Frank Beacham's Journal

On this day in 1827 — 195 years ago — a group of masked and costumed students danced through the streets of New Orleans marking the beginning of the city's famous Mardi Gras celebrations

On this day in 1827 — 195 years ago — a group of masked and costumed students danced through the streets of New Orleans marking the beginning of the city's famous Mardi Gras celebrations.

The celebration of Carnival — or the weeks between Twelfth Night on January 6 and Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Christian period of Lent — spread from Rome across Europe and later to the Americas.

Nowhere in the United States is Carnival celebrated as grandly as in New Orleans, famous for its over-the-top parades and parties for Mardi Gras (or Fat Tuesday), the last day of the Carnival season. (Except 2021, due to Covid)

Though early French settlers brought the tradition of Mardi Gras to Louisiana at the end of the 17th century, Spanish governors of the province later banned the celebrations.

After Louisiana became part of the United States in 1803, New Orleanians managed to convince the city council to lift the ban on wearing masks and partying in the streets.

The city's new Mardi Gras tradition began in 1827, when the group of students, inspired by their experiences studying in Paris, donned masks and jester costumes and staged their own Fat Tuesday festivities.

The parties grew more and more popular, and in 1833 a rich plantation owner named Bernard Xavier de Marigny de Mandeville raised money to fund an official Mardi Gras celebration.

After rowdy revelers began to get violent during the 1850s, a secret society called the Mistick Krewe of Comus staged the first large-scale, well-organized Mardi Gras parade in 1857.

Over time, hundreds of krewes formed, building elaborate and colorful floats for parades held over the two weeks leading up to Fat Tuesday.

Riders on the floats are usually local citizens who toss "throws" at passersby, including metal coins, stuffed toys or those now-infamous strands of beads.

Though many tourists mistakenly believe Bourbon Street and the historic French Quarter are the heart of Mardi Gras festivities, none of the major parades have been allowed to enter the area since 1979 because of its narrow streets.

In February, 2006, New Orleans held its Mardi Gras celebrations despite the fact that Hurricane Katrina had devastated much of the city with massive flooding the previous August.

Attendance was at only 60-70 percent of the 300,000 — 400,000 visitors who usually attend Mardi Gras, but the celebration marked an important step in the recovery of the city, which counts on hospitality and tourism as its single largest industry. 

Thanks History.com

Malcolm X, African American nationalist and religious leader, was assassinated 56 years ago today in New York City

Malcolm X, an African American nationalist and religious leader, was assassinated 56 years ago today in New York City.

He was killed by rival Black Muslims while addressing his Organization of Afro-American Unity at the Audubon Ballroom on Broadway and 165th Street in Washington Heights.

Born as Malcolm Little in 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska, Little was the son of James Earl Little, a Baptist preacher who advocated the black nationalist ideals of Marcus Garvey. Threats from the Ku Klux Klan forced the family to move to Lansing, Michigan, where his father continued to preach his controversial sermons despite continuing threats.

In 1931, Malcolm Little’s father was brutally murdered by the white supremacist Black Legion, and Michigan authorities refused to prosecute those responsible. In 1937, the young man was taken from his family by welfare caseworkers. By the time he reached high school age, he had dropped out of school and moved to Boston, where he became increasingly involved in criminal activities.

In 1946, at the age of 21, he was sent to prison on a burglary conviction. It was there he encountered the teachings of Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam, whose members are popularly known as Black Muslims. The Nation of Islam advocated black nationalism and racial separatism and condemned Americans of European descent as immoral "devils."

Muhammad's teachings had a strong effect on young Malcolm, who entered into an intense program of self-education and took the last name "X" to symbolize his stolen African identity. After six years, Malcolm X was released from prison and became a loyal and effective minister of the Nation of Islam in Harlem.

In contrast with civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X advocated self-defense and the liberation of African Americans "by any means necessary." A fiery orator, he was admired by the African American community in New York and around the country.

In the early 1960s, he began to develop a more outspoken philosophy than that of Elijah Muhammad, whom he felt did not sufficiently support the civil rights movement.

In late 1963, Malcolm X’s suggestion that President John F. Kennedy's assassination was a matter of the "chickens coming home to roost" provided Elijah Muhammad, who believed that Malcolm had become too powerful, with a convenient opportunity to suspend him from the Nation of Islam.

A few months later, Malcolm formally left the organization and made a Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, where he was profoundly affected by the lack of racial discord among orthodox Muslims.

He returned to America as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz and in June, 1964 founded the Organization of Afro-American Unity, which advocated black identity and held that racism, not the white race, was the greatest foe of the African American.

Malcolm's new movement steadily gained followers, and his more moderate philosophy became increasingly influential in the civil rights movement, especially among the leaders of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.

On February 21, 1965, one week after his home was firebombed, Malcolm X was shot to death by Nation of Islam members while speaking at a rally of his organization in New York City.

Thanks History.com and the New York Times