for the roughly $11,000 campaign came from the national United Coalition of Reason, headquartered in Washington, D.C.
The Mobile billboard sits along I-10 between Carol Plantation Road and Theodore Dawes Road, a heavily traveled stretch of highway west of the city. Organizers said the message was intentionally simple: a welcome sign for people who don’t believe in God, at a time when other billboards along the same corridors carry religious messaging.
Local coalition coordinator Amanda Scott said the billboard offers something she and others in the secular community don’t often get, a public acknowledgment that they exist and are not alone. She described feeling regularly surrounded by religious advertising in the region, and said seeing a message aimed at nonbelievers created an unexpected sense of belonging.
Fellow coordinator Buz Ryland echoed that sentiment, saying organizers wanted the thousands of nonbelievers scattered across the Gulf Coast to know there is an established community they can be part of, one that he said is also engaged in charitable and volunteer work in the area.
The billboards direct passersby to the coalition’s website, which lists contact information for each of the member organizations. Beyond the Mobile sign, the campaign includes two billboards in Pensacola and one in Pascagoula, Mississippi, forming a loose network of signage stretching across the three-state Gulf Coast region.
The effort reflects a broader national trend of secular advocacy groups using public advertising to raise their visibility, following similar billboard campaigns in larger metro areas over the preceding several years. For a Deep South region where religious identity remains deeply embedded in civic and cultural life, organizers said the modest campaign was less about persuasion and more about letting a dispersed, often quiet community know where to find each other.
The billboards were expected to remain up for several weeks as part of the coalition’s broader outreach efforts in 2015.