Toulminville is a district in Mobile, Alabama. It began as a small settlement on the property of Theopilus Toulmin, who served as Sheriff

Sheriff

A sheriff is in principle a legal official with responsibility for a county. In practice, the specific combination of legal, political, and ceremonial duties of a sheriff varies greatly from country to country....

 of Mobile County in the 1830s. During the American Civil War

American Civil War

The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

, Toulminville was mapped along the Mobile and Ohio Railroad as a significant settlement, northwest of Mobile (see map). In 1945, the remainder of Toulminville was annexed into the city of Mobile. The area of Toulminville has varied over the past decades from being an upper-middle class suburb to having a serious crime problem during most of the 1980s and 1990s, although the trend has been reversed in recent years.

Annexation by Mobile

Toulminville remained a largely rural settlement until after the Civil War

American Civil War

The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

, when it slowly took on the character of a suburb

Suburb

The word suburb mostly refers to a residential area, either existing as part of a city or as a separate residential community within commuting distance of a city . Some suburbs have a degree of administrative autonomy, and most have lower population density than inner city neighborhoods...

 to Mobile. It remained largely exurban in character until the 20th century, when growth within the city of Mobile spilled over into Toulminville. Part of Toulminville was annexed into the city of Mobile in the 1920s, and the whole of Toulminville was annexed into the city of Mobile in 1945, in the annexation

Annexation

Annexation is the de jure incorporation of some territory into another geo-political entity . Usually, it is implied that the territory and population being annexed is the smaller, more peripheral, and weaker of the two merging entities, barring physical size...

 which tripled the size of Mobile's corporate limits. In World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, Toulminville had become an upper-middle class suburb, with many affluent neighborhoods built along Stanton and Summerville Streets. Hank Aaron also grew up in Toulminville as a young boy.

White flight

In the 1960s, white flight

White flight

White flight has been a term that originated in the United States, starting in the mid-20th century, and applied to the large-scale migration of whites of various European ancestries from racially mixed urban regions to more racially homogeneous suburban or exurban regions. It was first seen as...

 issues caused by desegregation and an upsurge of crime on Mobile's north side (highlighted by an incident in 1966 in which a white nun was raped by a black man at Catholic Cemetery on Stone Street, now Martin Luther King Avenue) caused the district which was majority white in 1960 to become nearly 80% black by 1975, and Toulminville was the bedrock of the district which elected John LeFlore, a Mobile NAACP leader who became the first black elected to the legislature in Mobile County.

The final holdout against white flight were neighborhoods along Stanton and Summerville Street which finally became nearly all black in the 1980s, though they remained affluent areas.

While Stanton and Summerville are middle-class areas, most of Toulminville is lower-class and during most of the 1980s and 1990s had a serious crime problem, though that trend has reversed due to a concerted effort by the Mobile Police Department and community leaders in Toulminville.

Toulminville was the birth place of General William Crawford Gorgas who takes on the status of Toulminville Community Hero, as several streets and an elementary school were named after him, (Figures Park, named for Senator Micheal Figures, an influential black politician, was originally named Gorgas Park, in honor of General Gorgas). It also is the neighborhood in which baseball

Baseball

Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...

 legend Hank Aaron lived during his adolescent years.

LeFlore Magnet High School

LeFlore Magnet High School

John L. LeFlore Magnet High School of Advanced Communication and Fine Arts is a public high school in Mobile, Alabama, United States, enrolling 1400 students in grades 9-12. LeFlore Magnet High School offers academic and artistic programs while being accredited by the Southern Association of...

 (originally Toulminville High School) is a performing arts magnet school

Magnet school

In education in the United States, magnet schools are public schools with specialized courses or curricula. "Magnet" refers to how the schools draw students from across the normal boundaries defined by authorities as school zones that feed into certain schools.There are magnet schools at the...

named in honor of John L. LeFlore. Toulminville High School was renamed LeFlore High School in honor of LeFlore. In the 1980s, it was converted into a magnet school, which under Mobile County Public School policy, is ideally to have a 50/50 black white mix. This has not been the case which has developed the school to have a 75/25 black white mix.