February 13, 1866

Joseph Stillwell Cain paraded through downtown Mobile on Fat Tuesday in the city’s first carnival celebration since before the Civil War. Dressed as a fictional Chickasaw chief named Slackabamarinico, Cain and six others rode through the city in a decorated charcoal wagon playing horns and drums as they declared an end to the suffering the city experienced during the Civil War. Cain is credited with moving Mobile’s Mardi Gras celebration from New Year’s Eve to the more traditional pre-Lenten period and, since the 1960s, is honored each year with a parade on Joe Cain Day, held the Sunday before Fat Tuesday.

RELATED: How well do you know your Mardi Gras history?

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.

Joe Cain dressed as his Mardi Gras fictional character, Chickasaw Chief Slackabamarinico. His role as Slackabamarinico is noted on his gravestone in the Church Street Cemetery in Mobile. (Wikimedia, the University of South Alabama)

Grave of Joseph Stillwell Cain, Jr., in the Church Street Cemetery, Mobile. (The George F. Landegger Collection of Alabama Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith’s America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.