New Orleans’ Black Carnival traditions
22nd January 2024 · 0 Comments
The sun is not yet up; dew covers the grass under the great oak trees lining Claiborne Avenue during the early-mid 20th century. There’s no interstate separating Treme, only a neutral ground lined with a canopy of trees and lush grass.
Early revelers from St. Bernard Avenue to Basin Street and Orleans Avenue stake out their celebratory space on Carnival Day. Children sleep in the back of station wagons and trucks while adults lay food on fold-away tables. It’s an all-day picnic and celebration of Fat Tuesday, the day before the Catholic Lenten season.
The Knights of Peter Claver Building on Orleans Avenue, which housed the law offices of A.P. Tureaud and, later, a young Ernest N. Dutch Morial, stands open for revelers who need bathroom facilities.
As the sun rises and dew evaporates upward, here comes the Baby Dolls and Skeletons. Baby Boys are also in yellow-tinged diapers, and adults and children are in various costumes.
Before Zulu rolls through Basin Street, there’s a kazoo band and marching brass bands! Ooh, here comes the Black Indians chanting and singing.
The annual Carnival Day celebration under the massive Oaks in Treme, the nation’s first Black subdivision, was created by New Orleans’ Black community, complete with picnics, indigenous food, music, dancing, bands, parades, and Black Indians, after being legally blocked from celebrating Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras Day) on Canal Street and beyond due to segregation, aka legal apartheid.
The Krewe of Zulu was the first Black-founded parade to hit the streets of New Orleans in 1909. It was the first Black parading organization to break the back of segregated Mardi Gras by parading on Canal Street in 1973. Today, Zulu’s membership is multicultural. What a spectacle it is to see white people in Blackface, again, as well as Black people wearing Blackface paint.
The Zulu Club leadership claims black makeup is not “blackface.” And they insist the makeup has nothing to do with poking fun at whites who used Blackface in racist minstrel shows. Indeed, despite clapbacks from community activists, the Zulu organization refuses to ditch the 115-year tradition of wearing so-called “black makeup.”
Perhaps the most prestigious cultural manifestation to arise out of Black Carnival are carnival songs, including James “Sugar Boy” Crawford’s Jock-A-Mo The Wild Tchoupitoulas’ Indian Red, Dixie Cups’ Iko Iko, and The Meters’ Hey Pocky Way flow from radios.
Other Black Carnival anthems: Al Johnson’s “Carnival Time,” Professor Longhair’s “Go To the Mardi Gras,” and Earl King’s “Street Parade” permeated the airways too.
These and other recordings are specific indigenous Carnival music created by black New Orleanian musicians James “Sugar Boy” Crawford, the Wild Tchoupitoulas (George Landry and his nephews – the Neville Brothers), The Dixie Cups, The Meters, the Wild Magnolias, and the chants of Black Indian tribes inspire dancing in the streets and sing-alongs.
What is paramount to remember about the 19th-century Black Carnival traditions is that Mardi Gras was not the term for the celebration. The Carnival season and Carnival Day were celebrated in segregated Black communities.
Fat Tuesday, aka Mardi Gras, denotes the pre-Lenten Catholic tradition. And while New Orleans is home to the largest Black Catholic population in the United States, the carnival tradition lives on. The music and Black Indian culture have now been dubbed “Mardi Gras” music and “Mardi Gras Indians.” Still, in the hearts and minds of those who experienced the segregated version of the holiday, they will always be a part of the Black community’s “Carnival” tradition.
Now, let’s set the record straight. The masking Indian tradition, some say, evolved out of the need to honor First Nation people who took in escaped slaves. There are however some historians who claim native Americans owned slaves.
Even so, what many in the Black community know and accept is that some indigenous tribes are indeed Black-complected, and some Black New Orleanians do have native American ancestry. Some claim Choctaw and Blackfoot genealogy.
Today, there are over 40 Black Masking Indian tribes throughout the city of New Orleans, including the Wild Tchoupitoulas, Yellow Pocahontas, Guardians of the Flame, Spirit of the Fi Yi Yi and Mandingo Warriors, Wild Magnolias, the Young Maasai Hunters, the Wild Tchoupitoulas, Bayou Renegade, the Golden Feather Hunters, and Choctaw Hunters, among others.
The first recorded Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans was in 1837. The city’s first parade with floats, Comus, was in 1857, apparently after assistance from Mobile, Alabama, according to CNN, which determined the first Mardi Gras took place in Mobile, Alabama.
“Legend has it that French explorer Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville first introduced Mardi Gras to the area in 1699, after he sailed into the Gulf of Mexico on March 6 (Fat Tuesday) and set up camp on the west bank of the Mississippi river about 60 miles south of New Orleans. He named the site Point du Mardi Gras, in honor of the holiday which had been celebrated in Paris since the Middle Ages.”
Black New Orleanians have celebrated Carnival since the tradition began. It’s important to remember that Black Creoles descended from African, French, Spanish, and First Nation ancestors and took part in creating the community’s celebration.
Indeed, in 1885, one visitor to the city noted that Black New Orleanians, “particularly the children, are great maskers. I think I saw ten thousand Black children in masks, in one place, during the Carnival just over,” Amy Katherine Medvick documented in “Mardi Gras for Enslaved and Free People of Color in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans.”
Today, New Orleans’ Most Talked of Club (NOMTOC) is the area’s only all-black parading organization. Located on the West Bank of the Mississippi River, NOMTOC’s Carnival activities are sponsored by the Jugs Social Club, which was organized in 1951. The Krewe has come a long way since its inaugural 1971 parade of six floats.
And despite the successful fight waged by the icon civil rights leader Dorothy Mae Taylor, New Orleans City Council member, and state representative, to desegregate parade krewes and Mardi Gras events, Black New Orleanians have kept the Black Carnival traditions going.
On Carnival Day (aka Mardi Gras/Fat Tuesday), February 13, 2024, get out early and set up a barbeque grill, folding table, and chairs under the I-10 on Claiborne Avenue and get ready for the sights and sounds of Black Carnival. Play Carnival music on your cell phones or break out a boombox and speakers if you’re as adventurous as some. And prepare to buck-jump to the music.
Stroll down Claiborne Avenue between St. Bernard Avenue and Basin Street, and you’ll see Carnival Day by the Black community. Go to Kermit Ruffins’ Morther-in-Law Lounge, owned initially by singer Ernie K-Doe and his wife Antoinette, and you’ll see the Baby Dolls paying homage to Antoinette, a member of the Baby Dolls. You’ll see the skeletons and other costumed people there.
Stick around and wait for the Black Indians and brass bands.
Robert “Two Scoops” Stanley, who since 1985 has managed the Tamborine & Fan Club’s stage, will be there coordinating the local and national acts that will perform from 9 am-6 pm. Hang around for the Black Indians, Baby Dolls, Skeletons, and the Zulu Parade.
Walk down Orleans Avenue near Dooky Chase’s reviewing stand for a close-up view of the Zulu Parade on its way to the Zulu Club on Broad Street.
Carnival Day on Claiborne Avenue is an unforgettable experience.
This article originally published in the January 22, 2024 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
