This article first appeared in the 2017 issue of Mobile Mask magazine
The Utopia Club, Inc., on Mobile Bay
The Utopia Club members and wives at the first CCA Mayor's Party, 1940
The first King Elexis I, Alexander Leo Herman, and his Queen, Aline Jenkins, 1940
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER:
1. Is it clear to you why African Americans had to create their own clubs and organizations many years ago in order to create their own Mardi Gras? Why or why not?
2. Why so you think those organizations continue today?
3. Many Mardi Gras organizations are about more than just Mardi Gras, aren't they?
Lesson 5
MAMGA was Born on Mobile Bay in The Utopia Club
On the lower west coast of Mobile Bay, near the top of Mon Louis Island, sits a modest cinderblock building that looks like any other shorefront house that’s weathered decades of storms and stood strong.
But the place near the end of Gregory Street is also something of a birthplace of the pre-eminent African-American Mardi Gras celebration in Mobile.
It’s the home of The Utopia Club. Founded in 1936 as an African-American men’s social club, some of the charter members of The Utopia Club also became the founding members of the Colored Carnival Association or CCA in 1938.
In the 1970s, the Colored Carnival Association changed its name to the Mobile Area Mardi Gras Association or MAMGA, what we know as Mobile’s premier African-American Mardi Gras organization.
MAMGA selects and presents the African-American King and Queen of Mardi Gras, and every Fat Tuesday, MAMGA’s Mammoth Parade is among the highlights of Mardi Gras Day in Mobile.
The very beginning of organized Mardi Gras events in the African-American community of Mobile started with the Order of Doves in 1897. That organization held a short walking procession and a ball every Lundi Gras until about 1914.
About the same time, civic and social clubs were becoming a driving force in the African-American community, especially among those in the upper echelons: doctors, dentists, bankers, pharmacists, and funeral home directors.
Unlike the earlier benevolent, burial and funerary entities, which were formed to provide members of the African-American community with insurance, health care, and loans, Mobile’s social clubs of the 1930s and on were simply that, places where social and business relationships were built over good meals, drink, and music.
They were country clubs without golf courses, and the upper end of Mon Louis Island became a favorite area to build. The building next to The Utopia Club was a clubhouse for the Comrades Social Club, formed in 1946. Their membership consisted of postal carriers, accountants, teachers, drivers, artists, pharmacists, bankers, tailors, laundry/dry cleaners, caterers, nightclub owners, and other small business owners.
African Americans in those days were not welcome at the popular beach areas frequented by whites, so they found their own part of the shoreline where they could bring their families in the summer, enjoy the water, fish, and picnic.
The Utopia Club had one or more predecessors, including The Utopia Social Club, going back as early as 1901. But it was the 1936 incarnation that still exists today and gave birth to the Colored Carnival Association.
Just two years after The Utopia Club was formed, charter members Dr. Wilborne Russell, DDS; J.T. McKinnis; and J.A. Franklin, M.D., were joined by Sam Besteda Jr. to form the CCA.
The importance of Dr. Russell in particular cannot be overstated, since he served as president of the CCA and MAMGA until 1988.
In 1939, the CCA held “the first colored carnival parade in Mobile’s history,” according to The Mobile Press-Register, but did not select a king and queen.
The parade was held on Fat Tuesday, February 21, at 3:30 p.m. “with marching groups, decorated bicycles, pedestrian maskers, and a number of floats,” according to the newspaper. The Utopia Club sponsored at least one of those floats.
“Band and drum corps included those of St. Peter Claver’s School, Most Pure Heart of Mary School, Bama State Band, Excelsior Band, Melody Masters, a clown band, and a jazz orchestra from a traveling minstrel show.”
Interestingly, there were African-American royals crowned and feted that year, just not by the CCA.
Winston A. Allen was “chosen by popular vote as the first ruling monarch” of African-American Mardi Gras and dubbed himself King Tut, according to the Press-Register in 1939.
The royal court was sponsored by several groups in the community. According to The Strikers Social Club history, the Strikers were “asked to join the Smart and Thrifty Club (Ladies Club) in sponsoring a Mardi Gras parade. After much planning, The Strikers Club, Inc., the Smart and Thrifty Club and the Chauffeur Social Club united to sponsor the parade.
“A coronation was held. King Winston Allen crowned Ruby Morgan as the first African-American Queen of Mardi Gras.”
Ruby Morgan was a student at Dunbar High School, and Winston Allen worked at Johnson-Allen Mortuary.
The coronation, scheduled for 10 p.m. Fat Tuesday at the Colored Community Center, was followed by the two-float parade that “wended northward to Davis Avenue, countermarching up and down that thoroughfare,” the newspaper said.
The following year, 1940, The Strikers apparently dropped out of the king and queen business, and the CCA began a royal legacy that continues today.
The first King was Alexander Leo Herman, the 41-year-old president of the Unity Burial and Life Insurance Company and a member of The Utopia Club. At the suggestion of Frederica Evans, Herman took the name King Elexis I, which has been the nom-de-royale of every CCA and MAMGA king since.
The Queen and her five ladies of the court were selected from the debutantes of The Utopia Club, and their escorts were the five knights of the court. Nineteen-year-old Aline Jenkins served as the first Queen of the CCA.
“The beauty of the carnival celebration will be accentuated by the youth and charm of the queen and her court,” a newspaper of the time said. “Chosen from the season’s debutantes and young entrants into society, the queen, her ladies in waiting, and maids represent a refreshing note in the social life of our section.”
Samuel Besteda Jr., one of the founders of the CCA and a well-known tailor, was elected “mayor of colored Mobile,” as the newspaper put it, “after a popular ballot was cast at the Colored Community Center.”
The position of Mayor was an ingenious invention of the CCA. The founders of that group wanted their Mardi Gras King to be afforded everything that the white king, Felix III, was afforded, including a key to the city.
Since the white mayor of Mobile in 1940 was surely never going to present a key to the city to any African American, the CCA simply created its own Mayor for just that purpose.
Years later, when that service was provided by the actual mayor of the city, the position became Grand Marshal, still a vaunted position in MAMGA.
On the afternoon of Sunday, February 4, 1940, King Elexis I “arrived” in Mobile and “was escorted to the Colored Community Center, where he met his queen and other dignitaries and plans for two days of great activity,” the Press-Register said.
The Queen was crowned at 9 p.m. the next day at the community center, followed by a coronation dance. The CCA parade was held the next day, Fat Tuesday, at 3:30 p.m.
Many years later, Aline Jenkins Howard told an interviewer that she did not ride in the parade, she watched it from the Elks Lodge. The parade that year included the 80-piece Tuskegee Institute Band and the 56-piece band from the Alabama State Teachers College.
By 1941, King Elexis I, Dr. T.W. Tobin, DDS, and his Queen, Bernice Walker, had their own floats in the CCA parade. The Queen and her court were again selected from The Utopia Club’s debutantes, and the 1941 CCA Mayor was William H. Madison, one of the charter members of The Utopia Club.
There were no kings or queens or parades from 1942 through 1945, due to World War II.
By 1948, the CCA Queen and her court were chosen from the debutantes presented by the new Comrades Social Club. The Utopia Club still entered a float in the CCA parade for many more years, but it had served its role as incubator for African-American Mardi Gras in Mobile.
For decades, The Utopia Club continued to present debutantes at its costume de rigueur ball on the last Thursday of December at one ballroom or another downtown.
Each month, the members held their monthly meeting at the clubhouse on Mobile Bay. Each member was required to host at least one meeting every six years. The members wore their best suits, and the tables in the clubhouse were adorned with white cloths, crystal glasses, silver flatware, and centerpieces. A well-stocked bar and a sumptuous meal, followed by cigars, were the expected elements of the meeting.
These days, The Utopia Club is down to about 25 members, and the organization last held its formal ball and last presented debutantes in 2004.
Those may return one day, members said, but right now their emphasis is on fixing the clubhouse and the surrounding grounds.
Out at the end of the deep back yard of the clubhouse, a sea wall is giving way to the forces of the bay. Members pointed out various items sticking out of the water as markers of where the yard used to end or where the pier used to be.
For now, the picnics, cookouts, and casual meetings will continue, and The Utopia Club remains their secluded little piece of heaven on the bay.
Photos of past presidents line the walls of The Utopia Club