A Message from Mayor Stimpson - January 7
Jan 7th, 2021
Good evening,
It is 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, January 7, and I am writing to give you an update from the City of Mobile.
Today, the Mobile County Health Department reports 27,892 COVID-19 cases, an increase of 446 cases. To review MCHD's detailed report, click here.
Work will begin tomorrow as part of a cultural resources study of the property that is slated to house the Africatown Welcome Center. Once completed, the Welcome Center will serve as a tourism facility and a central location to welcome visitors to the community. It will be located across Bay Bridge Cutoff Road from the Old Plateau Cemetery, which is the final resting place for many of Africatown’s founders.
With approval from the Mobile City Council, we have contracted with the University of South Alabama to conduct this study to ensure that no burials or artifacts associated with the Old Plateau Cemetery are impacted by the construction of the Welcome Center. The study will include a geographical survey of the land, an oral history project consulting members of the community and a Phase I archaeology survey.
We have strived to work with the Africatown community and the descendants of its original founders in all of our efforts to spur tourism to this uniquely historic piece of our City. That’s why we are taking the extra steps to ensure we’re properly respecting and documenting that history. This is an important step toward a Welcome Center that will greet visitors eager to see the story of Africatown firsthand.
Tomorrow evening, we’ll also be celebrating our first LODA Art Walk of the year with a virtual event from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. on the Art Walk Facebook page and in-person activities in downtown Mobile's entertainment district from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. This hybrid event will feature music and visual arts, and for those out and about downtown, there will be soup!
To highlight National Soup Month, some of downtown’s finest culinary artists will be offering a variety of special soups to keep you warm. In recognition of National Blood Donor month, the Life South Blood Mobile will also be on site accepting blood donations. You can find more information by clicking here.
This morning a friend of mine sent me a message the father of a young baby wrote following yesterday’s troubling events in our Nation’s capital. He urged other new parents not to feel sorry for or fear for their children because the world they’ll grow up in isn’t what it used to be.
“God created them and called them for the exact moment in time they're in. Don't teach them to be disheartened by the state of the world but hopeful that they can do something about it,” he wrote.
We have had many challenging times in our nation’s history and throughout the history of the World, but there have also always been men and women there to meet those challenges. Daniel survived the lion’s den and David defeated goliath. In the United States, we saw one of the greatest threats to our way of life vanquished during World War II by a group of men and women we still call “the Greatest Generation.”
We live in uncertain times, but we have risen to the challenge of uncertainty before. I have faith we will again, and your children or grandchildren may be some of the very people who help us do it.
Sleep tight,
Sandy Stimpson