Pythian unveils mural honoring A.P. Tureaud

By Michael Patrick Welch
Contributing Writer

Last Wednesday (May 9), the historic Pythian building hosted a mural unveiling on its first floor, in the main room of its soon-to-open Pythian Market. The painting, by local artist Brandan “Bmike” Odums, depicts iconic civil rights attorney A.P. Tureaud and his wife, Lucille.

The Pythian building was originally conceived in 1908, by the Colored Knights of the Pythians of Louisiana (also known as The Grand Lodge Knights of Pythians of Louisiana). Under the leadership of formerly enslaved man named S.W. Green, who later made himself into a millionaire, the CKPL commissioned the temple be built for $200,000. Described by The Times Picayune as, “the biggest enterprise ever attempted by the colored race of the United States,” the Pythian housed the Negro Board of Trade, and African-American businesses including a Black-owned bank, Green’s Liberty Independent Life Insurance company (where Homer Plessy once worked), and the first incarnation of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper. The building also boasted a theater and an outdoor jazz venue, where legends like Louis Armstrong and Manuel Perez played. In 1941, the Knights of Pythians lost the building during the Great Depression, and, during World War II, it notably became the personnel headquarters of Higgins Industries, which built the Higgins Boats with one of New Orleans’ first racially integrated staffs.

In recent years, the Pythian has been refurbished and revitalized, with more than a nod to its roots. It now houses dozens of residents in its reasonably priced apartments, located above the soon-to-open Pythian Market and other on-site amenities.

“My parents first met in the Pythian Temple rooftop jazz garden in the late 1920s,” recalled A.P. Tureaud’s son, Alexander P. Tureaud Jr., a civil rights activist and Louisiana State University’s first Black undergraduate. Several hands went up when Tureaud Jr. asked the crowd how many others in the room had parents who’d met at the Pythian. Looking around in wonder, he exclaimed, “We are unique and we must protect our heritage.”

New Orleanians know A.P. Tureaud Sr. as the city’s attorney for the NAACP during the Civil Rights Era. Tureaud filed the lawsuit that ended Jim Crow, and successfully desegregated many local institutions, among other accomplishments. His wife, Lucille Dejoie, a debutante and Howard University graduate, worked in pharmacy and also aided in many of her husband’s civil rights causes.

Tureaud Jr. told the crowd at the mural unveiling that he’d had numerous conversations with Odums about his parents before the artist started the piece. He sent Odums photos showing the famous couple when they were young. “What Brandan did with the pictures I sent him of my parents is astounding,” attested Tureaud Jr.

Next, beside a curtain hiding the mural, before a crowd of around 100, Odums talked about the “power and responsibility of art”: “We are surrounded by sacred ground in New Orleans,” he reminded us. “This building, which stood overlooked for so long, was full of so many stories.”

Odums has worked steadily in New Orleans for years, but came into the national eye with his installations “Project Be” (2014, lower 9th Ward) and “Exhibit Be” (2014, Algiers), both of which turned Katrina-blighted housing projects into vast, colorful, hopeful art exhibitions. Odums’ first solo show (and, Odums points out, his first ever legal show), “Studio Be,” opened in a Bywater warehouse in 2016.

The Pythian’s developers – Green Coast, ERG Enterprises and Crescent City Community Land Trust – finally unveiled the work during a champagne toast, wherein bottles were popped. The wall-sized painting depicted a stylish A.P. and Lucille in their late 20s or early 30s, both dressed in flapper attire, smiling, rendered in cool purple and blue spray paint against and a yellow painted moon and the Tureaud quote, “Resist by all lawful means any and all efforts to deny us our rights.”

Couple Ronnie and Brandi Johnson and their eight-year-old daughter Lailah, all Pythian residents for a year this month, were excited to finally see the mural.

“Lailah’s more excited for the Market to finally open,” said Brandi, who still hasn’t been given a firm date for the market’s opening. “We’re very excited to come downstairs and get breakfast down here on the weekends.”

Following the unveiling, the Johnsons and the rest of the crowd gathered upstairs on the Pythian’s beautiful top-floor patio to listen to the jazz of Kit Simmons Quartet, and nibble seafood appetizers, while overlooking City Hall.

This article originally published in the May 14, 2018 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.