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Back in the Day: The first Black Carnival club [1]

['Tammy C. Barney', 'More Tammy C. Barney', 'Verite News']

Date: 2024-01-24  

French-Canadian explorer Jean Baptiste Le Moyne Sieur de Bienville brought Mardi Gras to this area in 1699 by naming land located 60 miles south of New Orleans as “Pointe du Mardi Gras” when his men realized it was the eve of the holiday. In 1781, the Perseverance Benevolent & Mutual Aid Association was the first of hundreds of clubs and carnival organizations formed in New Orleans.

In 1856, six young Mobile natives formed the Mistick Krewe of Comus. Krewe members were anonymous, but it was no secret that they were all white.

A photo of Wiley James Knight, from the book “Mardi Gras in New Orleans” by Arthur Hardy. Credit: Courtesy Jari C. Honora

Wiley James Knight, a 22-year-old Black native of Bolivar, Tenn., is credited with sparking the idea for the first Black Carnival club, according to the Historic New Orleans Collection. Knight began offering dance lessons to Black men and women in 1894 after he noticed there were no Carnival balls for Black people, only square dances.

The next year, a group of his students presented debutantes during the first Black Carnival ball at Globe Hall, located at St. Peter and Marais streets, according to the club’s website. Miss Louise Fortier was the first queen.

After the ball, they formed the Illinois Club. The name was selected because most members were Pullman porters and maids from Illinois. The club became exclusively for men around 1900. The group split in 1926, forming the Original Illinois Club and the Young Men’s Illinois Club.

“In many ways, the founding of the Original Illinois Club and its presentation of debutantes was a conscious response to the burgeoning Jim Crow system,” wrote Jari Honora for the Historic New Orleans Collection. “It was a declaration that people of color were imbued with the same refinement and social graces as the white New Orleanians whose organizations presented their own debutantes each year.”

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