Robert Joseph McKinney, 1933, from The Lighthouse, the Xavier University yearbook. Courtesy Xavier University Archives.
Robert Joseph lived his life accordingly. Because of his keen eye for detail, classical education, work ethic, interpersonal skills, sense of humor, and belief in the essential dignity of all classes of Black New Orleanians, we are left with an invaluable record of the ordinary and extraordinary customs lived out by a cross-section of the city’s citizens, traditions continued to the present day by their descendants.
WHO WERE THE MILLION DOLLAR BABY DOLLS?
The Million Dollar Baby Dolls were women who paraded on the street together wearing short pleated skirts, bloomers with ruffles and bows, waists or halters, poke bonnets, and socks or stockings held up by garters for securing dollar bills. They donned wigs of corkscrew curls in various colors, including blonde, and they made extensive use of makeup. Their dresses were made of pink or blue satin to achieve the goal of looking as innocent as possible.
Dressing up as Baby Dolls was reported to have begun when a group of uptown (that is, above Canal Street) prostitutes decided to show up a group of downtown (below Canal Street) prostitutes on Mardi Gras. Each woman had to put up her own money to make her costume, including “green money” overflowing from the garter belt that rested snugly on her thigh. During Carnival, these women smoked cigars, flung money at men, and challenged other groups of masked “sportin’” women. They were known for “walking raddy” (a kind of strut that would end with the steps needed to “shake on down”), “shake dancing,” singing traditional Creole songs and blues, turning tricks, drinking, smoking reefers, and “starting and causing” street fights complete with brick throwing and razor flashing. The name they adopted for themselves, “Baby Dolls,” was based on what their pimps called them. Like the Mardi Gras Indians, they “masked” twice a year: on Carnival and on St. Joseph’s Night, March 19.
Rounding out popular descriptions of the Million Dollar Baby Dolls are accounts primarily from male musicians. Coming from the dance halls and brothels, the Million Dollar Baby Dolls specialized in “the naked dance,” which Ferdinand “Jelly Roll Morton” LaMothe believed was an art form in the city’s brothels.12 Jazz musician and New Orleans native George “Creole” Guesnon recounted the scene on St. Joseph Night at the Humming Bird Cabaret on Bienville and Marais streets in 1927: “What I saw there I ain’t never saw before. It was the Baby Dolls… kicking high their pretty legs in the fancy lace stockings, filled with fifty and one hundred dollar bills.”13 Robert Tallant described their activities at the Zulu Mardi Gras parade in 1947, in which one Baby Doll “began doing a shake number. She accomplished what is called ‘going all the way down,’ lowering herself to the ground, shaking violently all the time, until she was stretched out on her back, resting upon her shoulders and feet, with hips gyrating violently and her breasts quivering like jelly under her pink satin halter she wore above her brief skirt.”14
Baby Dolls gained a reputation as agile dancers, sharp entrepreneurs in the sex work industry, and as tough women. The noted New Orleans chef Austin Leslie, who was born in 1934 and as a child probably saw the Baby Dolls in their heyday, described their dress and demeanor: “all those women dressed like little babies, in hot pink and sky blue. You fool with them, they’d cut you too.”15 Beatrice Hill was one of the tough ones. She recalls, “We had stacks of dollars in our stockings and in our hands. We went to the Sam Bonart playground on Rampart and Poydras and bucked up against each other to see who had the most money,”16 though admittedly, they made peace with one another. In a rather reductive portrayal of a complex sociopolitical artistic expression, historian Samuel Kinser compared them to the Mardi Gras Indian gangs that were “led by a fighter, usually a murderous one.”17
A different perspective on the female tradition of the Baby Dolls is offered by jazz musician Eddie “Duke” Edwards, whose aunt, Vanilla, was a Baby Doll.18 The Edwards family lives in Edgard, in St. John the Baptist Parish. Many of the women who were Baby Dolls came to New Orleans from the river parishes. “Out here you are somebody’s daughter, and somebody’s niece. In the river parishes, people’s behavior was governed by the ‘Society.’ Crimes against women such as domestic violence would be handled by the woman’s relatives.” No such protections existed in the city for these women; so they relied on the survival spirit they inherited from their families. This spirit of independence and defiance grew in reaction to the conditions African American women faced at the bottom of the gender, race, class, and caste system in New Orleans. By 1912 Blacks’ legal and social second-class citizenship had finally gained the upper hand in what had formerly been a more integrated city.
“BEFORE WE WERE BABY DOLLS”
Robert Tallant thought of opening the chapter on African American Carnival traditions in Gumbo Ya-Ya as follows: “Every night is like Saturday night in Perdido Street, wild and fast and hot with sin. But the night before Mardi Gras blazed to a new height as the denizens of that vicinity refused to wait the hours that stretched before tomorrow and rode them through the night as if they were bucking, fiery steeds come to life on a madly whirling carousel.”
But the sentence sensationalizing behaviors as “wild” was scratched out, and the paragraph started at “as the denizens.” Also scratched out in an edited version was the chapter’s subtitle, penciled in as “Nigger Mardi Gras.” What Tallant did not ask was why these people (musicians, sex workers, cooks, laundresses, storekeepers, barbers, hair dressers, bar owners, etc.) acted as if every night was like Saturday night. What turned these inhabitants into “bucking, fiery steeds”? What “madly whirling carousel” has forced them to “come to life,” that is, to have to come to this life in the District?19 What is striking is the way Tallant begins the chapter as if he dropped into a scene that has no social or historical context. He characterizes its inhabitants as being in a state of perpetual play, as if these people are not fully and completely engaged in an industry, i.e., the business of producing pleasure for others. But the editors can act as if all this were mere spectacle, not only because of their White, male, and class privilege. Lyle Saxon made it clear that of the ethnic communities presented in Gumbo Ya-Ya, the Creoles—who for him were racially White, never having “colored blood”—were on top and the Baby Dolls were on the bottom of the social hierarchy. Saxon believed that “Creoles [were] the top of the heap,” compared to those at the other extreme, “such as Negro prostitutes parading on Mardi Gras.”20 In addition, it is not clear whether Saxon and Tallant ever set foot on the Baby Dolls’ streets, nor whether they interviewed any of the so-called denizens. To get their information, they literally copied from the reports of Robert McKinney. Many of McKinney’s transcripts of interviews with the members of the Zulu Club and the Baby Dolls were marked “Private” and slated for Tallant’s files.
To complicate matters further, there are few sources in which the voices of Black women who lived in the District can be heard. Police records, travelogues, sensational descriptions in books and newspapers, and memoirs of male jazz musicians are all that can be mined. The Black women who lived or worked in the District and its surrounding areas were engaged in a variety of occupations, the majority perhaps as sex workers, but also as servants, cooks, seamstresses, and accomplished musicians.21 They were often single women supporting children, parents, and other relatives through their work. These women are rarely called by their given names. Instead, in numerous sources they are referred to by the epithet of “whore.” Jazz musician and writer Danny Barker categorized Black sex workers as “stray whores” (who were associated with drugs, alcohol abuse, ignorance, uncleanliness, fighting, and jail), seemingly the majority of women, with the more rare, so-called “first-class whores” (or “sporting women,” who were intelligent, drug free, and particular about their associates).22
The historical record tells us little about these women and what they did to keep their spirits up in the face of daily humiliations. A recent exhibition of pho
tographs, “Hidden from History: Unknown New Orleanians,” from the New Orleans Public Library brings their vulnerability and entre preneurial determination to life. “Even though the Storyville ordinance ostensibly made prostitution legal within the District’s boundaries, women were frequently arrested for petty theft and pick-pocketing, drunkenness, disorderly behavior, fighting, reviling the police and other such crimes. In spite of the District’s reputation for swinging good times, and the romanticization of prostitution in New Orleans,” the photographs of Virginia Green, Louisa Barnes, and Bertha Bailey, as with other women labeled as prostitutes during this period, “indicate that for most women, prostitution was neither glamorous nor easy.”23
Virginia Green, age eighteen, 1912. Louisiana Division/City Archives, New Orleans Public Library.
Louisa Barnes, age twenty-two, 1912. Louisiana Division/City Archives, New Orleans Public Library.
Bertha Bailey, age twenty-eight, 1912. Louisiana Division/City Archives, New Orleans Public Library.
Storyville, a portion of the city set aside by an 1897 ordinance legalizing prostitution, gambling, and other “vices,” was segmented into two areas, supposedly one White and the other Black. Black women worked in both sections. The corralling of black-market businesses into one easily accessible area allowed for the development of a robust financial industry, connected as it was with rail lines and in close proximity to the city’s business district.
These women lived in Storyville proper, not in the uptown vice district some blocks away, and had many run-ins with the law. On April 29, 1912, twenty-eight-year-old Bertha Bailey was arrested as “a suspicious thief.” She also resided near Virginia Green and Louisa Barnes, according to police records of her at 415 N. Liberty (currently Tremé) Street.24 Twenty-twoyear-old Louisa Barnes was arrested on May 23, 1912. Accused of being a “sneak thief,” she served ten days in Parish Prison. She purportedly resided at 515 Bienville Street. Virginia Green was just eighteen when she was arrested and charged with “larceny from the person”25 (i.e., pickpocketing) on November 29, 1912. A petite, brown-skinned young woman who reported her address as 1402 Bienville Street, she was already labeled a “prostitute” on her Bertillon card, a record-keeping system then used by police. Later she was arrested with unnamed “others” for “operating an immoral house” and for “grand larceny.” The dispositions of her cases are unknown since these were not recorded in the Orleans Parish Criminal Courts’ Criminal Defendants’ Index.
Bertha, Louisa, and Virginia were busily occupied earning a living (whether as sex workers, vendors, hustlers, performers, seamstresses, or servants) and trying to survive in what might have been the toughest environment Black women had encountered since enslavement. By 1912, New Orleans was firmly in the grip of legal segregation. Beginning with the outlawing of interracial marriage in 1894, federal legislation separating Black and White seating on trains and all public accommodations in 1896 (Plessy v. Ferguson),26 disenfranchisement of Blacks by the state constitutional convention in 1898, segregation on streetcars in 1902 (the Separate Street Car Law), and the 1908 outlawing of concubinage, social attitudes and practices hardened to extend segregation to residential areas, saloons, circuses and tent entertainment, sporting events, and jails and prisons.27 No area of life was left unaffected. Even in Storyville the color line persisted. The city ordinance issued in 1897 stipulated that Black and White women were not allowed to reside or work in the same house, though they could occupy adjacent buildings.28
In 1910, Black women made up 28 percent of those working as prostitutes in Storyville, according to Craig Foster. Darker-skinned Black women labored in poorer conditions and earned less income than did light-skinned Black women, who more often worked in “high-class” bordellos.
The lowest type of brothel was the crib. The women who worked in the crib were considered the lowest caliber and, consequently, lived the most miserable lives. They were usually black and catered to other blacks or to the lower classes. The cribs themselves consisted of a small room attached to an even smaller room or entry hall separated by a wall or curtain. The spartan furnishings consisted of a bed (or a mattress on the floor), a chair, and a washstand. These rooms were open around the clock and were used by several prostitutes working in shifts.
…The differences between the cribs and the high-class parlor houses were emphasized by unwritten rules of segregation. The parlor houses and cribs that were located south of Liberty Street were white clientele only, consequently commanding higher prices. The houses and cribs between Liberty and Villere streets were occupied and frequented by both races. The section between Villere and Robertson streets was the black section. This area charged the lowest prices, had the roughest clientele, and had numerous street walkers doing back alley trade.29
For Black women in the area of Perdido and Gravier streets, life was equally difficult, if not more so. McKinney records the nature of the women’s working conditions with astounding candor. Whereas men played board games like checkers and cards and wore expensive clothes, “their” women hustled customers into little dank rooms for sex. The men kept enough money on them (their bankroll) to bail “their” women out of jail when the need would arise. Some women, like Beatrice Hill, maintained their own houses and charged other women for room use. The women walked the streets in “short tight skirts” with a “fascinating vigor,” as if “the rhythm of their movement was the key to their success.” McKinney wrote that the women dance, “sing ‘low down’ songs, use profanity with aplomb, flip their hair with indifference.” They did not need to dodge the police because they paid a regular graft to them and personally knew the officials. Some, like McKinney’s interviewee, Clara Belle Moore, grew in leadership ability to become the virtual “boss of the neighborhood,” meaning these women’s capacity to command respect was evident in spite of the turbulence of their lives. McKinney did not miss the fact that these were “hard working women.” And, he adds with special emphasis, “They are proud.”
And they were defiant. When insulted, Clara Belle recalled that the Baby Dolls’ retort would be, “Kiss our tails, cause the babies and the dolls don’t give a damn.” They were “raddy” women who did not care about what others who devalued them thought of them.
These women made an impression on Louis Armstrong, who provides one of the few eyewitness accounts of everyday life, his own life.
I had been brought up around honky-tonks on Liberty and Perdido where life was just about the same as it was in Storyville except that the chippies were cheaper. The gals in my neighborhood did not stand in cribs wearing their fine silk lingerie as they did in Storyville. They wore silk lingerie just the same but under their regular clothes. Our hustlers sat on their steps and called on to “Johns” as they passed by. They had to keep an eye on the cops all the time.…
When the girls were hustling they would wear real short dresses and the very best silk stockings to show off their fine, big legs.30
To be sure, if life for higher-caste Black Creole women in New Orleans was difficult, for working-class Black women, having a job that did not involve the risk of sexual exploitation was rare. For the women under discussion here, life was exceptionally difficult. Crushing poverty, poor health, illiteracy, unsanitary living conditions, venereal disease, unchecked drug and alcohol addiction, and criminal activity from murder to robbery and fighting—hence regular encounters with the criminal justice system—had all become a normalized part of their existence.
Judging from the advertisements in Blue Books (published directories of names and addresses of prostitutes in the District), some light-skinned Black women, such as Emma Sears, who associated with the well-appointed brothel of Lulu White—herself a fair-skinned Black woman—could express their creative talents in music they wrote and performed. Lulu White gained control of the representation of herself and her female employees by insisting on defining them using the existing color caste system, which distinguished Blacks along the lines of skin tone. With lighter skin
having been exploited as desirable in the local guidebooks, Lulu White advertised her sex workers as octoroons. But for dark-skinned Black women, in addition to their gender and class status, their skin tone further truncated even their creative opportunities. What then could they do to keep their spirits up? Like other aggrieved groups, they appropriated Mardi Gras for their own purposes.
For maskers, Mardi Gras is more than a day. It is a workspace in which one prepares to participate in the concrete transgression of the everyday social order, to perform reversals, to participate in communal activity, to forge collective identities, and to assert one’s personhood. Carnival identities are in existence all year long, but normally submerged in daily life. Roger Abrahams’s analysis of such activities on the island of St. Vincent demonstrates that “rude” behaviors (such as drinking, verbal and physical play, or “nonsense” activities) are given the greatest freedom of expression on Carnival. These behaviors are practiced all year long largely by men who are “sporty,” constituting the reputations of men who exist outside the female-dominated yard or household and are thought to be a direct attack on notions of respectability, namely family mores and customs. Abrahams observes that the rude behaviors contain their own social values. It is on Carnival that conflicting lifestyles and competing value systems are expressed. Sporty people harness the festival’s “energies by embodying these otherwise embarrassing nonhousehold ‘nonsense’ behaviors in their licentious festival performances.”31 Similarly, the Baby Dolls took their everyday, ordinary identities and marked the city’s environs with their stamp of performativity. They journeyed from place to place on Carnival Day: singing the blues, dancing, smoking cigars, earning money and flaunting it in an abundant display in their garters, challenging other groups of women with how “sharp” they looked in their little “chippy” outfits.
The "Baby Dolls" Page 3