South Alabama Community Events Roundup: February 5-11, 2020

The first full week of February brings a dense slate of festivals, fundraisers, lectures and Mardi Gras season festivities across Mobile and Baldwin counties. Here is a look at the highlights. The calendar stretches from downtown Mobile’s Government Plaza to the shores of Gulf State Park, with stops at historic parks, community colleges, libraries and theaters in between. Residents on both sides of the bay have more than a dozen chances to get out of the house this week, whether their interests run toward local history, live music, running races or king cake.

The timing is no accident. Early February sits at the heart of Mardi Gras season in the Mobile area, and parade weekends reliably draw crowds that organizers of other events work to share. At the same time, winter’s mild weather makes it one of the best stretches of the year for outdoor festivals and races before Gulf Coast summer heat returns. The result is one of the fullest community calendars of the winter season.

Africatown Festival Honors Clotilda Survivors

The Spirit of Our Ancestors Festival runs Saturday, Feb. 8, from noon to 4 p.m. at Mobile County Training School (800 Whitley Street). The festival celebrates the survivors of the Clotilda, the slave ship that illegally brought 110 Africans from Dahomey — present-day Benin — to Mobile in 1860. Keynote speaker Dr. Deborah G. Plant will discuss how she turned Zora Neale Hurston’s 1927 interviews with Cudjo Lewis into the 2018 bestseller “Barracoon: The Story of the Last ‘Black Cargo.’”

The festival’s setting carries its own weight. Mobile County Training School is part of the Africatown community just north of downtown Mobile, founded after the Civil War by many of the same Africans who arrived on the Clotilda and their descendants. Cudjo Lewis, the ship’s last known surviving captive, lived out his life in the community, and his recollections recorded by Hurston nearly a century ago remain one of the most important first-person accounts of the transatlantic slave trade in American letters. The Clotilda itself was scuttled in the Mobile-Tensaw Delta after its final voyage, and the search for and identification of its remains has drawn international attention to the community in recent years.

Dr. Plant’s keynote connects that history to a contemporary audience. “Barracoon” presented Hurston’s conversations with Lewis in his own voice, preserving his words and dialect, and its 2018 publication — decades after the interviews were conducted — brought renewed national attention to both the book and the community it describes. Organizers of the festival have made the annual gathering a fixture of Africatown’s efforts to honor its founders while educating visitors from across the region.

Mardi Gras Season Flavors

The King Cake-Off takes over Government Plaza on Saturday, Feb. 8, from 11:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., with king cakes and king cake-inspired treats from local bakeries and creameries, kids’ activities, live music and a cash bar — timed so attendees can stay for the afternoon parades. The event puts downtown Mobile’s Mardi Gras tradition on full display, with the plaza transformed into a staging ground for the season’s signature pastry and the families who follow it.

King cake is the culinary centerpiece of the Gulf Coast’s Carnival season, a ring of sweet dough — here often iced in purple, green and gold — that appears in bakeries and offices from Twelfth Night through Fat Tuesday. A King Cake-Off turns that tradition into friendly competition among the region’s bakeries and creameries, giving attendees a taste of many styles in one afternoon and letting children enjoy activities while adults sample. The schedule is deliberately built around the parade calendar, so festivalgoers can walk straight from the plaza to a viewing spot for the afternoon processions.

The Mystics of Time aren’t the only draw this week; the AAF Mobile Bay Awards Show honors local advertising creativity Thursday, Feb. 6, at 6 p.m. at the Mardi Gras Museum. The American Advertising Federation’s local chapter uses the annual show to recognize the region’s creative and marketing professionals, and the Mardi Gras Museum setting gives the industry event a distinctly Mobile backdrop, mixing the city’s advertising community with its most famous cultural tradition.

Music and Theatre This Week

Children’s favorite Blippi comes to the Saenger Theatre Wednesday, Feb. 5, at 6 p.m. for an all-ages stage show of dancing and singing. The character, known to young audiences through online videos and television, brings his high-energy educational format to a live stage, and weekday family shows at the historic downtown theater typically draw packed houses of preschoolers and their parents.

The Saenger itself is a fixture of Mobile’s entertainment scene. The restored movie palace on Joachim Street hosts touring productions, concerts and comedy acts throughout the year, and its downtown location puts dinner-and-a-show combinations within walking distance of a growing strip of restaurants. Wednesday’s early curtain makes it an easy school-night outing for families with young children.

Historic Blakeley State Park hosts bluegrass band Things With Strings on Friday, Feb. 7, from 6 to 8 p.m., with storyteller Harriet Outlaw, author of “Haunted Baldwin County,” spinning legends between sets. The park, on the Tensaw River bluffs north of Spanish Fort, preserves the site of the town of Blakeley and one of the last major battles of the Civil War, and its evening programs blend entertainment with the kind of storytelling that keeps local history alive.

Mystery fans can catch “Murder on the Casting Couch” Friday at Heron Lakes Country Club or Saturday at Bellingrath Hall. The interactive murder mystery format invites audiences to play along as the plot unfolds around their dinner tables, and the double booking gives Mobile and Baldwin County residents a choice of nights. The Crescent Theater’s Rocky Horror Valentine’s Show follows next week, extending the theatrical calendar for fans of the cult classic in the weeks around Valentine’s Day.

Outdoors, Learning and Community

Fairhope Mayor Karin Wilson delivers her fourth State of the City presentation Thursday, Feb. 6, from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Fairhope Civic Center in an expo-style format with city department booths. The layout lets residents walk between displays, ask questions of city staff directly, and hear the mayor’s annual summary of where the Eastern Shore city stands — from infrastructure projects to parks to the ongoing conversations about growth that have defined Fairhope’s recent years.

The city’s Arbor Day ceremony Saturday at Coastal Alabama Community College recognizes poster contest and beautification award winners before a tree seedling giveaway. Fairhope has long worn its garden-city heritage proudly, and the annual ceremony doubles as a civic celebration, honoring student artwork while handing residents young trees to plant in their own yards.

Foley Public Library hosts librarian Jeanette Bornholt’s program on common genealogical mistakes Saturday at 1 p.m. Genealogy research has surged in popularity with the growth of online records, and programs like this one help South Alabama researchers avoid the transcription errors and false family-lore dead ends that can derail years of work. The library’s local history resources make it a regular stop for family researchers across southern Baldwin County.

The Gulf Frontal Watershed Management Plan meeting Thursday evening at Gulf State Park’s Learning Campus covers Little Lagoon and Perdido Pass watersheds. The session gives residents of Gulf Shores, Orange Beach and the surrounding area a direct role in shaping how the waterways that define the Alabama coast are managed, from water quality to habitat protection to stormwater planning.

Races and Community Drives

Races round out the week ahead: the Hub City Classic 5K and 10K runs Saturday at Garrett Park in Robertsdale benefiting the Jace Waters Foundation. The western Baldwin County event gives runners a chance to race in one of the county’s fastest-growing communities, with proceeds supporting a charitable cause close to the region’s heart.

The Sea Turtle Half Marathon and Sweetheart 5K return to The Hangout in Gulf Shores on Feb. 15, with proceeds supporting Camp Rap-A-Hope, Share the Beach and other coastal charities. The beachfront races pair a half marathon course along the coast with a shorter Valentine’s-themed 5K, and the beneficiaries connect runners directly to the coast they run along — Share the Beach coordinates the volunteer program that protects loggerhead and other sea turtle nests along Alabama’s beaches each summer, while Camp Rap-A-Hope serves children with cancer and their families.

Baldwin Bone & Joint’s 17th annual Many More Miles shoe drive also continues, collecting gently used athletic shoes in Daphne and at the Azalea Trail Run expo in late March. The drive ties Baldwin County’s busy running calendar to community service, channeling shoes donated by runners and residents to people who need them. Collection sites run through the winter training season, culminating at the expo for one of Mobile’s oldest and largest running events.

Ongoing Exhibits Worth a Visit

Ongoing exhibits include the Excelsior Band display at USA’s McCall Library, “Ancient Rome” at the History Museum of Mobile and “Dinosaurs Around the World” at the Exploreum through May 10. Together they give residents and visitors several standing options for the weeks around the festival calendar, no matter the weather or the day of the week.

The Excelsior Band display documents one of Mobile’s most beloved institutions — the brass band that has marched in Mardi Gras celebrations and community events for well over a century, and that remains a soundtrack of the season. The McCall Library’s archives at the University of South Alabama make it a natural home for material on the band’s long history.

The History Museum of Mobile’s “Ancient Rome” brings artifacts of the classical world to the old city hall building downtown, a rare chance for students and families in south Alabama to see material from antiquity without leaving the region. Across downtown, the Gulf Coast Exploreum Science Center’s “Dinosaurs Around the World” offers an immersive look at prehistoric life through animatronic and interactive displays, an option aimed squarely at families with school-age children and scheduled to run through May 10 — well past this week’s festival rush.

Planning the Week Ahead

With so much on the calendar, the practical challenge is choosing. Families with young children have Blippi on Wednesday and the King Cake-Off’s kids’ activities on Saturday. History buffs can build a full day around the Spirit of Our Ancestors Festival, the Blakeley bluegrass-and-storytelling evening, or the museum exhibits. Runners have back-to-back weekends of racing, and anyone curious about local government, genealogy or watershed planning has a meeting or program to attend.

Organizers across both counties have timed their events to complement, not compete with, the Mardi Gras parades that anchor the season — the King Cake-Off most explicitly, but the museum exhibits and library programs offer indoor alternatives for residents who want to keep exploring between processions. As always with community events, attendees should confirm final details with venues before heading out, since times and locations can shift as the week unfolds.

For a region that sometimes sees its two counties as separate worlds — Mobile’s downtown parades on one side of the bay, Baldwin County’s beach towns and fast-growing suburbs on the other — the first full week of February makes the case that south Alabama’s community life is a single, connected thing. From Africatown to Gulf State Park, from Government Plaza to Garrett Park in Robertsdale, the week’s events trace a map of the whole region, and residents have seven days to see it for themselves.