Big Chief Harrison and the Mardi Gras Indians

By Al Kennedy

A biography of the life, work, and legacy of a pivotal figure in New Orleans cultural history.

Based on more than seventy interviews with the subject and his close friends and family, this biography delves deep into the life of Donald Harrison—a waiter, performer, mentor to musicians, philosopher, devoted family man, and, most notably, the Big Chief of the Guardians of the Flame, a Mardi Gras Indian tribe. The firsthand accounts and anecdotes from those who knew him offer insight into the electrifying existence of a man who enriched the culture of New Orleans, took pride in his African American heritage, and advocated education throughout the city.

Beneath a vibrant costume of colorful feathers and intricate beading stood a man of conviction who possessed a great intellect and intense pride. Harrison grew up during the Great Depression and faced discrimination throughout his life but refused to bow down to oppression. Through determination and an insatiable eagerness to learn, he found solace in philosophy, jazz, and art and spiritual meaning in the Mardi Gras Indian tradition. He shared his ideals and discoveries with his family, whom he protected fiercely, until he took his last breath in 1998. Harrison’s wife, children, and grandchildren continue to carry his legacy by furthering literacy programs for New Orleans’ youth.

From Harrison’s birth in 1933 to his desire to become a Mardi Gras Indian to the moment he met his beloved wife, author Al Kennedy shares Harrison’s significant life experiences. He allows Big Chief Donald to take center stage and explain—in his own words—the mysterious world of the Mardi Gras Indians, their customs, and beliefs. Rare personal photographs from family albums depict the Big Chief with his family, parading through the streets on Carnival Day, and performing the timeless rituals of the Mardi Gras Indians of New Orleans. This well-researched biography presents a side of the Big Chief the public did not see, revealing the rebellious spirit of a man who demanded respect, guarded his family, and guided his tribe with utmost pride.

Praise for Big Chief Harrison and the Mardi Gras Indians

“Enormously enjoyable, richly informative, and deeply moving. . . . To meet the Harrisons is to encounter an America you can't help but fall in love with and be inspired by forever, while gaining a glimpse into the powerful and meaningful tradition of the Mardi Gras Indians in New Orleans. It's a story of strength, passion, survival, and resistance. It’s a story for today.” —Jonathan Demme, Academy Award–winning director

“Building on his impressive knowledge of New Orleans culture, Al Kennedy delivers a masterpiece of artistic biography. The world needs to know about Big Chief Donald Harrison, Sr. Al Kennedy tells his full story in this wonderful book. . . . A powerful read.” —Robert Farris Thompson, Col. John Trumbull Professor, History of Art; Master of Timothy Dwight College, Yale University; and author, Tango: The Art History of Love, Face of the Gods, and Aesthetic of the Cool

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Feb 17, 2010
• ISBN: 9781455601172

Book preview

Big Chief eBook cover.jpgPELOGO.TIF

PELICAN PUBLISHING COMPANY

Gretna 2010

Copyright © 2010

By Al Kennedy

All rights reserved

---

The word Pelican and the depiction of a pelican are trademarks

of Pelican Publishing Company, Inc., and are registered in the

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

---

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kennedy, Al, 1953-

Big Chief Harrison and the Mardi Gras Indians / Al Kennedy ; foreword by Herreast J. Harrison.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-58980-696-2 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Harrison, Donald, 1933-1998. 2. African Americans—Louisiana—New Orleans—Biography. 3. Jazz singers—Louisiana—New Orleans—Biography. 4. Mardi Gras Indians (Musical group)—History. 5. New Orleans (La.)—Biography. 6. Carnival—Louisiana—New Orleans—History—20th century. 7. New Orleans (La.)—Social life and customs—20th century. I. Title.

F379.N553H37 2009

976.3'35063092—dc22

[B]

2009013913

ACIDCREA.EPS

Printed in the United States of America

Published by Pelican Publishing Company, Inc.

1000 Burmaster Street, Gretna, Louisiana 70053

To Vickie, Jennie, Adam, Sarah, and Dan

and

the magnificent

Big Chiefs, Wild Men, Spy Boys, Flag Boys, Big Queens,

and

all those who work to preserve the

Mardi Gras Indian tradition

in New Orleans

Contents

Foreword

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1 Jackson and Clara

Chapter 2 The Resistance of the Elders

Chapter 3 From Eager Apprentice to Big Chief

Chapter 4 The Turnkey’s Advice

Chapter 5 Falling in Love with a Photograph

Chapter 6 Throwing Signals on the Neutral Ground

Chapter 7 Are You Hip to Camus?

Chapter 8 Shoot My Pistol on a Mardi Gras Day

Chapter 9 Hanging Up the Suit

Chapter 10 Walking Across New Orleans

Chapter 11 A Chief Without a Crown

Chapter 12 Jazz and a New Orleans Big Chief

Chapter 13 Guardians of the Flame

Chapter 14 Improvising by the Kitchen Table

Chapter 15 In the Spirit

Chapter 16 Listening to Indian Red

Chapter 17 The Legacy of Thunder and Lightning

Afterword

Acknowledgments

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Foreword

After being asked numerous times by my late husband, Donald, to record his thoughts regarding his involvement with the cultural tradition of masking as a Mardi Gras Indian in New Orleans, I reluctantly agreed. Thus began the daunting task of recording him while I was occupied with other activities, and I soon realized I could not devote my uninterrupted attention to my husband’s stories. I needed assistance with such an enormous undertaking.

My daughter, Cherice Harrison-Nelson, suggested that I ask Al Kennedy if he would be interested in interviewing the Chief. We knew Al through his work in the New Orleans Public Schools, and he included the Harrison family in his previous book on public-school music teachers. I summoned enough courage to approach Al with the proposition in the spring of 1998. He told me he might be interested in the project, but he was working full time for the Orleans Parish School Board. I was pleased when, months later, I received his call saying that he would help. That help has resulted in what I affectionately call Donaldisms, the retelling of encounters with the late Big Chief.

After ten years of interviews and research, Al has painstakingly chronicled the events that comprised Donald’s life. He has written a compelling, realistic account of who Donald was and was not. My daughter, Cara, and I were the first Harrisons to read Al’s words, and we shared similar reactions. Some of the recounted experiences prompted laughter, while others brought tears. We were reminded of some extremely painful events, but we recalled many more moments of immense, irrepressible joy. Every moment of my life with the complex, spiritual being that was Donald Harrison, Sr., was worth living and, through Al’s words, reliving.

I am most grateful to the entire Kennedy family—Al, Vickie, Adam, and Jennie—for helping me fulfill my husband’s last request.

Herreast J. Harrison

Preface

According to Big Chief Donald Harrison, Sr., the Mardi Gras Indians are a living culture of pride and resistance that developed in the African and African American communities of New Orleans over the course of more than 150 years. The once-simple feathered suits, the chants, and the elaborate dance rituals are said to date from the mid- to late 1800s, with some researchers contending that the tradition reaches back to the 1700s.

At its most basic, Big Chief Donald explained, the tradition honors the American Indians who fed, sheltered, and protected the African survivors of the Middle Passage and their African American descendents who escaped from slavery in colonial and antebellum Louisiana. The participants remember that the enslaved and the American Indians often worked together, fought together, and struggled together to survive.

Big Chief Donald, who became a conduit of the old ways to the present generation, made it his life’s work to preserve the spiritual arts of sewing and singing he had learned from his elders. He had tremendous respect for the American Indians, yet he also celebrated the pride and resistance of his African and African American ancestors—both free and enslaved.

The Mardi Gras Indian tradition is forever linked to New Orleans, and the Mardi Gras Indians helped shape the culture of a city that, in turn, influenced the world.

Groups of African American men—and more and more women—still walk through the neighborhoods of New Orleans on Mardi Gras Day and St. Joseph’s Night. They dance, sing the old songs, and keep alive the complex rituals of respect. This book is about one of them.

Introduction

"I’m the Big Chief from the Guardians of the Flame.

Bark out thunder.

Roar out lightning.

Kick over tombstones.

Wake up the Dead."1

Bark out thunder! Roar out lightning! Big Chief Donald Harrison, Sr., lived his life barking out thunder and roaring out lightning. He took center stage wherever he stood. He challenged everyone, yet he earned and gave respect. He crossed the social and cultural boundaries of New Orleans and left behind an artistic and historical legacy. Throughout his life, the Mardi Gras Indian tradition directed his footsteps and shaped his philosophy.

This book, however, is not about the Mardi Gras Indians. It is the story of one man and how he chose to define the Mardi Gras Indian tradition and then lived his life in accordance with his beliefs. This narrative tells one out of many possible stories of Donald Harrison, an African American man who learned how to survive in a hostile America. He embraced the New Orleans Mardi Gras Indian tradition of resistance and fierce pride that developed in the same America that tried its best to ignore him.

To understand Donald Harrison, it is important to understand what the Mardi Gras Indians meant to him. An important part of his story is the way in which he shared his tradition with a younger generation. Within these pages, he talks about embracing the tradition when he was four years old and living it to the fullest throughout his life. And when he could no longer tell his story, others stepped in to continue the narrative right up to the moment he took his last breath in the veterans hospital in New Orleans on December 1, 1998.

The narrative draws from Big Chief Donald’s words and those of his family and friends. Their voices are far more important than anything anyone else can add. As the author, I believe that the way I transcribed the original taped interviews reflects the way I was trained to hear and to speak. Consequently, my biases admittedly are part of the transcriptions. Since the interviews for this book spread over a decade, I tried to get as many interviewees as possible to reread the quotes they had given me many years earlier—and they were given the opportunity to correct the text. It is sad to note that some Mardi Gras Indians who allowed me to interview them are not alive to see how their words live on in this book.

Throughout the narrative, I reference Big Chief Donald Harrison, Sr., by his given name, Donald. In fact, so many Harrisons are an integral part of this story that, to differentiate them, I use their first names as well. In addition, Robert Nathaniel Lee appears most frequently as Big Chief Robbe, the name used by most people who knew him.

In different conversations at different times, the people interviewed often added new details to events covered in previous interviews. I have combined these quotations in the text but indicated the different interviews in the notes.

The term American Indian is used throughout the book when specific tribal affiliations cannot be determined. Some Mardi Gras Indians refer to themselves as members of gangs, and others designate their organization as a tribe. The individuals within the gangs have called themselves Indians for many decades, and the term is used by their neighbors, friends, and family members to mark their connection to the Mardi Gras Indians.

Every year crowds of music fans in shorts and loud Hawaiian shirts rush along Esplanade Avenue to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. They stream past the iron gates of St. Louis Cemetery #3 without stopping. Most are unaware that near the back of the cemetery, in Our Lady of the Holy Rosary Mausoleum, Big Chief Donald Harrison, Sr., is at rest. At least his body is. In death, as in life, his spirit refuses to be confined.

On the left side of the quiet corridor, at the bottom, in Row A, on the fourth marble plate from the entrance, is a simple bronze plaque:

DONALD E HARRISON Sr

US ARMY

KOREA

JAN 27 1933 + DEC 1 1998

Sometimes a plant or some flowers decorate the vault. At other times, a simple feather rests in the flowerpot next to the crypt.

Since the Big Chief’s funeral on December 5, 1998, I’ve stopped there many times on my way to the Jazz Festival to pay my respects, and I can’t help but recall how he quizzed me the first time I interviewed him. Suddenly turning the tables, he asked me: Are you hip to Albert Camus? The Big Chief was schooling me in philosophy.2

I had long forgotten the French philosopher whose writings were as much a part of Donald Harrison’s vocabulary as the songs of the Mardi Gras Indians. There was much to learn about Donald Harrison, Sr.

Every year, the chants of the Mardi Gras Indians performing at the JazzFest catch the wind and drift over the fence separating St. Louis Cemetery from the Fair Grounds. The ancient songs echo through the marble corridor to Donald Harrison’s final resting place. He lies closest to the stage where on May 3, 1998, he made his final JazzFest appearance with his gang, the Guardians of the Flame. On that stage, he sang the old songs, danced the traditional dances, and wore the feathers he had loved since childhood. His spiritual journey was almost complete.

Every biography is a best guess. Any errors of fact are my responsibility, and certainly my interpretations are free for all to challenge. In this book, I have tried to arrange the fragments of Donald Harrison’s life into a coherent narrative. In the end, however, it’s still a guess—my guess. Yet, in all of these pages, I hope there remains a glimpse of the real man who barked out thunder and roared out lightning.

Chapter 1

Jackson and Clara

"I was born to mask with the Indians.

Do you understand what I am saying?"1

The little boy, barely three years old, trembled with excitement as he peered out his front door. He cautiously inched closer to the steps leading to the sidewalk below until he could no longer resist the yells and bursts of color in the street. His curiosity overcame his fear, and he bravely stepped outside to see Mardi Gras Day 1936 unfold in front of 2630 Jackson Avenue.

Wild Man Herman, the Wild Man for the Creole Wild West Mardi Gras Indians, exploded out of the intersection of Jackson Avenue and Clara Street, right in front of the little boy. Executing a flawless head-over-heels roll on the street, the Wild Man sprang up again. He defiantly waved his hatchet, swaying violently so the feathers that seemed to cover him from head to toe snapped back and forth in the morning light.The massive Wild Man suddenly towered over Donald Harrison. Excitement turned to terror, and the three-year-old fled back into the safety of his house.2

While the little boy cowered in his living room, he could not take his eyes off the Mardi Gras Indians as they moved on down the street. Soon they were gone, but Wild Man Herman would live in Donald’s imagination for a lifetime.

I was scared, recalled Donald Harrison sixty years later. He was the Wild Man. He was running wild.3

The boy’s curiosity grew so much over the next year that Louis and Thelma Harrison could barely contain their now four-year-old son and keep him inside. Anticipating Mardi Gras morning the way other children might anticipate Christmas, Donald Harrison waited with growing impatience for the morning when the man in the bright feathers would appear again. All I did was I’d just sit on the steps and look for the Wild West to come through there, Donald Harrison said.4

Torn between fear and fascination, Donald widened his blue eyes as Wild Man Herman again made his dramatic entrance into the neighborhood on February 9, 1937, Mardi Gras Day. Combining athletic grace with unrestrained fury, Wild Man Herman cleared the streets, making a path for Brother Tillman, his Big Chief—Big Chief of the Creole Wild West.

Standing on his steps again, Donald Harrison spotted the man shouting, Wild Man! I’m the Wild Man! The scene blurred as Donald felt two strong arms grab him, and Wild Man Herman pulled him close, saying, You don’t have to be a-feared of me. I’m going to protect you. I ain’t going to let nobody hurt you.5

Wild Man Herman effortlessly lifted Donald onto his shoulders. High above the crowd, the breeze mussed Donald’s fine blond curls as he frantically clutched at feathers and canvas. The Wild Man carried the boy a block down Jackson Avenue to Magnolia Street. When he reached the corner, he abruptly reversed direction, jumping, shouting, and dancing back to Jackson and Clara. Wild Man Herman then deposited the dazed child back on his doorstep. That was the day Donald Harrison became a Mardi Gras Indian. He had to wear the feathers. He had to follow them.

But before Donald could mask as a Mardi Gras Indian, he had to be allowed to leave his porch, and his parents were not about to let that happen anytime soon back in 1937. Besides, they had more important concerns, such as surviving the Great Depression in New Orleans.

Growing Up in the Depression

Married in 1920, Louis and Thelma Harrison faced the challenge of rearing six children in New Orleans during the tough days of the Great Depression.

By the time Donald Harrison was born on January 27, 1933, he already had two older brothers and a sister: Joseph, Yvonne, and Louis. After Donald, the family grew to include Edwin and Gloria.6

His wife, Herreast, remembered a photograph she had seen of Donald sitting on a horse at age three or four. His hair was blond when he was a younger child, she said. Big curls, too. He was so cute.7

Because Yvonne was the oldest Harrison girl, she became Donald’s first babysitter. I remember . . . pushing him in a red wagon, she recalled. We didn’t have strollers. Her mother used to prop him up with a pillow in the red wagon.8

He was so fat, Yvonne said of her baby brother, and he looked the very image of my mother’s brother—my mother’s brother James that used to mask Indian. Everybody called him Foxy.

Skin color plays an inevitable part in almost any story that takes place within a society that has been taught to think in the artificially constructed absolutes of black and white. Donald was, to use a term his wife abhors, light skinned. To be African American with light skin put Donald in the position of having to prove himself within his African American community and also out in the white-dominated world. Yvonne remembers accompanying her mother once as she pushed Donald down the street in the wagon. They were stopped by a white lady who asked whose baby that was, because Donald had blond hair and blue eyes. Donald’s mother angrily responded: My baby! Why?9

A society based upon faulty assumptions certainly misjudged Donald Harrison, who charged like a bull into the white-and-black world—a world that prized white skin but cared nothing for Donald’s fair skin. Donald embraced his African ancestry, though it was blended with the blood of a European paternal grandfather. He placed himself squarely within the black community he loved.10

In New Orleans during the depression, it took the work of many hands to feed a family. The Harrisons struggled together and survived together. If any member of the family got a little something, they put it in the pot, Donald said. When the family lived on Conti Street, near where the Lafitte public housing complex was being constructed, Donald, who was then around eight years old, spotted a source of coal to keep the family warm. More than a half-century later, he leaned back in his dining-room chair and said conspiratorially, I’m going to tell you something. It’s all right because I can’t get busted for this now.

They had a coal yard on St. Louis and Claiborne, and I dug a hole on the corner of the fence where I could reach in there and grab some coal, he recalled. And [I] had that going for about two weeks, and then they closed that up. But I’d come home with a bucket of coal and nobody asked me about that coal. Nobody asked me where I got it from. Your a— is warm.11

Peddling Wagon

By the time Donald was ten, the Harrisons already were living in the Lafitte complex, which opened in June 1941 and offered public low-rent housing specifically for colored. The demand for housing was so great that all Lafitte’s units were snapped up by July 1941.12

Donald worked after school and during the summers with his brother Joe selling watermelons, bananas, potatoes, and other fruits and vegetables from the back of a mule-drawn peddling wagon. Years later, a smile would spread across his face as he sang the hollers that brought buyers out of their homes. If you couldn’t holler, you couldn’t work on the peddling wagons, he explained, as his voice began to fill the dining room where he sat.

Butter beans and okra/ripe tomatoes/new potatoes/and/ri-i-i-pe toma-a-a-toes, he sang.

Singing his old hollers brought him back to his boyhood streets of the Lafitte complex. It was almost as if he could smell the fragrance of faraway summers when he would walk through Lafitte, cutting plump watermelons and holding up the dripping slices to show the customers how red and ripe they were.13

His brother rented the mule and a cart from a man on Miro and Bienville streets. If they wanted watermelons, they would guide the mule to the New Basin Canal. Fresh produce meant a trip to the French Market, and bananas, according to Donald, came from the banana boxcars near Perdido and Roman streets. The Harrison brothers never sold watermelons and bananas at the same time because the weight was too much for the mule.14

Donald made it a point to get to know his neighbors, and they became his best customers. We’d usually go through the project—the Lafitte project, he said. If you are selling potatoes for fifteen cents a bucket, I’d sell them for ten cents a bucket. Donald and Joe would work until they sold as much as they could, then they would drop the reins. The mule would head back to the stable, where Joe would give Donald his share of the money.15

Donald and his brothers and sisters gave the bulk of the money they earned to their parents, which enabled the family to survive periods of joblessness. Donald’s older sister, Yvonne, remembers her father digging ditches for the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Whenever Louis Harrison, Sr., knew he would be working by a river or bayou, Yvonne would dig up earthworms and put them in a coffee can for her father. He would go fishing and bring back a string of fish, she said. That would be our dinner. Fish and grits.

A rare treat would be when her father occasionally caught a particular kind of turtle, known locally as a cowan, and brought it home to make the delicious Creole soup-stew.16

My mother never ate it, and she never cooked it, said Yvonne, so her father would kill, drain, clean, scald, and cook the turtle. And it was good, she remembered. Years later she would cook the spicy dish as a special treat for Donald.17

Apples and Brokers

Donald’s father worked wherever and whenever he could. The New Orleans city directories list him as an insurance agent in 1928; as an agent for the Louisiana Industrial Life Insurance Company in 1933, the year Donald was born; and again as an insurance agent in 1947. He walked door to door selling insurance policies and collecting life-insurance and burial-insurance premiums. He worked briefly at the U.S. Naval Station in Algiers, perhaps as a laborer, since city directories list him as a laborer in 1935 and again in 1940. In 1938, he got a job as a porter, working at Maison Blanche, a department store, and Donald remembered his father also working at a lumberyard. You got a job where you could get a job, you know, said Donald, who also recalled his mother working as a domestic.18

During the war years, Thelma Harrison received ration stamps but never enough to cover the needs of her family. She saw to it that her children got every bit of wear out of their shoes, and if she managed to save one or two of the precious clothing stamps, she exchanged them with neighbors for food items or food-ration stamps.

When she heard that apples were being distributed, she rounded up as many children as she could because the more children you had, the more commodities you’d get. The Harrisons ate countless meals of stewed apples, fried apples, smothered apples, and any other recipe that made the abundant apples feed a hungry family. We never saw a hungry day, Yvonne said. Mrs. Harrison also cooked for neighbors, and if anyone in the neighborhood was in need, Thelma Harrison would take them food.

The Harrison children were not coddled. Meat was scarce, and onions often were the only seasoning for the plentiful beans. If you didn’t like what they cooked, you went to bed hungry, said Yvonne.

You don’t want it, go to bed! the parents would order the complaining child. Drink some water and go to bed! The Harrison children quickly learned not to be finicky eaters.19

2-01-2_gray_Thelma & Louis Harrison.tif

Thelma and Louis Harrison. (Courtesy of Herreast Harrison)

Louis and Thelma Harrison shared cooking duties, and family members still associate the Harrison home with the aroma of Louis’s lasagna and the fragrance of Thelma’s mirliton--shrimp--ham casserole or the rolls she baked in the wood-burning oven. At home, Donald also developed a lifelong fondness for a dish his wife called weenies and spaghetti. Watching his father in the kitchen must have inspired Donald, because he often cooked for his own wife and children.20

Even without money, Louis and Thelma always celebrated the holidays with their children. For Christmas, each child would receive two gifts, one inexpensive item their parents would buy, such as a cap pistol, watercolor set, or skates, and one from the Times-Picayune Christmas Gift Fund, which distributed toys to negro children at Pelican Stadium. By four o’clock on Christmas morning, Louis Harrison already had bundled up his sleepy children, taken several streetcars, and arrived at Pelican Stadium before the doors opened at seven. He wanted to get them as close as possible to the front of the line because the better toys were distributed first.21

On Holy Saturday, the day before Easter, the Harrisons rushed their children to Dryades Street, the thriving African American shopping district. In the afternoon, the stores would mark down the Easter candy, selling the broken chocolate Easter eggs and broken chocolate rabbits, which the Harrison children called brokers. They would get enough brokers to fill their shoeboxes, which served as their only Easter baskets.

On Sundays, Louis and Thelma Harrison and all their little bobcats, as Thelma referred to her children, walked to church. Much to their dismay, the Harrison children found out that playing sick to avoid church carried a high price: if they were too sick to go to church, they were too sick to go out and play for the rest of the day.22

Louis Harrison actively supported his church, serving as secretary for the Grace Methodist Church, at Iberville and North Prieur streets. He combined his religious faith with stern discipline. He demanded discipline, Donald said. Everybody respected his discipline.23

Louisiana Weekly

Knowing he was expected to earn additional money, ten-year-old Donald joined his brothers and sister in selling the Louisiana Weekly. The New Orleans-based African American newspaper, started in 1925, carried the news that the white-owned dailies often ignored or refused to publish. According to Donald Harrison, in the eyes of those papers, we [the black community] didn’t even live here.24

To the amazement of the other newsboys, Donald, on his first day on the job, confidently strode up to the elderly woman on Bienville and Roman streets who distributed the Louisiana Weekly and demanded fifty copies. The seasoned veterans already had claimed the best street corners, and they did not hesitate to defend their turf should any new boy try to muscle in on their sales. They assumed they would have to take Donald down a peg or two, but he skipped the usual intersections and headed straight to Charity Hospital on Tulane Avenue. They are shut-ins, so they are looking for the paper, he reasoned. His steady sales proved he possessed a good business sense even at ten years old.25

Happiest when selling vegetables and the Louisiana Weekly, Donald struggled in school. He often told the story about how his brother Joe changed his life with the simple gift of a book—the title of which has long been forgotten. But there was something about the book—some family members think it may have been a story of the wild west—that turned a small spark of intellectual curiosity in Donald into a roaring blaze.

Instead of just selling the Louisiana Weekly, Donald started reading the newspaper from front to back. He was drawn to the Louisiana Weekly’s editorial page. They would put out decent editorials, he said, and he read every opinion piece in the paper.26

The book from his brother and a steady diet of Louisiana Weekly editorials made him think about the power of words, and how words convey thoughts, and how words in print can persuade. He realized that someone far away could make you believe something, accept something, reject something—all through words. He began to read everything he could find, and he soon found the words to express who he was, where he was going, and what he wanted to achieve.27

Moving from Place to Place

In 1947, Louis Harrison became a school custodian for the Orleans Parish School Board. Each time the board assigned him to another school, he moved his family to a custodial lodge on or near the school grounds. By giving the custodian free or reduced rent, the board kept a person on duty day and night to safeguard the property.

But it was always a house, Yvonne stressed. Always a house.28

Friends sometimes teased Donald, saying, Your daddy didn’t pay his rent. Every time I would look, you done moved somewhere else.

We did move a lot, Donald continued. You didn’t know where you were going to stay the next week. It’s part of life.29

From the time he was about fourteen years old until he joined the army, Donald lived near the public school where his father worked or on the school grounds. In September 1947, Louis Harrison was appointed a subcustodian at Hoffman Elementary School with a salary of $86.16 per month. A year later, in 1948, the school board promoted him to custodian of another Uptown school, McDonogh 6 Elementary, a move that raised his monthly salary to $134.64. The Harrisons lived on the McDonogh 6 school grounds until Louis was transferred to Alfred C. Priestley Senior High School in 1953, by which time Donald was in the army. In 1956, the school board moved Donald’s father for the final time to McDonogh 41, which later was demolished for the construction of what would become Armstrong Park.30

The schoolyards became the Harrison children’s private playgrounds. While the older children worked with their father cleaning the school buildings, the younger children enjoyed the swings, merry-go-rounds, and other playground equipment. As the school board transferred his father, Donald and his siblings would change schools. Like I said, I was rambling, Donald said.31

Immersed in New Orleans Culture

Donald Harrison grew up in a family that celebrated many cultural aspects of the city. However, the Mardi Gras Indians were a forbidden topic. My daddy didn’t like [Mardi Gras] Indians, Donald explained. My mama didn’t approve of it, but she didn’t dislike it. Two of his mother’s brothers, Joseph King and James Foxy King, had masked as Mardi Gras Indians many years earlier, and Donald must have listened eagerly any time the conversation in the Harrison house turned to the two uncles. The stories were as close as he could get to the Mardi Gras Indians. His father made sure of that.32

Nooo! Stay away from the Indians. I don’t want you to be an Indian,’ his father would tell him. The Mardi Gras Indians had not yet been deemed worthy of scholarly study when Donald was a young boy. Like many parents in the 1930s and subsequent decades, Donald’s father considered the Mardi Gras Indians to be negative, destructive, and violent. Years later, Donald explained to an interviewer that his father had an adverse reaction towards them from a past experience when he was a young kid, but he did not elaborate.33

Neighborhood friends formed the nucleus of early Mardi Gras Indian gangs. As Donald grew into boyhood, Indian gangs would pass by his house on Mardi Gras Day wherever he lived. Boys he knew would call out to him, and he ached to follow them, to join the dancers and his friends who second-lined behind the Indian gangs throughout the day. I knew they were going to come every Mardi Gras morning, and my daddy wouldn’t let me second-line, he said, his voice still filled with regret more than a half-century later.34

While opposed to the Mardi Gras Indians, Donald’s parents did enjoy other aspects of New Orleans culture. Louis Harrison liked to parade. He joined the Prince Hall Masons, and many of the Masonic parades featured brass bands. He was no stranger to the processional aspect of New Orleans culture.35

The Harrison family also attended Mardi Gras parades, catching the Zulu parade on Jackson Avenue and standing in the cold wind on Canal Street for others. They would arrive early and get tightly wedged in the crowd because Louis Harrison liked to be close to the front.36

Living near Jackson Avenue as a small child and then in the Treme neighborhood (pronounced Truh-may) as a teenager put Donald Harrison in two vibrant cultural centers of the city. These communities included brass bands, Mardi Gras Indians, Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs, Benevolent Societies, and a cast of street characters, sights, and sounds that made an indelible impression upon him.37

Donald remembered a prominent funeral home near the family’s rented house on Jackson Avenue, because the Zulu Mardi Gras parade always stopped there. Nor could he forget the large eye painted in that front window of the funeral home, which faced Jackson Avenue. According to Donald, recounting the story as an adult, the hand-painted slogan The Eye that Never Sleeps was intended to convey the message that the funeral-home staff members were available twenty-four hours a day to help a grieving family. Instead, the message frightened the Harrison children, particularly young Donald, giving him the uneasy feeling that the eye was watching him.38

Donald spoke so often to his grandchildren of this fear that his grandson Kiel Scott said he could almost visualize the eye. According to his grandfather, everybody in the neighborhood used to think that the eye followed them. The children believed they were safe from the eye only if it was looking at someone else. But when they started fighting or fussing, the eye would stare at them, Scott said.39

Donald also warily watched out for a character the children called Little Louie, who walked the neighborhood around Jackson Avenue, seldom speaking but terrifying all the children. He would go to every wake, whether he knew them or not, said Yvonne. Anytime you’d see him, he was going to someone’s wake.40

When people see Little Louie in the neighborhood, they’d run inside, Donald said. ‘Little Louie’s walking! Somebody’s going to die!’ The word would spread, and the children would scatter.41

Another old man, stooped, dressed in black, wearing a black derby, sporting a long beard, and limping through the neighborhood, also sent the children scurrying. Donald later learned that this man and others who were sooty and carrying long sticks probably were some of New Orleans’ chimney sweepers.42

Whenever Donald had a little money left after contributing his share to the household, he might spend it at the movies. On Wednesdays and Fridays he would take in stage shows, comedians, and other live entertainers who sometimes performed before the movies.43

St. Joseph’s Day

Donald, whose neighborhood was predominantly black, enjoyed many Italian traditions since he lived near so many Italian corner grocery stores. They didn’t make their money and run out of the black community, he said. They lived in the community. Their children came up with us. Donald played with the children, and he ate in their homes. We are going to have ravioli, they told him. Come on, bring your little brother. Come on and have ravioli.44

Donald respected the Italian grocers because they extended credit to his family during the depression, and beans and rice and pig meat still appeared on the Harrison dinner table even when money was hard to come by. In return, the Harrisons faithfully paid their bills—always.

It is interesting that the predominantly African American neighborhoods gave Donald his first experiences with New Orleans’ traditional Italian St. Joseph Altars. In the grocery stores or family homes, Donald would see a statue of St. Joseph surrounded by tables piled high with breads, cakes, cookies, and other foods prepared in special ways and decorated with religious symbols. Said to have originated during the Middle Ages and been brought to New Orleans by Sicilian immigrants around the late 1800s, St. Joseph celebrations were a familiar sight to Donald Harrison while he was growing up.45

According to author Kerri McCaffety, the French in New Orleans had long looked forward to St. Joseph’s Day, March 19, because it offered the Catholic population a break in the middle of the Lenten fast. Some African American churches also adopted the St. Joseph tradition, and St. Joseph Altars have appeared in the African American neighborhoods of New Orleans since the 1930s.46

To Donald Harrison, St. Joseph’s Day meant a special meal, but more important to Donald, St. Joseph’s Night meant Mardi Gras Indians in his neighborhood. This will be discussed in a later chapter.47

Skeletons and Indians

In the Lafitte complex, located in the Treme/Lafitte neighborhood, Donald found himself in a community rich in music, history, and cultural innovation. Historically, the area was linked to an ancient Indian portage, which later became Bayou Road. According to a study conducted by the City of New Orleans in 1978, the free men of color who resided in Treme were often musicians, craftsmen, and artisans. A more recent study by the National Park Service declares that Treme has one of the highest concentrations of jazz parading in the city.48

The area around the intersection of Orleans and Claiborne avenues was a central location for the New Orleans African American community’s Mardi Gras activities, and the Mardi Gras Indians gathered there. The Harrisons, who lived on Galvez Court, were only minutes away from the excitement of Black Carnival. On Mardi Gras Day, early in the morning, Donald and his brothers and sisters nervously encountered the grass men, neighborhood men who covered themselves from head to toe with Spanish moss. Soon the Harrison children would be running from the Skeleton gangs costumed in their fearsome, oversized papier-mâché skull masks and long handled underwear dyed or painted black. To make their outfits particularly frightening, these men painted white bones on the black material.

If you want to put a split in the head, you take and put a split with black paint, so when you look at it in the dark . . . it looks like a split skull, said Joe Jenkins, childhood friend of Donald Harrison and Second Chief of the Guardians of the Flame.49

I’ll tell you something about the Skeletons, added Donald. When I was small, I was scared of them, because they run up to you, and holler at you, and make you run. He recalled seeing the men who were members of the Skeleton gangs going over by the meat markets . . . on the Saturday or Sunday before Mardi Gras, and they’d get these ham bones, and they carried the ham bones in their hands on Mardi Gras. The bigger and bloodier the bone, the better.50

For Donald Harrison, Joe Jenkins, and countless other children, seeing the Skeletons added terror and delight to Mardi Gras Day. But the Skeletons meant something even more important to them: "When you see the Skeletons, you can bet your bottom