#mobile bay

A vast number of birds rely on Alabama’s waterways. The Mobile-Tensaw River system ends in Mobile Bay, on the Gulf, where small islands provide nesting and roosting habitat for birds like the brown pelican.

During the era of slavery, occultist Paschal Beverly Randolph began studying the occult and traveled and learned spiritual practices in Africa and Europe. Randolph was a mixed race free African man who wrote several books on the occult. In addition, Randolph was an abolitionist and spoke out against the practice of slavery in the South.

After the American Civil War, Randolph educated freedmen in schools for former slaves called Freedmen's Bureau Schools in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he studied Louisiana Voodoo and hoodoo in African American communities, documenting his findings in his book, Seership, The Magnetic Mirror. In 1874, Randolph organized a spiritual organization called Brotherhood of Eulis in Tennessee.

Through his travels, Randolph documented the continued African traditions in Hoodoo practiced by African Americans in the South. Randolph documented two African American men of Kongo origin that used Kongo conjure practices against each other. The two conjure men came from a slave ship that docked in Mobile Bay in 1860 or 1861.