County View

Last October Merceria Ludgood became the first African-American woman elected a Mobile County Commissioner. This is Part One of my interview with her.

Q. When you graduated with honors from Toulminville High School in 1970, Mobile was a very different place than today. What kept you strong and on point during those years?

ML: I had an excellent support system, which included first and foremost my parents. Both my parents worked outside the home and my fraternal aunt helped to care for me, my two brothers and sister. They were hard working people whose values were shaped by their rural upbringing during the Depression era. They demanded the best from us and expected that we would always conduct ourselves with dignity.

People in my neighborhood and church encouraged us. My teachers reminded us constantly that no one could ever take from us what we had in our heads, that we should strive to be “twice as good.” They believed that if we achieved academically we would be less of a victim of the racism and discrimination so prevalent in our society. Many of us believed only to learn later that “twice as good” means little to those motivated by racial prejudice.

Q. Did you like living in Mobile back then, or were you ready to get off to college and explore other places in the world?

ML: I loved Mobile then as I do now, but I knew that there was a lot wrong with the way things were done. I grew up on the banks of Three Mile Creek and a hard rain would prevent us from getting out of the house except by boat. An even harder rain brought Three Mile Creek into our house, literally.

There was no recreational facility in our neighborhood. My mother and many others sought assistance from the Mobile City Commission with no success. They watched city resources bypass us time and time again en route to the more affluent areas. In fact some of us believed that the city addressed storm water management issues in Springhill by redirecting it to the Millville area of Crichton. That may not be accurate from an engineering standpoint, but it made sense to our adolescent imaginations.

I think my parents wanted me to remain in Mobile for college, but I had no desire to do so. Instead I went north to Tuscaloosa, a city more overtly racist than Mobile. It was the domain of Robert Shelton, the then-Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

My first Homecoming parade at the University of Alabama featured a male group , maybe a fraternity, parading in blackface wearing dirty, ragged clothes and barefoot, presumably as slaves. To this day, that memory and Old South Day at a white fraternity house are etched in my memory.

Leaving Mobile was a part of the journey, but it was not a move that was more welcoming.

Q. Was there any one defining moment that set your goals toward getting your law degree?

ML: As best as I can remember it was 1963, with a confluence of events that included the March on Washington, the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, where four girls who could have been my classmates ,were killed, and the assassination of John F. Kennedy. My recollection is that it was lawyers who were instrumental in addressing so many of the issues surrounding these events.

They seemed such a rarified group and mostly men. I remember reading about Constance Baker Motley, but black women were even rarer. In ninth grade, Thurgood Marshall was the subject of my oratorical address. So while I harbored this secret ambition, it did not seem real to me because I knew no lawyers.

My undergraduate degree was in Secondary Education Social Sciences with emphasis in history. That major married my love of history with a vocation where I was sure I could get a job. Back then it was thought that a teacher’s certificate was something you could always “fall back on” if your other plans failed.

That proved not to be the case for me. My attempt to find employment in Mobile in the spring of 1973 proved fruitless because social studies vacancies were as scarce as hens’ teeth. Had I gotten a job teaching Social Studies in high school I doubt that I would have gone to law school. I taught 12th grade American Government at Druid High School as my student teaching experience. I was hooked on teaching, but that was not to be at least in that setting.

Q. Is Mobile the next boomtown of the South and is that a good thing? Are we ready to be the next Atlanta?

ML: Mobile is growing by leaps and bounds. Our greatest challenge is to ensure that the no sector of the population is left behind as we grow. Atlanta is a growing, prosperous city, but it has its challenges as well. It is important to learn from cities like Atlanta and not repeat their mistakes.

In the Atlanta metro area surrounding cities benefited from Atlanta’s growth. That will be a plus for the cities and towns in Mobile County. There are several successful planning initiatives underway that have the potential to position us to grow smartly.

Q. I’ve heard quite a bit of feedback on the recent health insurance increase for Mobile County employees and some dissatisfaction with the health care plan. One of the concerns is limited or no coverage in many areas of need under the plan. Is it possible a new health care plan could be introduced in the future?

ML: There is no new healthcare under consideration. I am sure there are many areas where coverage is not provided. Unfortunately that is the situation with all healthcare plans. If they covered every possible medical situation it would be cost prohibitive.

I am one of those individuals who has experienced a catastrophic illness so I understand better than most the importance of health insurance. My coverage was through a private provider and I paid the full premium. It did not cover everything, but it covered enough for me not to be saddled with medical bills for the next 20 years. The plan is not perfect, but I think it is an excellent plan for a government employer whose resources are wholly from dollars from taxpayers.

Contact Preston Brady at preston@lagniappemobile.com.

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