Lambert C. Mims (April 20, 1930 – November 25, 2008) was a politician and author who for two decades was a member of the City Commission of Mobile, Alabama (1965-1985).
His ancestors moved from South Carolina in the early 1800s, founding what was known as Fort Mims in what became Baldwin County, Alabama.
Mims was a member of Riverside Baptist Church on Dauphin Island Parkway (AL 163), and espoused public morality.
Thus he passed a local anti-pornography resolution and also shut down a play he considered too racy but being performed at the University of South Alabama, which had been created during his lengthy tenure.
[3] Even before the riots which followed the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, Mims became known for clashing with the Neighborhood Organized Workers, a group of young African Americans including future city councilor Fred Richardson who opposed the gradualist policies of fellow-commissioner-until-1969 Joseph N. Langan and John LeFlore, a postal worker who had organized the local NAACP branch decades earlier.
[5] Ultimately, a "smoking gun" letter was discovered and admitted into evidence—written by Mobile lawyer and Congressman Frederick G. Bromberg to the Alabama legislature in 1909 it indicated the purpose of the at-large system was to prevent blacks from holding office.
[3][9] The charges concerned negotiations that had taken place four years earlier, when Mims was still in office, for the construction of a trash-to-steam energy plant that was never built.
[2] In his final years, Mims ran a real estate business in Mobile and continued civic participation through the Waterfront Rescue Mission, as well as assisting at local nursing homes and other charitable institutions.