NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) — The tradition of Carnival has been part of the fabric of New Orleans since the beginning. By the end of the Civil War, New Orleans was in a post slavery society with it’s economy in ruin. Some of the old traditions persisted onward.
Teresa Devlin is the Marketing Manager for The Historic New Orleans Collection. The Historic New Orleans Collection is the repository for much of the artifacts of the Rex Organization; an organization that helped to define Carnival in New Orleans, Louisiana.
“After the Civil War we are in the period of reconstruction and there is some political friction throughout the country; particularly here in the south, for instance The New Orleans Massacre of 1866, when a peaceful protest of African Americans and Republicans were attacked by white rioters,” says Devlin.
Despite the turmoil of the age, Mardi Gras exists in the city, but not as it’s known today.
“Our earliest records of Mardi Gras go back to the 1720’s. We know that the holiday was celebrated throughout the city, but it wasn’t celebrated in an organized kind of way. The celebrations were largely unorganized, chaotic and largely disruptive,” says Devlin.
On February 13th, 1872, Mardi Gras is reborn. The Rex organization parades for the first time as a simple but structured parade. The king that year was Louis J. Soloman.
Mardi Gras was beginning to take shape and during that same year, a visiting tourist writes to his wife in a letter that is now owned by The Historic New Orleans Collection. The letter states that the the tourist was impressed by the magnitude of spectacle he was beholding.
“The first parade would have been simple by our standards. The king rode a horse and had a line of masked revelers marching behind him. It was the next year in 1873, when the king rode, what we would consider a float,” says Devlin.
Over the years, Rex would continue to influence the largest free party on earth by introducing the dabloom and the official Mardi Gras colors. The organization would also take a stand for integrating Mardi Gras.
One of the most delighting artifacts The Historic Collection owns is home video from some of the floats in the roaring 1920’s.
To learn more about the history of Rex, The Historic New Orleans Collection has a tidy exhibition at the Williams Research Center, in front of it’s reading room: Fit for a King: The Rex Archives at THNOC. The exhibit will be up until may eight.
