Zulus’ history and lore on parade, again

4th March 2019   ·   0 Comments

By Ryan Whirty
Contributing Writer

On Nov. 21, 1945, just a few days before Thanksgiving and a few months before Mardi Gras in New Orleans, the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club lost arguably its most important historical figure, John L. Metoyer, after he suffered an acute attack related to diabetes.

With Metoyer’s sudden passing, Zulu lost its founder and the man who spearheaded the creation of the club’s now-internationally famous Mardi Gras parade. It was a crushing blow, especially because Metoyer had been tabbed as King Zulu, the symbolic monarch who annually reigns over Mardi Gras.

“The man who originated the Zulu Aid and Pleasure Club, sponsor of King Zulu, and one of the finest exponents of Carnival mirth, is dead,” stated the Nov. 25, 1939 issue of The Louisiana Weekly. “John L. Metoyer, a potent factor in the social life of the men and women he led.”

The paper continued its obituary by setting the scene roughly three decades earlier, at which Metoyer was front and center, in a back room at a restaurant and bar on Perdido Street.

“Receiving the idea of King Zulu from Black Patty, a show that was popular at the [Pythian] Temple,” the paper stated, “Mr. Metoyer banded together several of his friends and formed what was later to be one the city’s most popular and colorful parades. Today people from all over the world come to New Orleans to see King Zulu and his revelers.”

But like it always did, Zulu forged ahead to make the 1940 Mardi Gras parade week a stellar, honorific send-off to its founder.

“A broad, gray sky heaped its rains upon Mardi Gras day,” said the Feb. 10, 1940 issue of The Louisiana Weekly, “but the rain wasn’t as heavy as the mirth the Zulus and King Jolly gave more than 450,000 spirited Carnival gay-makers who shouted their praises like little children.”

But such has been the history of Zulu in New Orleans – one of persistence, determination and annual merriment – in which the famed club withstood a continuous battering by the crashing waves of time. Zulu and its parade survived wars, floods, the turbulent Civil Rights Movement and heated criticism of its traditions.

In the process, Zulu has become not just a diamond in New Orleans Mardi Gras’ crown, but a symbol of the constant struggle among the African-American community for recognition, respect and acceptance by a society fraught and riddled with racism, both overt and subtle.

District B City Councilman Jay Banks, who has been a long-time Zulu member and currently serves as chairman of its board, said he gains inspiration from the club’s history and continues to be inspired by it.

“It’s a source of pride for me, the fact that I’m part of an organization that has been around for almost 110 years,” he said, “and the fact that through trials and tribulations and adversity, we’re still standing strong.

“We don’t do it for the glory, we do it for the good of the community,” he added. “We’ve stood the test of time.”

Zulu planted its roots in the activities of the “Tramps,” a local social group and aid society inspired by vaudevillian shows. In 1909, the group coalesced into the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, a prototype insurance organization aimed at providing financial support for sick members or members’ families upon a Zulu passing.

The group that formally evolved into the Zulu club first marched during Mardi Gras in 1901, with the first official Zulu marching coming in 1909. Five years later, marchers and riders began wearing the now-traditional costume of grass skirts and black face; the following year saw the first rudimentary parade floats, made of dry goods boxes on top of spring wagons, according to the club’s official history.

The krewe also began the tradition of tossing coconuts from floats and marches, with the earliest reference coming in 1910, according to the official Zulu club history. From straight-of-the-tree hairy state to the highly prized “Golden Nugget,” colorful-decorated, glittering coconuts – with some controversy along the way over injuries from revelers getting bonked with the fruit – have become essential to the Zulu Mardi Gras experience, so much so that the krewe introduced two new “trophies” in 2001, the “Commemorative Ceramic Coconut” and the “Engraved Zulu Coconut.”

Then, beginning with 1917 King Zulu James Robertson, the monarch arrives to his “kingdom” via first the New Basin Canal and currently on the river to formally kick off the festivities, originally with a skiff, then chartered yachts and, today, with the accompaniment of the Coast Guard, states the club history.

While all these traditions were being launched progressively, the Zulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club was officially incorporated in 1916. Its early Mardi Gras success and development occurred due in large part to the sponsorship and in-kind support of the Gertrude Funeral Home on Jackson Street. (Today the still-thriving funeral parlor operates as Gertrude Geddes Willis Funeral Home.)

In addition to providing club members with a meeting place when needed, the funeral home had a viewing stand in front of its building, where King Zulu was received and toasted as the parade wound through the city’s streets.

From its humble beginnings through today, Zulu has espoused the socially egalitarian and embodiment of working-class New Orleans. Unlike the so-called cultured Creole elite, Zulu grew as a source of fellowship and inspiration. Zulu embraced its Blackness and its dedication to the average Joe and Jane.

However, unlike the white krewes, Zulus also welcomed white residents and revelers to the krewe’s celebrations in a spirit of true brother- and sisterhood among all of New Orleans. While Zulu was rooted in racial pride and uplift, as it evolved, it gained its worldwide fame by embracing everyone.

Of course, during the time of Jim Crow, Zulu operated largely in a parallel but distinctly separate celebration from long-standing, segregated, and racially divisive clubs like Comus and, especially, Rex. The Zulu parade originally ran largely through the city’s Black neighborhoods only, past African-American homes and business.

Importantly, Zulu developed its traditions as a satire of and spirited, proud reaction to the racism exhibited not only by groups like Rex, but society in general.

The challenges to Zulu’s success – and even its survival – have been many over 100-plus years. The World Wars both sapped much of the club’s membership and funding; Zulu suspended activities for 1918-19 during the First World War, then becoming so drained of membership and enthusiasm that the versions immediately following World War II tested the clubs strength and determination.

The Korean War of the early 1950s did the same. In fact, during Mardi Gras 1951, the Zulus were just about the only major krewe to actually stage its parade; white parades like Comus, Rex and Proteus nixed their parades. An American Negro Press wire story even credited Zulu and its unwavering 1951 King, Roland Brown, for keeping Mardi Gras in New Orleans alive.

“The 1951 Carnival was about the sorriest in its annals, the war years excluded,” the article stated. “If it had not been for King Zulu, well, there would have been no carnival.”

Then Zulu, like all of New Orleans, endured a crisis in the immediate wake of Hurricane Katrina, to the point where many wondered if the krewe, parade and related events would – or should – even happen in 2006.

But, said Banks, the members of the Zulu believed it was their duty to the community to show people that recovery would, eventually, be popular. By going ahead with its traditions, Banks said, Zulu embodied the city’s determination and optimism.

“Zulu sent a message to the world and told people that, yes, you can return to New Orleans and move forward,” Banks said. “Zulu stood up and said, ‘We don’t have a choice. We have to do this.’ We wanted to show people that you can come home.”

Zulu headquarters at Orleans and Broad withstood yet another deluge in summer 2017, as heavy rains overwhelmed the city’s antiquated sewerage and water system, causing Zulu, along with a host of other business and homes, to flood. “We had, like, four feet of water in here,” Zulu historian Clarence Becknell told WWL TV in November 2017. “And it hurts us because we’re a Mardi Gras organization and this is the time we prepare for Mardi Gras.”

Perhaps Zulu’s biggest tests have been the periodic, often vociferous criticism leveled at the krewe’s traditions, such as using blackface and wearing grass skirts, charging that such displays perpetuate traditional white stereotypes of the Black community, bigoted attitudes that describe Blacks as “savages” and inherently inferior to whites.

Critics argue such costumes demean and embarrass people of African descent in New Orleans and all over the world, a representation and remnant of minstrelsy and other outdated forms of entertainment. A coordinated boycott by local residents and businesses, as well as national pundits, even threatened to prevent the Zulu parade in 1961, but ultimately failed.

After the upheaval of the Civil Rights Movement, Zulu was severely put to the test in the early 1990s, when a mass boycott winnowed Zulu membership down to 16 people. But James “Jim” Russell, another former Zulu president and 1992 King Zulu, is credited with piloting the krewe through the trials and tribulations and beginning a rebuilding process that saved the club.

However, Zulu members – as well as many historians, researchers and social commentators – answer that originally, blackface evolved out of economic necessity. While white Mardi Gras celebrants partook in the rich tradition of masking – covering one’s face with ornate self-decorated masks – most African Americans of the early 20th century couldn’t afford the materials necessary to make such elaborate, ostentatious face coverings. Instead, early Tramps and Zulus used chimney soot to approximate masks, beginning the tradition.

Defenders of Zulu say, those “masking” rituals are now crucial, long-held traditions that help make Zulu what it is and what it does to celebrate Mardi Gras with the community, but that those “non-PC” traditions are themselves rooted in subversive, sly satire of prevailing white attitudes.

In truth, they argue, those traditions poke fun – albeit silly, spirited fun – at the way white society viewed Black culture.

“These critics cite the roots of blackface minstrelsy in hate and [cultural] theft,” Tulane student Sara C. Bonisteel wrote in her 1998 honors thesis. “Yet, Zulu has always countered these argument [sic], painting (so pun intended) the use of blackface as an elaborate parody of the white Carnival clubs who march as the royalty of the city. Based on the Zulu argument, blackface is a cultural reappropriation of a medium used for years against blacks turned into a celebration of blackness …”

Bonisteel added that blackface and grass skirts parody the view of “the other,” a notion that paints people of African descent as exotic or inherently different from the rest of society. She writes that blackface “acts as a reaffirmation of blackness,” that traditionally, for Zulu riders and marchers “blackface defined them as Zulu.”

Others, however, keep the explanation for the campy costumes short and sweet, rooting them squarely in economic necessity and social reality. In a 2009 article in the New York Times, Becknell dismissed the esoteric, philosophical vagaries.

“It was none of that stuff,” Becknell told the paper. “It was strictly creative. These guys were laborers and couldn’t afford to buy masks. But blackface was cheap.”

He was seconded in the article by Charles Chamberlain, the Louisiana State Museum historian, who asserted, “It was part of vaudeville and the carnival tradition,” he said. “They were making fun of themselves more than anything.”

Of course, after all these years, although such serious, solemn topics continue to stir criticism, Zulu has, at its core, been about fun, about revelry and inclusion.

As such, over the decades, the Zulu celebration has seen its fair share of quirky happenings and zany goings-on. Perhaps most famously, in 1949 none other than the great Louis Armstrong served as King Zulu, a title Satchmo savored. In 1967, King Zulu even served as a crime-fighter – as then-King Milton Bienamee rode on his throne in exultation and jubilation, he spotted two men along the route who appeared to be attempting a break-in through a house window. Bienamee, a former police officer and then a private patrol officer, called the police and warily eyed the suspects until cops came.

In the 1970s, the late Rev. Joseph E. Johnson and Earnest George founded the Zulu Ensemble choir, and in 1993 the club joined with the Audubon Institute to create the Zulu Lundi Gras Festival, held annually on the riverfront in Woldenberg Park, featuring a packed slate of musicians, an incredible spread of food, and a Children’s Village.

Zulu continued to build on its connection to local youth in 1995, when it launched the Junior Zulu Youth Program, aimed at providing role models and character-building activities for local school kids.

Zulu’s century-plus of success earned well-deserved recognition when the State of Louisiana named the club a historical organization and placed a historical marker at the corner of Orleans Avenue and North Broad Street.

Finally, Zulu helped create a significant milestone in New Orleans race relations in 1999, when the respective kings of the traditionally Black Zulu krewe and the traditionally white Rex krewe exchanged official greetings for the first time in history.

The meeting of King Zulu and the King of Carnival from Rex represented the further, and quite overdue, erosion of decades of racial exclusion and hostility. Taking place at Lundi Gras on the riverfront, the tete-a-tete marked the collapse of one of the last stubborn, if symbolic, racial barriers to vex New Orleans’ culture and image.

“This is history making,” then-City Councilman and long-standing Zulu member Roy Glapion Jr. was quoted in reports as saying, “This has never taken place.”

Another milepost was reached in 2009, when Zulu celebrated the centennial of its legendary parade. Three and a half years after Katrina almost wiped the krewe out, the Zulu celebration was back on its feet and roaring again, as chronicled in a February 2009 Associated Press article.

“Sure, the majority of people marching in Tuesday’s parade and riding the 40 floats, will wear, as they always have, blackface, huge afro wigs and grass skirts,” the AP article stated.

“‘Zulu has really grown,’ said Vincent Stripling, 66, a member for 41 years. ‘When I joined there were 45 members, now there are over 500 and a waiting list of people who want to join.’”

Today, as the krewe closes in on its 110th anniversary as a New Orleans institution, its traditions are deeply rooted and steeped in a history that has been rich, proud, bumpy, raucous and, most importantly, resilient.

King Zulu 2019, George V. Rainey, with Queen Zulu Kailyn Rainey next to him, reigns over the festivities, with the royal court members that have emerged, evolved and expanded over the years – Big Shot, Witch Doctor, Ambassador, Mayor, Governor, Province Prince and Mr. Big Stuff, as well as the traditional Zulu Maids.

The grand, star-studded Coronation Ball was held on March 1. On March 5, the Zulu krewe will kick off the Fat Tuesday celebration at 8 a.m.

All of these traditions that have grown over the years – the crowning of King and Queen, the coconuts, the river-borne arrival, the elaborate costumes and masks, the toasting of the court, the socially conscious background and, most of all, the spirit of togetherness and celebration – make up the modern Zulu experience.

Banks noted that Zulu has stayed true to its original purpose – as an insurance program for ill members and their families. He said that mission soon expanded into serving the community and benefitting all of New Orleans and contributing to the city’s very identity. “In Zulu, social aid is just as real as the parade. It’s not just about the party.”

That history and tradition, he said, is what he wants to embody and pass on.

“I’m very happy and elated and in awe of being able to stand on shoulders of those men who established the history and tradition,” he said. “The spirit in which it started, very proud Black men joining together, is still there today,” he added. “We’re very focused. We are an extension of what we began as. We love what we do.”

This article originally published in the March 4, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.