There’s no half-stepping with this Baby Doll
13th March 2023 · 0 Comments
By Geraldine Wyckoff
Contributing Writer
On the third Sunday of March, the Mardi Gras Indian Council annually presents its Super Sunday parade that begins at 1 pm at Washington Avenue and LaSalle. This year, that Sunday falls on March 19, St. Joseph’s Day. When the sun goes down on the holiday, it is a Black Indian tradition to roam the streets to meet and engage with other tribes in battles of feathers, dance, tambourines and chants.
Merline Kimble, a denizen of New Orleans 6th Ward, will head uptown to watch the parade though before nightfall, she’ll come back downtown, don her baby doll outfit, and head to the Lapeyrouse Street home of Big Chief Al Womble and his Queen Wanda Womble of the Cheyenne Mardi Gras Indian tribe.
“I’m coming out with Chief Al and his wife because my grandson plays drums with that group,” Kimble explains. “So I’ll be there with him and any of the Gold Diggers that want to come out.” Earlier in the day, Chief Al and his gang also plan to participate in the Uptown parade.
Kimble is a co-founder of the Gold Digger baby dolls along with her lifelong friend, the late Lois Nelson Andrews, the matriarch of the musical Andrews family, both of whom both grew up in the 6th Ward. The name of the group, which first hit the streets in the late 1970s, is in honor of Kimble’s grandparents who back in 1936 were members of the Gold Digger Social & Pleasure Club. Her grandmother dressed as a baby doll in the large organization filled with family members and friends.
Personally, Kimble considers masking baby doll as a rebellion of sorts. She compares her era during the feminist movement that encouraged bra burning, which she feels displayed a certain emancipation, to that of the women during her grandmother’s day declaring their freedom of choice by hitting the streets as baby dolls.
“During that time (the mid-1930s), a woman would have to kneel and her skirt had touch the floor,” Kimble explains. “If it didn’t she was considered a loose woman. So for them to come out with their dresses across their thighs, I think that was kind of a rebellious statement. ‘You’re not going to tell me how to dress, what to do or whatever. I’m going to do this.’”
The original Gold Digger S&PC disbanded at the onset of World War II as many of the men were drafted and the women wouldn’t come out without their husbands. The much-beloved Uncle Lionel Batiste and his family kept up their Mardi Gras festivities that included baby dolls until the 1960s.
“One day, I was sitting on my step talking to Trombone Shorty’s mom, Lois Nelson Andrews, and I was telling her about the Gold Digger baby dolls. She said, ‘Let’s bring it back, let’s do it.’ I said, ‘Girl you crazy, we’re not doing that.’ Everyday she’d say we’re going to bring the baby dolls back. I said nope until I just broke down and said okay. So we collected a lot of women out of the 6th Ward and we did it.”
“When we were going down the street, (on Carnival Day in the late ‘70s) the people who remembered Uncle Lionel they were hollerin’, “Oh my god, look at the baby dolls!” And people who were younger, asked, “What are you supposed to be?”
Significantly, that first year, the new generation of Gold Digger baby dolls stopped by Kimble’s grandmother’s house and her reaction was tears of joy. “She was the last living Gold Digger and she saw us,” Kimble remembers with love.
Kimble might be just as well known for producing events to honor and raise funds for musicians as she is as a baby doll.
“They were calling me the Benefit Queen,” she offers with a laugh and estimates she’s done about 30. “I’ve never counted them.” Kimble empathized with musicians who were not only unable to work due to illness but were also were isolated at home after decades of being connected with fellow artists and audiences. “I wanted to do a big celebration in their honor,” she explains. One of the first benefits she organized was for vocalist extraordinaire, Johnny Adams back in around 1997 and, sadly, the next one she’ll produce will be held on April 2 for his daughter.
“I haven’t been doing them lately – I don’t know why,” Kimble says while agreeing that it might be in part because of the overwhelming loses caused by the pandemic. “I really feel obligated with his one because when Johnny died this little girl was like six or seven years old and I’ve been sticking by her since then.”
Kimble, whose family has lived between the 1100 and 1500 block of Dumaine Street for an amazing six generations, has also been renowned for always having a bunch of children around her skirts. “They weren’t just around them, I was teaching them,” she corrects and explains that they were neighborhood kids.
“I would have two children sweep the block and I’d give them a dollar each,” Kimble says. Then she would tell them the story told by Martin Luther King Jr. about Joe the Street Sweeper the moral of which is if you end up a street sweeper, be the best street sweeper you can be. “I’d always also be telling them to read, read, read.”
There are no young children surrounding Kimble as she sits on the bench outside of the Little People’s Place in the 6th Ward. “There are no kids around here any more,” she says wistfully. “Two things I really miss in the neighborhood are the children outside playing and laughing and I miss the smell,” she remembers. “You’d walk down this block and you’d might smell red beans, the next block you might smell pork chops and the next block chicken. I walk around here now, I don’t smell anything, there’s no smell. If you’d smell something coming out of a house and you’d want some of it, you just knock and say, ‘I’m so hungry.’ The response would be, ‘Oh come on in and get you something to eat.’”
After St. Joseph’s night, Kimble, a retired dietitian, will don her baby doll outfit again and dance in the streets when the Circle of Chiefs presents its Downtown Super Sunday parade the date of which has yet to be announced.
“When I put that baby doll costume on and come out I become a different person,” she exclaims. “I’m sad, when I think of my grandparents, grand uncles and aunts but then I point at the sky and say, ‘Gramma, look at your baby!” and get a big smile on my face.”
This article originally published in the March 13, 2023 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
