Beautiful Crescent: A History of New Orleans

by Garvey, John B.

  In New Orleans, the Whigs ceased to exist because of their anti-slavery sentiments. Those who had been Whigs and wished to retain their anti-Democratic identity joined the “Know-Nothings,” rabid Nativists, whose main objective was to break the power of the immigrants in politics. It was easy to make the change from Whig to Know-Nothing. Whigs were wealthy and powerful. The Nativist doctrine of the Know-Nothings, which oppressed the immigrants, suited their purposes.

  Throughout the summer of 1854, reckless remarks by Know-Nothings convinced the Irish that the Americans were going to burn down St. Patrick’s Church and slaughter Irish immigrants as they slept.

  For ten days in September, armed gangs of Irish and Americans marched endlessly, causing needless destruction. On the evening of September 11, the Americans gathered at Lafayette Square and the Irish at St. Mary’s Market. A fight ensued on Camp Street. Two were killed and many were wounded. Hostile feelings flared.

  Just before the mayoral election of 1858, the Know-Nothings in New Orleans split. The independents nominated Major P. G. T. Beauregard and went after the old Whig vote; the American Party nominated Gerard Stith, a printer, and went after the labor vote. Two days before the election, the Creole-immigrant group formed a vigilante committee to guarantee a peaceful election. They recruited five hundred men, mostly Irish, who occupied the arsenal and the municipal buildings at Jackson Square. The Americans formed an organization which camped at Lafayette Square. Peace was achieved by means of a compromise, without the use of violence.

  From 1860 to 1864, during the War Between the States, political parties had no purpose. Municipal government, as we shall see, gave way to military rule. Then, during Reconstruction, only two political parties remained: the Republicans (the members of the Federal army of occupation and the blacks) and the Democrats (the defeated Southern whites). For more than half a century, the South was referred to as the Solid South because of the total and predictable adherence of the whites to the Democratic Party and its policies.

  CHAPTER VII

  Customs, Carnival, and Cemeteries

  Customs

  When New Orleans became American in 1803, the port city became a refuge for the world. Down the Mississippi and from across the Atlantic came immigrants, bringing with them customs and traditions, which were to be their lifeline to a world they had left behind.

  In a city that was predominately Catholic and known for its love of festivity, it is not strange that as many as twenty-five Holy Days per year, besides Sundays, came to have their own special celebrations.

  On Christmas Eve, a peculiarity of the area is the lighting of bonfires all along the levee of the Mississippi. It is a very old tradition, supposedly begun by the Acadians, who were “so far from home that they had to guide ‘Père Noel,’ so he could find them.” For weeks in advance of Christmas, river dwellers begin erecting pyramids of logs in graduated sizes in preparation for the fires. The sight of the line of bonfires from the opposite side of the river on Christmas Eve is one of the most memorable spectacles the area has to offer.

  Twelfth Night is King’s Day, another religious holiday, that honors the day when the three wise men are said to have visited the Christ Child. It is the twelfth night after Christmas. It is celebrated in New Orleans by the baking and eating of “king cakes,” circular rings of coffee cake dough sprinkled with colored, granulated sugar. Inside the cake, a tiny doll, bean, or ring is hidden. The guest who finds the object gives the next party, and so it goes weekly until Mardi Gras.

  A forerunner in New Orleans of this charming party custom was the Bal de Bouquet, which originated in the nineteenth century. It was given by a bachelor, chosen at the beginning of the Carnival season, at the home of a lady whom he had designated his queen by crowning her with a wreath of flowers. After a few quadrilles at the party, the

  A little girl receives lagniappe after her purchase. (Courtesy Leonard V. Huber Collection)

  king (the bachelor) led the queen to the center of the floor, where she crowned the king with a wreath of flowers. The ritual was repeated weekly until Mardi Gras. (The similarity to today’s King Cake parties can easily be seen.)

  Mardi Gras is so special in New Orleans and has such a history of its own that it will be treated in a separate section of this chapter.

  St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, is celebrated by the wearing of green, parades, and dances and banquets given by the Hibernians and other Irish-American organizations.

  Visitors admire the artistry of the altar at St. Joseph the Worker church. (Courtesy Ethelyn Orso)

  St. Joseph’s Day, March 19, is observed by the building of St. Joseph Altars in the homes of Italians in thanksgiving to the saint for favors granted. The altars originated in Sicily during the Middle Ages, when famine threatened the island, and the people prayed to St. Joseph. One crop, the fava bean, survived to save them, and in thanksgiving, they prepared cooked food and laid it out on an altar for the needy. New Orleanians of Sicilian descent still commemorate the day in the same way.

  Throughout the year, many Italians make vows that if a prayer for help is answered, they will build an altar to St. Joseph in their homes each year on his feast day.

  Father Douglas Doussan blesses the St. Joseph’s Altar at St. Joseph the Worker church in Marrero, Louisiana. (Courtesy Ethelyn Orso)

  Today, the altars are elaborately decorated with bread baked in the shape of wreaths, crosses, and hearts. Italian cakes and cookies are decorated with praying hands and Bibles. Baskets of fava beans and St. Joseph medals are placed on the altar to be distributed to visitors, as they did in the old days, to ward off famine in the coming year. No meat is placed on the altar in keeping with the Lenten penance, but there are dishes of fish, stuffed lobsters, crabs, and vegetables, fruits, and pasta of many kinds.

  On St. Joseph’s Day, children dressed as Mary and Joseph take part in a little ceremony commemorating their search for shelter in Bethlehem. The Italians invite them in to share the wealth of their altars. Then, the food is shared with friends and neighbors or is donated to a needy organization.

  On St. Joseph’s Night, the Italian community gives a parade through the French Quarter with floats, horses, bands, and marchers.

  An interesting sidenote of the St. Joseph feast is the tradition of the parades of the Mardi Gras Indians. Only twice a year, on Mardi Gras Day and St. Joseph’s Night, do they appear in their colorful, elaborate costumes, with the ornate beadwork and the enormous feather headdresses. Tribes such as the Wild Magnolias, the Black Eagles, the Yellow Pocahontas, or the Wild Squatoolas compete in a colorful display of costumes. It is believed that their appearance on this particular feast day dates back to their veneration of St. Joseph in their voodoo rituals of the late nineteenth century.

  Easter Sunday is a movable feast, celebrated on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the spring equinox. This, of course, is a world-wide holiday. But in New Orleans, Germaine Cazenave Wells, a descendent of Count Arnaud (founder of Arnaud’s Restaurant), arrived at the St. Louis Cathedral on Easter Sunday for several decades in an extravagant chapeau, after having led an Easter parade through the French Quarter. Today, the Germaine Wells parade continues and is followed by another at noon, led by French Quarter entertainer Chris Owens.

  The Spring Fiesta is an acknowledgment of the beautiful season of spring and a tribute to the cultural heritage of Louisiana. Begun in 1947, the Spring Fiesta is a tourist-oriented celebration. For nineteen days, beginning on the first Friday after Easter, young ladies of New Orleans dressed in antebellum costumes escort groups of tourists by candlelight through the French Quarter patios and the beautiful old homes of the Garden District. Plantations along Bayou Teche, River Road, Bayou Lafourche, and Feliciana offer similar tours of private homes.

  New Orleanians decorate the tombs of the dead for All Saints’ Day. (Courtesy Leonard V. Huber Collection)

  All Saints’ Day, November 1, has a very special meaning to New Orleanians. Since the water table
of the city made above-ground burials a necessity, residents took the opportunity to erect elaborate tombs and mini-mausoleums to house their dead. The upkeep of these properties was a way of life and a year-round occupation. Special pains were taken in preparation for All Saints’ Day, which included whitewashing tombs, pulling weeds, sweeping sidewalks, and bringing vases to the burial site. In the old days, tombs and headstones were draped with flags or black crepes. Ground plots were edged with painted shells, China dogs, and pig banks. And on the day itself, thousands thronged to the cemetery to bring flowers and pray for their loved ones in these cities of the dead. The first All Saints’ Day activities celebrated the re-opening of St. Peter’s Cemetery in 1742 and the completion of the fence surrounding it. The work had been paid for by the rich and labor was the gift of the poor.

  Street Vendors

  Almost from the very beginning of New Orleans history, there were street vendors, singing their cadences as they advertised their wares to housewives of the city. In colonial days, slave-owners sent older slaves who could no longer work in the fields out to sell the surplus products of the plantation. The owners had to buy licenses for their slaves but increased their annual income by thousands of dollars.

  Vendors endured well into the 1960s, and even today, an occasional truckload of fresh vegetables or fruit may still be seen in the residential areas of town. At the turn of the century, the housewife depended almost entirely on street vendors and went to market only if it was in walking distance and if she was in need of meat, an item that did not appear daily on the supper table.

  The sight of the mule-drawn vegetable wagon was a welcome one, for it was a break in the day’s routine, and the sound of vendor’s melodious “Water-melon! Red to the rind!” or “Ah got Ba-na-na, Lay-dee!” was music to the ear of the housewife. The rendition of the vendor’s songs and chants was limited only by his imagination and talent. “Black-ber-reees! Ah got black ber-rees!” might be warbled into the morning air with the pathos of a tenor of the Metropolitan Opera House.

  Many vendors walked, carrying baskets filled with a variety of vegetables on their heads. Their prices were low, their produce fresh, and the cost of any item was subject to discussion. Each season saw the appearance of its own specialties. In early summer, there were strawberries, followed later on by watermelons and by wild ducks in the fall. During Lent, there were always fish and oysters. There were milk vendors, ice cream vendors, and bread and cake vendors singing the familiar “Calas! Tout chauds!” Familiar faces included the Corn Mean Man, the Hot Pie Man, the Waffle Man, the Candy Man, the Broom Man, the Clothespole Man, the Chimney Sweep, the Bottle Man, the Knife Sharpener, the Umbrella Man, and Zozo La Brique, who sold brick dust to scrub stoops and walks in certain neighborhoods. There were also the spasm bands of small black boys who did a slapfoot dance with makeshift instruments, hoping for a handout from passing pedestrians.

  At the French Market, Choctaw Indians sold sassafras and other roots and herbs. Black women in tignons sold rice cakes, molasses, and pralines. In the markets, which were spread all over town, everything was available from chickens to fish to oysters to live canaries in cages. Even women in search of a day’s work were singing out their trades, waving their washboards above their heads.

  Superstition

  Due to the constituency of the population, superstition ran rampart throughout the city. The Irish had brought over their own superstitions, most of which were considered comic, or at least, not taken too seriously. The blacks, because they so long adhered to the voodoo cult, feared gris-gris (ritual objects such as crossed sticks, circles of salt, roosters’ heads) as evil omens. Gamblers, with which the city abounded, were natural adherents of superstition. Many played the lottery and consulted their “dream books” for the numbers they should play, depending on whether they had dreamed of fire, death, rain, or even red beans.

  The Creoles, gamblers or not, all believed that dreams had meanings. For example, a dream of pulling a tooth meant death was coming and dreams of trees presaged joy and profit. They also feared the following omens: rain or tears at a wedding meant bad luck; flowers out of season brought bad luck; the transplanting of a weeping willow brought about violent death; spitting in a fire would draw up your lungs; and sleeping with the moon in your face would draw your mouth to one side and make it crooked. They were also well known for the Creole Mirror superstition: if three men look in a mirror at one time, the youngest will die; if three girls look in a mirror at one time, the eldest will marry within a year.

  There were hundreds of such omens and superstitious beliefs.

  Jazz

  New Orleans is the birthplace of jazz. Jazz first gained attention around the turn of the century, although its beginnings reach far back into history. When slaves were first brought to America, they carried with them a memory of the music they had learned in West Africa or acquired in the Caribbean Islands. The slaves chanted as they worked, and their songs spoke of love, anger, longing, joy, and despair. Under the liberal French and Spanish governors of New Orleans, slaves were allowed the freedom to sing and dance together, which was not always a possibility in other parts of the United States. They made their own musical instruments—banjos from gourds or reeds to blow or pluck—and played music to accompany their dancing in Congo Square and at the many picnics, parades, and other celebrations in or around the city. Many musicians were needed in a city of so many festivities.

  Free men of color often had an entirely different culture from slaves. Some were even sent by their white fathers to European schools, where they studied classical music. People considered the outbreak of jazz (or ragtime, as it was originally called), around 1887, to be nothing more than European music played badly. Innovations in music, such as syncopation, staccatos, and timbres, later considered revolutionary, were considered by these trained musicians to be mistakes. Variations on a theme, as performed in European music, became improvisations, which were called “jazzing it up.” The raw talent jazz musician would take a melody that consisted of just a few notes, such as that of “When the Saints Go Marchin’ In,” and play it every possible way in variation. By the standards of European trained musicians, these jazz musicians either could not or would not play music as it was written. Nice young ladies were not encouraged to play jazz. It was considered disorderly music—“closet music”—rebellious and untraditional. The Times-Picayune, in 1918, called an attraction to jazz a “low streak in man’s taste” (“Jass and Jassism”).

  Jazz was not born in Storyville, but grew up and came of age there (1897-1917). The product sold in the bordellos was not music. Music was an accessory, paid for by the tips given to musicians. With its many dance halls and bars, Storyville gave employment to many jazz musicians. The audience at the bordellos was generally mellow and agreeable to whatever was played, which allowed the musicians ample opportunity to experiment and improvise. There were also “spasm bands” in the 1890s that played homemade instruments on street corners, such as Emile “Stalebread Charley” Lacombe, who got his start with his Razzy Dazzy Spasm Band and became one of the jazz greats.

  Storyville proved to be the melting pot in which the perfect ingredients for jazz were blended: the technical training and knowhow of the downtown black Creole musicians and the raw-talent improvisation of the uptown black American musicians. Here, the two were forced to mix. Their disparate heritages were wed and soon gave birth to jazz. Alan Lomax, in Mister Jelly Roll: The Fortunes of Jelly Roll Morton, New Orleans Creole and “Inventor of Jazz,” expressed it this way: “Creoles who played in Storyville were compelled to accept blacks as equals, and this was bitter medicine” (1956, 80).

  The Olympia Brass Band of New Orleans. (Courtesy Johnny Donnels)

  Paul Dominguez, a black Creole violinist, explained in the same biography: “See, us downtown people, we didn’t think so much of this rough uptown jazz, until we couldn’t make a living otherwise. That’s how they made a fiddler out of a violinist—me, I’m talking ab
out. A fiddler is not a violinist, but a violinist can be a fiddler” (Lomax 1956, 84-86). As to his feelings about black American pure talent: “I don’t know how they do it, but they do it. They can’t tell you what’s on paper. But you just play it. Then they play the Hell out of it” (Lomax 1956, 86).

  This forced cooperation was especially important in building understanding between blacks and whites who played together when jazz was just beginning after the Civil War. Jazz played more than a minor role in the building of mutual respect and admiration between the races. “Piano keys opened doors to many white homes for black musicians,” according to Al Rose in Storyville, New Orleans: Being an Authentic, Illustrated Account of the Notorious Red-Light District (1974, 104).

  Many New Orleans-born musicians, such as “King” Oliver, Louis Armstrong, and Jelly Roll Morton, achieved fame in Chicago, New York, or on the West Coast after having started in Storyville.

  Jazz funerals are still held, though now almost exclusively for deceased jazz musicians. In these processions, musicians play sad, slow music on the way to the cemetery, but after they have “turned him loose,” as they say, referring to burying their dead, they lead the mourners away to the beat of a gay and lively tune, such as “When the Saints Go Marchin’ In,” because they are celebrating the jubilation of a soul gone to its reward. They strut and twirl umbrellas, picking up second-liners (bystanders who join in the singing and marching) as they walk.

  There are many clubs where Jazz can be heard, such as: 8 Block Kitchen and Bar at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, the Palm Court Jazz Café, and Preservation Hall, to name just a few. Jazz is still alive and well and struttin’ in New Orleans!