New Orleans parade tradition advances black men’s image

Black men, to put it lightly, carry a heavy burden.

In much of the media, and thus in the eyes of much of America, they are symbols of danger--the face of the drive-by shooter; the crack dealer; the carjacker; the unwed, unemployed father; the most likely to grace a mug shot and the most likely to be hauled off to the morgue. Even when their blackness is celebrated, as in, say, an MTV video, they often appear as exaggerated stereotypes, rapping about sexual prowess or fearlessness with a gun.

Fred Johnson calls it “the change,” the generational shift that replaced the soul of his grandparents’ culture with the icy gaze of a teenage “gangsta.” That is why he was parading for more than four hours under a blazing Louisiana sky Sunday, leading the Black Men Of Labor on a mission to reclaim the joyous traditions of New Orleans.

Dressed in identical shirts sewn from African cloth--a pattern also used to make matching umbrellas and hat bands--his middle-aged crew of 17 dancers spun and swayed, gyrated and jiggled, high-stepping and moon-walking their way down streets that would have to be considered among the city’s roughest. They were backed by the Treme Brass Brand, a crisp marching ensemble of horns and drums that alternated between old-time spirituals and spirited funk. At least 1,000 people, maybe 2,000 or 3,000, gradually spilled out of their homes, turning the procession into one long movable jamboree, its thirst quenched by vendors hawking $1 beers out of shopping carts.

“This is a group of black men who work hard, who take care of their families, who are not polluted with drugs and crime, but who also appreciate the music that put New Orleans on the map,” said Johnson, 43, pausing between numbers to mop his dripping brow. “No matter how much younger people or other things change, we want to keep this tradition alive, and keep it in the streets.”

In the indigenous jargon of New Orleans, such roving shindigs are known as second-line parades, a term that encompasses just about everything from solemn jazz funerals to raucous block parties. Unlike the parades of Mardi Gras, however, these are not spectator events. Everyone is welcome to fall in behind the band--hence, the second line--as it weaves its way through the Big Easy, stopping every mile or so to wet its lips at a corner tavern or a smoky dance hall.

At the helm is always a dapper marching crew, sometimes sponsored by a social aid and pleasure club, the old African American benevolent organizations originally formed to provide health and burial insurance in segregated days. As times changed, most of their membership rolls waned, as did the frequency of their parades. But in recent years, dozens of new marching clubs, like Black Men Of Labor, have begun breathing new life into the art of second-lining. The number of Sunday parades, which had dwindled to just 15 in 1990, is expected to hit 45 this year, according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

“When that parade is going on, the marchers are basically saying, ‘This is our neighborhood, this is our culture, we’re out here in the street and it’s open to everyone,’ ” said Bruce Boyd Raeburn, curator of Tulane University’s Hogan Jazz Archive. “It’s ultimately a very wholesome kind of activity.”

Which is not the same as saying restrained or mild. A second-line parade is a passionate, inspiring, often cathartic promenade--a ritual of musicianship that is at once rollicking and deadly serious, sort of like imagining Louis Armstrong blowing his trumpet at an evangelical crusade. The Black Men Of Labor, guided by frequent bursts from Johnson’s whistle, were sometimes jumping for joy and other times writhing on their backs, one minute strutting with regal pride and the next feverishly shaking their butts.

“No matter how poor you are, this music gives you a richness,” said Johnson, who counsels first-time home buyers at a nonprofit community center during his workweek.

The crowd that trailed him couldn’t have agreed more, improvising steps of their own as they traversed the historic Treme neighborhood, where slaves once gathered in Congo Square to bang their drums through the night and, later, where pianists in the Storyville brothels pounded out the first chords of jazz. Even hard-looking teenagers with sagging jeans and wicked tattoos--the kind more inclined to listen to that “new-day music,” as Johnson puts it--seemed to revel in the rhythms of their forebears, prancing and halting and bending until they were as bathed in sweat as everyone else.

“You see this here? This is beautiful, brother,” said Joe Jones, a 31-year-old auto mechanic, similarly drenched under his pork-pie hat. As the parade rocked past the Zion Hill Baptist Church, he tucked his Heineken under his arm and quickly made the sign of a cross.

“Ain’t no place else like New Orleans,” he said, before marching on to the Black Men Of Labor’s timeless beat.