Officials plan to celebrate the opening Wednesday morning of a new downtown Mobile park celebrating the fight for civil rights in the city.

In November 2023, city and county leaders broke ground on the planned Isom Clemon Civil Rights Park. It’s a roughly triangular lot at the intersection of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, Hamilton Avenue and Congress Street; the property is owned by the city and the investment of about $1.4 million to develop it has come from the downtown TIF (tax improvement fund), the City of Mobile, the Mobile County Commission and other sources. It’s across from the longtime home of International Longshoremen’s Association Local 1410, founded in 1936 to represent African American dock workers.

As a longtime leader of the union and a founder of the Alabama Democratic Conference, Clemon was a leader in the push to win civil rights in general, and voting rights in particular, for Black citizens of Mobile County. The union hall was a critical meeting place as that effort moved forward.

At the groundbreaking, Mobile County Commissioner Merceria Ludgood said it was sad that more people weren’t familiar with Clemon’s legacy. “His story is the heart of the story of ILA Local 1410,” she said at the time. “It is the story of voting rights and civil rights in Mobile County. Just to have this time and this place to do that, I think is just extraordinary.”

The park is part of a larger plan to develop a Mobile County Civil Rights and Cultural Heritage District along MLK Avenue, a corridor that boasted a thriving community of Black-owned businesses prior to desegregation, when it was named Jefferson Davis Avenue.

Among other related landmarks, the new park is close to the former Davis Avenue Branch library, a much smaller clone of the Ben May Main Library built when Black patrons were excluded from the larger facility. That building has been turned into the Historic Avenue Cultural Center, which serves as an exhibition and gathering space.

The dedication ceremony for Isom Clemon Civil Rights Memorial Park will take place at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, Jan. 29, at 520 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Ave. In case of inclement weather, the ceremony will be held in the Historic Avenue Cultural Center, 564 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Ave.