The evolution of Mardi Gras
Today we celebrate Mardi Gras! This raucous celebration has a rich history, and the holiday has evolved much in the two hundred plus years it’s existed in New Orleans. Did you know these seven facts about Mardi Gras?
Mardi Gras in Louisiana owes its origins to the region’s French, Spanish, and Afro-Caribbean population.
Informal parades and festive masquerades date to the early nineteenth century.
The modern Mardi Gras began in 1857 with the establishment of the city’s first exclusive Carnival organization, the “Mystick Krewe of Comus.”
All-white “krewes” like Rex, Momus, and Proteus soon arose after 1857 and quickly became social networks for the city’s Anglo and Creole elites.
In 1909, members of New Orleans’ black middle class created the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club as a sly critique of white stereotypes of African Americans as savages, and as a protest against the city’s harsh Jim Crow culture.
Beginning in the 1880s, away from the center city, the black “Mardi Gras Indians” masqueraded in highly stylized Plains Indians costumes that played upon white stereotypes of both Indians and African Americans.
By the late 1990s more than seventy krewes paraded in the two weeks leading up to and including Mardi Gras day.
Image credit: New Orleans, Louisiana by David Mark, Public Domain via Pixabay.
