Zulu remains a Mardi Gras favorite
20th February 2023 · 0 Comments
By C.C. Campbell-Rock
Contributing Writer
The Zulu Parade is a must-see experience on Mardi Gras Day. It is the most soulful expression of mirth during Fat Tuesday. Parade-goers wait for hours to catch the vaunted coconuts, dance to the music of the bands, and scream, “Throw Me Something, Mister.” The parade is colorful, exciting, and fun.
King Zulu Nicholls “Nick” Spears and Queen Zulu Dr. Christy Lagarde Spears are reigning over Mardi Gras Day 2023. They are the stars of Zulu’s Coronation Ball and Court, and Zulu characters, including the Big Shot, Witch Doctor, Ambassador, Mayor, Governor, Province Prince, Mr. Big Stuff, and the traditional Maids.
King Zulu Nick Spears became a member in January 2001. He rode with the Witchdoctor Krewe, Walking Warriors, Postmaster General, and the Zulu Mayor’s Krewe and was elected Mayor in 2010. Spears has held various positions in the social and pleasure club. He was a member of the Zulu Tramps, a Coronation Duke, a Zulu Parade Duke, a Float Captain for nine years, and Assistant Chairman of the Coronation Committee, Carnival Activities, and King Duke in 2017 and 2020.
He was inducted into the Zulu Hall of Fame in 2021 and continues to serve the organization as a former Recording Secretary, a current member of the Board of Directors.
Queen Zulu Dr. Christy Lagarde Spears is a native New Orleanian and wife of Nicholls S. Spears, King Zulu Elect 2023. Dr. Spears is a psychologist and certified Licensed Professional Counselor for Louisiana and a member of the Louisiana Licensed Professional Counseling Association. Dr. Spears works for the United States Army Corps of Engineers’ Equal Employment, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Office.
The royal couple has three children, Nia, Nick Jr., and Bryce Spears.
The Zulu Lundi Gras Festival, which began in 1993 as a result of a collaboration of George Rainey of Zulu and Karen Noles of the Audubon Nature Institute, attracts an average of 150,000 revelers each year. Held on the Monday before Fat Tuesday, a University of New Orleans report found that Zulu’s Lundi Gras Festival’s economic impact on the City of New Orleans is estimated to be $5 million for this one-day event.
Then, on Fat Tuesday, the much-anticipated Zulu Parade begins.
The Zulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club was founded in 1908 after John L. Metoyer and members of a New Orleans Mutual aid society called “The Tramps” attended a vaudevillian comedy show There Never Was and Never Will Be a King Like Me,
The musical comedy performed by the “Smart Set” at the Pythian Temple Theater on the corner of Gravier and Saratoga streets in New Orleans included a skit where the characters wore grass skirts and dressed in blackface.
Inspired by the skit, Metoyer reorganized his marching troupe from baggy-pant-wearing tramps to a new group called the “Zulus.”In 1909, Metoyer and the first Zulu king, William Story, wore a lard-can crown and carried a banana stalk as a scepter. Six years later, in 1915, the first decorated platform was constructed with dry goods boxes on a spring wagon. The King’s float was decorated with tree moss and palmetto leaves, The Louisiana Weekly’s Editor Edmund Lewis wrote in 2016.
In 1916, the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club were incorporated, and bylaws were established, as well as its social mission and dedication to benevolence and goodwill.
While the “group” marched in Mardi Gras as early as 1901, their first appearance as the Zulus came in 1909, with William Story as King. The group wore raggedy pants and had a Jubilee singing quartet in front of and behind King Story. The King wore a “lard can” crown and carried a “banana stalk” scepter.
As the popularity of the Zulu krewe grew, in 1949, King Zulu Louis Armstrong graced the pages of Time magazine that year. Other celebrities have ridden with the Zulu Krewe over the years, including Danny Glover.
The membership comprises men from all walks of life–from laborers, mayors, city councilmen, state legislators, United States congressmen, educators, and men of other professions.
However, in the 1960s, membership dwindled due to social pressures from civil rights activists. The protesters advertised in The Louisiana Weekly stating:
“We, the Negroes of New Orleans, are in the midst of a fight for our rights and for a recognition of our human dignity which underlies those rights. Therefore, we resent and repudiate the Zulu Parade, in which Negroes are paid by white merchants to wander through the city drinking to excess, dressed as uncivilized savages and throwing cocoanuts like monkeys. This caricature does not represent Us. Rather, it represents a warped picture against us. Therefore, we petition all citizens of New Orleans to boycott the Zulu Parade. If we want respect from others, we must first demand it from ourselves.”
Criticism surfaced again in 2018 when Think504.com hosted a forum at the Carver Theater. At the event, critics, including journalists, social justice activists, and others, discussed the Zulu S&P Club’s blackface tradition.
One panelist asked, “What do the real Zulus think of club members wearing black paint on their faces? That must be demeaning to proud Zulu warriors.”
Real Zulus paraded with the Zulu Krewe on one occasion but didn’t wear black face paint or grass skirts.
Then there is the criticism of white Zulu float riders who wear black face paint. While other white people in the nation have been criticized for wearing black face paint, the Zulu Club tradition of painting faces black is mandatory, and, therefore, white riders mask blackface.
Former Zulu King Jay Banks, who served on the New Orleans City Council, told Think 504.com that the Zulu S&P Club riders would continue to wear black face paint because it continues the club’s tradition.
Several publications offer in-depth explanations for the Zulu Club’s use of blackface.
“Historians, researchers, and social commentators answer that originally, blackface evolved out of economic necessity. While white Mardi Gras celebrants partook in the rich tradition of masking with ornate self-decorated masks, most African Americans of the early 20th century couldn’t afford elaborate costumes. Instead, early Tramps and Zulus used chimney soot to approximate masks, beginning the tradition,” Ryan Whirty writes in The Louisiana Weekly.
Defenders of Zulu say those “masking” rituals are now crucial, long-held traditions that help make Zulu what it is and what it does to celebrate Mardi Gras with the community, but that those “non-PC” traditions are themselves rooted in subversive, sly satire of prevailing white attitudes, Whirty adds.
“These critics cite the roots of blackface minstrelsy in hate and [cultural] theft,” Tulane student Sara C. Bonisteel wrote in her 1998 honors thesis. “Yet, Zulu has always countered these arguments, explaining that painting (pun intended) faces black is a parody of the white Carnival clubs that march as the royalty of the city. Based on the Zulu argument, blackface is a cultural reappropriation of a medium used for years against Blacks turned into a celebration of blackness.”
Bonisteel writes that blackface “acts as a reaffirmation of blackness,” that traditionally, for Zulu riders and marchers, “blackface defined them as Zulu.”
Despite criticism, the Zulu Social & Pleasure Club tradition of masking blackface has survived,
The men’s only club also serves the broader community by sponsoring philanthropic events. Its annual Zulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club Golf Tournament is its biggest charitable fundraiser. The event takes place Saturday, September 24, 2023, at the Joseph M. Bartholomew Sr. Golf Course.
The Bike Giveaway, toy distribution, annual Christmas Baskets, and the Annual Night Out Against Crime also allow members to give back to the community.
“When Zulu first formed, many of the city’s white leaders and purveyors of segregation looked down their noses at what they thought was merely a group of working-class ragamuffins. They really didn’t think Zulu would survive,” Zulu Col. Clarence A. Becknell, Sr., Zulu Director of Public Relations and Historian Emeritus, told The Louisiana Weekly.
Continuing, Becknell said, “Zulu is at the forefront of New Orleans culture, economy, society, and heritage. You’re looking at an organization that more than 100 years ago came from nothing. It’s like real estate. It shows progress.”
The Zulu Social Aid and Plea-sure Club owns three buildings on Broad Street, the Clubhouse, a building rented out for events, and the Memorabilia Store.
This article originally published in the February 20, 2023 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
