History of Mardi Gras

History of Mardi Gras

No one is absolutely sure how Mardi Gras celebrations started. The history of early Louisiana Carnival celebrations isn't really documented until the 1800s, when private balls were held by the descendants of French and Spanish settlers. There were also raucous street processions, where young men wore masks and costumes and sometimes dumped flour on passersby. Then on February 24, 1857, Mardi Gras changed.

At 9 PM, 60 or so men dressed like demons paraded through the streets with two floats in a torch-lighted cavalcade. The group called itself the Mistick Krewe of Comus, after the Greek god of revelry. The krewe was started by men from both New Orleans and Mobile, Alabama, where Mardi Gras parades had begun a few years earlier. Wanting to observe the holiday more fully, these men formed a secret society and sent 3,000 invitations to a ball held at New Orleans's Gaiety Theater. They had begun a tradition. As time passed (with lapses during the Civil War), invitations to the Comus ball became so coveted that one year the krewe captain advertised a $2,000 reward for two missing invitations. Comus crowned Robert E. Lee's daughter, Mildred Lee, its first queen in 1884. Though Comus no longer parades, the krewe still holds its annual ball, one of the city's most exclusive.

Through the years, other groups of men organized Carnival krewes, each with its own distinctive character. In 1872, 40 businessmen founded The School of Design, a new krewe whose ruler would be dubbed Rex, and sponsored a daytime parade for the Mardi Gras visit of His Imperial Highness the Grand Duke Alexis of Russia. They created a banner of green for faith, gold for power, and purple for justice—these remain the official Carnival colors. The first Rex parade was thrown together quickly with borrowed costumes, and there was no ball. The first reception was not until the next year, when a queen was chosen on the spot at a public ball. Eventually invitations and formal dress became required. Rex still parades on Mardi Gras morning, featuring some of the loveliest floats of Mardi Gras, and holds its lavish ball Mardi Gras night. Rex and his queen are considered the monarchs of the entire Carnival celebration. Their identities are kept secret until Mardi Gras morning, when their pictures claim the front page of the newspaper.

For many decades, krewes were strictly segregated by race; even Jews and Italians were banned from guest lists of the exclusive older balls (known as the old-line krewes). So other segments of society started clubs of their own. A black butler and dance instructor from Chicago started the Illinois Club in 1895. Though this club split into two krewes—the Original Illinois Club and the Young Men's Illinois Club—the debutantes who serve on the courts still perform the founder's dance, the Chicago Glide, in parallel galas. The Illinois clubs don't sponsor parades, but the Zulu Social Aide and Pleasure Club, organized in 1909 by working-class black men, does. The Zulu parade precedes Rex down St. Charles Avenue on Mardi Gras day. Zulu was one of the first krewes to integrate, and today members span the racial and economic spectrums. These days, the elaborately decorated coconuts that Zulu float riders offer the crowd are among the most coveted of Mardi Gras throws.

After the Depression and World War II, Carnival krewes started popping up everywhere. Some were for doctors, others for businessmen, some for residents of certain neighborhoods, for women, for military men, or for gay men. The gay balls are splendid extravaganzas, with court members dressed in drag and bearing enormous, fantastical headdresses.

Parade standards changed in 1969, when a group of businessmen looking to entertain tourists the Sunday before Mardi Gras founded the Krewe of Bacchus, named after the god of wine. The sassy group stunned the city by setting new rules and strutting out with a stupendous show that dwarfed the old-line parades. The Bacchus floats (designed by Blaine Kern, who creates many other Carnival floats) were bigger than any seen before, and the king was Danny Kaye, not a homegrown humanitarian but a famous entertainer. The party following the parade was in the old Rivergate Convention Center, not in the Municipal Auditorium or a hotel ballroom, where the other balls were held. There was no queen and no court, and the party was called a rendezvous, not a ball. All guests could dance, not just members and their wives as was the custom in old-line balls, where nonmembers merely watched the proceedings. The floats rode right into the Rivergate, and you didn't have to be socially prominent—or even white—to join. The crowds have loved Bacchus from day one, and guessing which celebrities will follow the likes of Nicholas Cage, Elijah Wood, and James Gandolfini as monarch has become as popular as wondering about the identity of Rex. The arrival of Bacchus ushered in an era of new krewes with open memberships, including the Krewe of Endymion, and today many of the parades are held by these younger groups.