The Friday before Mardi Gras in 1946 – the first year parades returned after World War II – was the day the lights went out on Carnival.
Krewes were forced to parade in the dark or cancel after flambeaux carriers went on strike.
“Before safe battery-powered electric lighting and widespread overhead street lights, the dazzling parades of New Orleans’ famed Carnival tradition were lit by flambeaux,” a 2017 Antigravity article states. “A flambeaux carrier strike meant that the evening parades could not proceed.”
The Black male flambeaux carriers marched beside floats and danced for tips while holding iron poles topped with kerosene lanterns. According to Antigravity, the first flambeaux were enslaved men who marched in the Mistick Krewe of Comus parade in 1857.
“Up until the legal unraveling of racial segregation (and arguably far after), the flambeaux were really the only ‘sanctioned’ and protected way for Black people to cross the metaphysical race line of Mardi Gras,” Antigravity states. “After Emancipation, Black men continued to bear the gargantuan, cross-like apparatuses.”
Before the strike, the flambeaux received $2 per parade and wanted to increase their wages to $5 per parade. The krewes made a counter offer of $2.50 per parade. It was rejected.
Then the krewes tried unsuccessfully to recruit Black veterans.
“Momus, god of mockery and rebuke, got a rebuke,” a Louisiana Weekly editorial stated. “It seems that white Carnival parades are having a post-war rude awakening.”
When the Krewes ran out of viable alternatives, they agreed to the requested $5 raise. However, Antigravity states, “flambeaux carriers did not take up their torches again until the next year.”
Flambeaux wages eventually increased to $60 to $80 per parade, plus tips. However, the National World War II Museum states, “Mardi Gras parades have phased out traditional flambeaux torches, opting for modernized lighting.”
For more tales from New Orleans history, visit the Back in the Day archives.
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