It’s been seven years since the fallout of the controversial Comic Cowboys parade on Fat Tuesday sparked intense reaction over racist signs, leading to some high-profile resignations and an apology from one of Mobile’s oldest Mardi Gras organizations.

The controversy will return, once again, on Tuesday when the Mobile City Council will hear renewed complaints about the Comic Cowboys floats. Four people are signed up to speak out against one of the float displays and it’s portrayal of someone being struck and killed with a Taser by a Mobile police officer.

“Our concern is with the float of someone being tased to death by police,” said the Rev. Tonny Algood, a community activist and former director with United Methodist Inner City Mission in Mobile. “I thought that was very insensitive, especially to family members who have sons and daughters tased by police and especially to the ones who have died recently at the hands of police.”

A representative with the Comic Cowboys could not be immediately reached. The secretive parading society, which is 140 years old, rolls its annual Mardi Gras parade with controversial signage on display placards under the longtime guise, “Without Malice.”

The group’s barbs are typically aimed at political figures and public issues on a national, state, and local level.

Algood said he hopes city officials will make a public statement condemning the signage almost one month after the Fat Tuesday parades rolled through downtown Mobile. This is the first time there has been public concern over any of the float displays during this year’s Comic Cowboys parade.

Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson’s office did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

“It would carry some influence and weight if they speak out against this,” said Algood. “Silence out of this situation means consent, as far as I’m concerned. That goes for our whole community. People in other positions, and elected officials, if they spoke out against it, I’m sure it would have an influence.”

The controversial sign ties to an issue that is the subject of a federal lawsuit against the city, stemming from the July 2 death of 36-year-old Jawan Dallas during an encounter with two Mobile police officers in Theodore.

Dallas was hit with a Taser stun gun during the encounter, which attorneys for his family claim was the reason for his death. Authorities have since said that “underlying medical conditions,” and not Tasing, was the cause of death.

For months, the Dallas family and community activists protested at Mobile City Council meetings and elsewhere over the lack of releasing police-worn body camera footage of the altercation with police. The family and their attorneys were able to eventually review the footage, but it has never been released to the public.

The Comic Cowboys float, next to a person being stunned read, “MPD finally releases BODY CAM footage with SHOCKING RESULTS.”

John Burris, a civil rights attorney in Oakland, Calif., accused police in December of misusing the weapon “that is supposed to be non-lethal,” while calling its deployer on Dallas as “murder.” The Mobile County District Attorney’s Office said in November that it is not pursuing legal charges against the officers involved in the altercation.

Dallas’ death has been compared to George Floyd, the Black man whose killing in 2020 while in police custody in Minneapolis ignited protests across the country over police brutality and racial injustice.

“How would we feel if I had a son or daughter and they had been tased to death by police, and they saw that?” Algood said about the Comic Cowboys display. “It’s pretty devastating.”

The Comic Cowboys had other floats that took on crime in Mobile.

• One of the floats read, “Mobile finishes second in crime in 2023. Aiming for the top spot in 2024.” That float references a widely disputed rankings from online groups that list Mobile and Birmingham as among the “Most Dangerous” cities.
• Another float has a sign that says, “If Mobile doesn’t stop killing people, Sandy is gonna have to ANNEX again.” That sign connects crime to last year’s vote in West Mobile to annex nearly 20,000 residents into the city, bolstering the city’s population to over 200,000 residents.
• One float had a sign that inaccurately went after the MoonPie Over Mobile event, for the second year in a row. The sign read, “In TIMES SQUARE they’re doing SHOTS. In BIENVILLE SQUARE they’re GETTING shot.” That float references shootings that occurred over the past two New Year’s Eve gatherings in downtown Mobile, although neither incident occurred within Bienville Square where the MoonPie Over Mobile celebration takes place. During the 2023 parade, the group took a dig at the MoonPie event with the image of bullet holes on a target with the inscription, “Mobile’s New MOON PIE DROP.”

Controversy surrounding the parade is nothing new and has existed for many years. But in 2017, there was a political fallout from that year’s parade which featured a chorus of critics who viewed the placards were overtly disparaging toward Blacks and women and belittling to the city of Prichard.

Among the most talked-about display during the 2017 parade was a sign showing a Black man running with a TV, accompanied with the saying, “BLACK LIVES MATTER DEMANDS JUSTICE But it seems it will settle for BIG SCREEN TVs.”

Shortly after that year’s parade, Stimpson announced his resignation from the group. Also, City Councilman Joel Daves, who had been with the Comic Cowboys for 20 years, also resigned.

The group, in a letter to former Councilman Fred Richardson, vowed that “in the future,” it would cease “from comments which may be hurtful to our citizens” while taking “everyone’s feelings into consideration.”

The council, at the time, said they had no ability to regulate the Cowboys’ freedom of expression. Richardson, at the time, had hoped the group would consider laying off two specific topics: portraying gun violence and the victims of gun violence to humorous effect, and depicting women being assaulted.

The 2020 parade also drew criticism after the group’s signs targeted Boeing and the company’s struggles with the 737 Max airline following tragic plane crashes in 2018 and 2019.

The signage drew outrage on social media, and prompted Airbus – Boeing’s chief rival, with its largest North American manufacturing operation in Mobile – to release a statement that the Comic Cowboys had no affiliation with the company, and their messaging did not reflect Airbus’ values.