The National African American Archives and Museum features the history of African-American participation in Mardi Gras, slavery-era artifacts, and portraits and biographies of famous African Americans. It is the largest industrial and transportation complex in the region with more than 70 companies, many of which are aerospace, spread over 1,650 acres (668 ha). Current companies that were formerly based in the city include Checkers, Minolta-QMS, Morrison’s, and the Waterman Steamship Corporation. Between 1993 and 2003 roughly 13,983 new jobs were created as 87 new companies were founded and 399 existing companies were expanded. Aerospace, steel, ship building, retail, services, construction, medicine, and manufacturing are Mobile’s major industries.
The port is also home to private bulk terminal operators, as well as a number of highly specialized shipbuilding and repair companies with two of the largest floating dry docks on the Gulf Coast. Mobile’s public transportation is the Wave Transit System which features buses with 18 fixed routes and neighborhood service. Founded in 1927, Bishop State Community College is a public, historically African American, community college with four campuses in Mobile. Protestant schools include St. Paul’s Episcopal School and Faith Academy. Many parochial schools belong to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Mobile, including McGill-Toolen Catholic High School. MCPSS has an enrollment of approximately 52,000 students at 92 schools, employs approximately 7,200 public school employees, and had a budget in 2024–2025 of $843 million.
- The top graduating high school seniors from their respective states compete each June.
- Early predecessors of cellular phones included analog radio communications from ships and trains.
- South Alabama basketball is a mid-major team in the Sun Belt Conference.
- Native NASCAR drivers include Bubba Wallace, Cale Gale, and Rick Crawford.
- The first mobile news service, delivered via SMS, was launched in Finland in 2000, and subsequently many organizations provided “on-demand” and “instant” news services by SMS.
- In Japanese mobile phone culture for example, mobile phones are often decorated with charms.
- In the U.S., the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations prohibit the use of mobile phones aboard aircraft in flight.
BayPointe Hospital and Children’s Residential Services is the city’s only psychiatric hospital. In 2008, the University of South Alabama opened the Mitchell Cancer Center Institute, which includes the first academic cancer research center in the central Gulf Coast region. It includes their flagship hospital Mobile Infirmary, two emergency centers and three outpatient surgery centers. Infirmary Health is Alabama’s largest nonprofit, non-governmental health care system. The 200-year-old Mobile County Health Department (MCHD) provides education and preventive health services to Mobile and surrounding areas. When MAWSS was founded in 1814, it used Three-Mile Creek to provide water to the city.
The Mobile Carnival Museum houses the city’s Mardi Gras history and memorabilia. The Mobile Police Department Museum chronicles the history of the city’s law enforcement. It serves as the official welcome center and a colonial-era living history museum. The Fort of Colonial Mobile is a reconstruction of the city’s original Fort Condé, built on the original fort’s footprint. It features the World War II era battleship USS Alabama, the World War II era submarine USS Drum, Korean War and Vietnam War Memorials, and historical military equipment. The Doy Leale McCall Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the University of South Alabama are open to the public and house primary sources relating to the history of the university, Mobile, and southern Alabama.
History
Langan Park, the largest of the parks at 720 acres (291 ha), features lakes, natural rivo casino spaces, and contains the Mobile Museum of Art, Azalea City Golf Course, Mobile Botanical Gardens and Playhouse in the Park. The public Mobile Tennis Center includes over 50 courts, all lighted and hard-court. The city’s lone example of the Egyptian Revival style is the Scottish Rite Temple, with Egyptian motifs, including obelisks and sphinxes. The Oakleigh Historic Complex are three house museums that portray the daily lives of enslaved, working class, and upper-class people during the 19th century.
History
Mobile became a majority-minority city, with Black or African American residents remaining the largest racial group. As white conservatives increasingly entered the Republican Party in the late 20th century, African-American residents of the city have elected members of the Democratic Party as their candidates of choice. This was nearly a decade after the United States Supreme Court had ruled in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) that segregation of public schools was unconstitutional. The free population in the whole of Mobile County, including the city, consisted of 29,754 citizens, of which 1,195 were free people of color. When Mobile was included in the Mississippi Territory in 1813, the population had dwindled to roughly 300 people. Considered one of the Gulf Coast’s cultural centers, Mobile has several art museums, a symphony orchestra, professional opera, professional ballet company, and a large concentration of historic architecture.
- The Mobile Genealogical Society Library and Media Center features handwritten manuscripts and published materials that are available for use in genealogical research.
- Mobile’s public transportation is the Wave Transit System which features buses with 18 fixed routes and neighborhood service.
- Some audio-quality enhancing features, such as Voice over LTE and HD Voice, have appeared and are often available on newer smartphones.
- These converge at the Port of Mobile, which provides intermodal freight transport service to companies engaged in importing and exporting.
- The Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception was built on the colonial-era Campo Santo cemetery, of which no trace remains.
- Other architectural styles in the city include shotgun houses, Colonial Revival, Tudor Revival, Spanish Colonial Revival, and Beaux-Arts.
- The National African American Archives and Museum features the history of African-American participation in Mardi Gras, slavery-era artifacts, and portraits and biographies of famous African Americans.
History
Text messaging, which are performed on mobile phones, has also led to the creation of ‘SMS language’. In Japanese mobile phone culture for example, mobile phones are often decorated with charms. They also stated that with the lack of data for the research and the usage periods of 15 years will warrant further research for smartphones and the cause of brain tumors. As of 2007, some hospitals had banned mobile devices due to a common misconception that their use would create significant electromagnetic interference.
Battery
The museum was expanded in 2002 to approximately 95,000 square feet (8,826 m2). The Mobile Museum of Art features permanent exhibits that span several centuries of art and culture. Its local history and genealogy division is located near the Ben May Main Library on Government Street. The Mobile Genealogical Society Library and Media Center features handwritten manuscripts and published materials that are available for use in genealogical research. Mobile has the longest history of celebrating Mardi Gras in the United States, dating to the early 18th century during the French colonial period.
In February 2014, 93% of mobile developers were targeting smartphones first for mobile app development. There are a huge variety of apps, including video games, music products and business tools. The first mobile news service, delivered via SMS, was launched in Finland in 2000, and subsequently many organizations provided “on-demand” and “instant” news services by SMS. A common data application on mobile phones is Short Message Service (SMS) text messaging. Of the two, Android has been the best-selling system worldwide on smartphones since 2011, and as of March 2025, Android had 71.9% of the overall market share, while iOS had 27.7%. Feature phones have basic software platforms whilst smartphones have a fully-featured operating system (commonly abbreviated to an OS), with the two most-used platforms being Android and iOS.
SIM and R-UIM cards may be mixed together to allow both GSM and CDMA networks to be accessed. The exact number of cycles depends on factors such as charging habits, operating temperature, and battery management systems. Most modern mobile phones use lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries, which are designed to endure between 500 and 2,500 charge cycles.