A GREAT COMING TOGETHER
"The Wisdom of Chief Slacabamorinico"
It has been estimated that local resident participation in Mardi Gras in New Orleans is 50% and in Mobile some 44% to 50%. Naturally many people participate over and over or the percentage would be even higher. For example during both the 1996 and 1997 Mardi Gras parading season in Mobile, police estimated over 1 million people attended the parades - this in a Metro area of perhaps 250,000. New Orleans participation is similar proportioned in relation to population.
Such massive involvement is as extraordinary as people zany behavior during the season. Mardi Gras has not only a strong attraction, but a durable one as well. Crowds and events continue to increase.
In a survey of 404 Mobile and Baldwin county residents conducted for the Mobile Press Register by the University of South Alabama Polling Group from February 3-6, 1997, 44% of those responding indicated that they attended at least one parade. 2 Had the poll dealt only with Mobile city or county residents the percentage would have most likely topped the 50% mark.
Samuel Kinser wrote in his classic volume Carnival American Style: Mardi Gras at New Orleans and Mobile, "Of the thirty largest urban concentrations in the United States none other has a festival of civic importance which is as old as Mardi Gras, and no large or middle-sized city, not even Pasadena with its Tournament of Roses spectacle or Philadelphia with its Mummers' Parade, has anything approaching New Orleans' apparent and Mobile's probable 50-percent participation." 1
1. Kinser, Samuel. Carnival American Style: Mardi Gras at New Orleans and Mobile. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago & London, 1990.
2. Mobile Register Poll, The Mobile Press Register, Mobile, Alabama, Sunday, February 9, 1997.