Lords of Misrule: Mardi Gras and the Politics of Race in New Orleans

by James Gill

Overview

Mardi Gras remains one of the most distinctive features of New Orleans. Although the city has celebrated Carnival since its days as a French and Spanish colonial outpost, the rituals familiar today were largely established in the Civil War era by a white male elite. In fact, the men behind the masks on the parade floats and at the Mardi Gras balls have kept the spirit of the Confederacy alive. They have put artistry and erudition into their Carnival displays while harboring a virulent racism that has led to violence and massacre. Because the Mardi Gras organizations have remained secret societies, their role in the white supremacist cause has not been fully recorded, until now.

Lords of Misrule is the first book to explore the effects of Mardi Gras on the social and political development of New Orleans, the first to analyze recent attempts to end racial segregation within the organizations that stage the annual festivities.

The history of Carnival is so intertwined with the

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780878059164
Publisher:	University Press of Mississippi
Publication date:	01/02/1997
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	312
Sales rank:	838,201
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

James Gill (1942-2024) was a writer and a columnist who worked for the Times-Picayune in New Orleans, Louisiana, before joining the staff of The Advocate. He is coauthor (with Howard Hunter) of Tearing Down the Lost Cause: The Removal of New Orleans's Confederate Statues, published by University Press of Mississippi.

Editorial Reviews

Less a history of Mardi Gras than a view of New Orleans through the lens of that all-consuming celebration of social hierarchy that shows how intertwined are carnival's charms with the misdeeds of the ruling class that invented it.

"New Orleans's pride is that it is unlike any other American city, which is also its undoing," writes Gill, a columnist for the New Orleans Times-Picayune. The evolution of America's most promising and industrious antebellum port into a seedy, second-rate city notable primarily for the flamboyant means by which it has flouted conventional morality (through legal prostitution, corrupt and defiant governments, and a closed social order that holds racial and ethnic exclusion more dear than economic prosperity) presents a decadent legacy rivaling the drunken riot of Mardi Gras itself. Though he frames the book with firsthand reporting of Councilwoman Dorothy Mae Taylor's 1991 attempt to adopt an ordinance mandating the integration of the private clubs that stage carnival parades, Gill devotes three-quarters of his text to exploring how members of the secretive old-line krewes, formed in the years surrounding the Civil War, directed that evolution. In the process, he sketches the intricate schematics underlying what he aptly dubs "the annual reaffirmation of social eminence over merit." What looks to outsiders like a chaotic street party is in fact a highly orchestrated social dance allowing the upper crust to establish their pecking order in public (albeit at masked balls hosted by secret societies) while spreading a little pre-Lenten cheer to the common folk. Relying mostly on old newspaper accounts, Gill forges a double-edged portrayal of Mardi Gras that, on one hand, captures the drama and romance of carnivals past and, on the other, unflinchingly details the bitter racial division it still fosters.

Scrupulously evenhanded—a lively, irony-loving illumination of the politics and history of America's rowdiest street celebration.

Kirkus Reviews