As we prepare for the 2024 AASLH Annual Conference in Mobile, AL, in a couple of weeks, AASLH staff and members of our Host Committee have put together some resources to prepare you for visiting the Alabama Gulf Coast. Here are books, documentaries, podcasts, and even a Spotify playlist to get you in the spirit for Mobile. So, read, watch, or listen to these great sources as you pack or travel to Mobile.
And if you can’t join us for the conference, you can still learn about our host city and the important history stories told there.
Books About Mobile
Colonial History
Mike Bunn, Fourteenth Colony: The Forgotten Story of the Gulf Coast During America’s Revolutionary Era (2020)
William C. Davis, Rogue Republic: How Would-Be Patriots Wages the Shortest Revolution in American History (2011)
Jay Higginbotham, Old Mobile: Fort Louis de la Louisiane, 1702-1711(1991)
Culinary History
Christopher Andrews, A Culinary History of Mobile (2023)
Emily Blejwas, The Story of Alabama in Fourteen Foods (2019)
Ecohistory
R. Scot Duncan, Southern Wonder: Alabama’s Surprising Biodiversity (2013)
R. Scot Duncan, Southern Rivers: Restoring America’s Freshwater Biodiversity (2024)
Ben Raines, Saving America’s Amazon: The Threat to Our Nation’s Most Biodiverse River (2020)
General History
Mike Bunn, This Southern Metropolis: Life in Antebellum Mobile (2024)
Elizabeth Barrett Gould, From Fort to Port: An Architectural History of Mobile (1988)
John S. Sledge, The Mobile River (2015)
Michael V.R. Thomason, Mobile: The New History of Alabama’s First City (2001)
History of the Clotilda and Africatown
James P. Delgado, Deborah E. Marx, et.al., Clotilda: The History and Archaeology of the Last Slave Ship (2023)
Sylviane A. Diouf, Dreams of Africa in Alabama: The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Story of the Last Africans Brought to America (2009)
Zora Neale Hurston, Barracoon (2020 ed)
Ben Raines, The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and Extraordinary Reckoning (2022)
Nick Tabor. Africatown: America’s Last Slave Ship and The Community It Created (2023)
Indigenous History
Kathryn Braund, Greg Waselkov, and Raven Christopher, The Old Federal Road in Alabama: An Illustrated Guide (2019)
Ian Brown, Bottle Creek: A Pensacola Culture Site in South Alabama (2011)
Christopher D. Haveman, Rivers of Sand: Creek Indian Emigration, Relocation, and Ethnic Cleansing in the American South (2020)
Jacqueline Anderson Matte, They Say the Wind is Red: The Alabama Choctaw (2002)
Greg Waselkov, A Conquering Spirit: Fort Mims and the Redstick War of 1813-1814 (2006)
Greg Waslkov and Philip Carr, Southern Footprints: Exploring Gulf Coast Archaeology (2024)
Mardi Gras History
Isabel Machado, Carnival in Alabama: Marked Bodies and Invented Traditions in Mobile (2023)
L. Craig Roberts, Mardi Gras in Mobile (2015)
Military History
Mike Bunn, The Assault on Fort Blakeley: The Thunder and Lightning of Battle (2021)
Paul Brueske, The Last Siege: Chester Hearn Mobile Bay and the Mobile Campaign (2018)
Jack Friend, West Wind Flood Tide: The Battle of Mobile Bay (2013)
Broader Alabama Topics
Edwin C. Bridges, Alabama: The Making of an American State (2016)
Frye Gaillard, Alabama’s Civil Rights Trail: An Illustrated Guide to the Cradle of Freedom (2015)
Frye Gaillard, Cradle of Freedom: Alabama and the Movement that Changed America (2004)
Documentaries about Mobile
Ken Burns’ The War (PBS) – Mobile is featured as one of “The Four Towns” in the United States that became boomtowns during WWII.
The Order of Myths (Netflix) – This award-winning documentary from “Descendant” director Margaret Brown explores the racially divided Mardi Gras traditions in Mobile, Alabama.
Mobile in Black and White – A documentary film project intended to explore race relations in Mobile, Alabama.
Who Are You People? (Amazon Prime) – Documentary that explores the making of Close Encounters of the Third Kind in Mobile, Alabama from May 31 to September 2, 1976, as told by the locals that experienced this sci-fi classic.
The Last Known Slave Ship (YouTube) – This 60 Minutes archive includes several interviews with Clotilda descendants and experts conducted by Anderson Cooper since the discovery of the wreckage.
Descendant (Netflix) – Margaret Brown’s documentary tells the story of the families of those brought over on Clotilda, who now form the community of Africatown, and how the recent discovery of the shipwreck has compelled them to grapple with a century of mythmaking, the lasting forces of oppression and a shared path toward justice.
Clotilda: Last American Slave Ship (Disney+) – This National Geographic documentary highlights the work of archaeologists who are exploring the sunken wreck of the last American slave ship.
Search for “Mobile” on the Alabama Department of Archives and History’s YouTube channel:
youtube.com/@AlabamaArchives/search?query=Mobile
Podcasts:
Alabama Folklife Association contains several episodes on Mobile or south Alabama: https://www.alabamafolklife.org/podcast
“The Port City Plate Podcast,” bienvillebitesfoodtour.com/podcast
“Unreformed: The Story of the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children,” iheart.com/podcast/1119-unreformed-the-story-of-t-107005437