On Mardi Gras in 1966, the African American krewe of Zulu paraded on North Claiborne Avenue accompanied by the Young Men’s Olympian Brass Band and followed by second-liners dancing in the street.
Among the throngs of appreciative revelers were various black parading groups: Mardi Gras Indians wearing elaborate hand-sewn suits, sassy Baby Dolls dressed in bloomers and bonnets, and ominous skeleton gangs costumed in skulls and crossbones. Families watched the spectacle and picnicked under the canopy of century-old oak trees that lined the grassy median known in New Orleans as a neutral ground. This was black Mardi Gras, a separate celebration from the whites-only festival that, until 1968, banned African Americans from the French Quarter and Canal Street. And North Claiborne Avenue was “Black Main Street.” During Jim Crow, businesses and social institutions catered to African Americans and developed a black professional class of doctors, lawyers, pharmacists, and funeral directors.
Yet, this was the last year that families were able to enjoy Mardi Gras from the tree-lined neutral ground. From 1966 to 1968, the city used federal highway funds to construct an elevated expressway to facilitate traffic to the mostly white suburbs, tearing out the neutral ground, uprooting the majestic oak trees, and destroying at least 170 residences and fifty businesses. Poor and working-class black residents lacked the resources and political clout of the white preservationists who successfully fought an elevated expressway through the French Quarter. As community activist Jerome Smith recalled, “the expressway broke up neighborhoods and families in the 1960s and destroyed much of the city’s African American heritage.” In the 1970s, grassroots neighborhood organizations led negotiations with the city of New Orleans to reinvest in the district and preserve its rich cultural traditions, ushering in a new era of community activism in the Claiborne Corridor.
Favorite Neighborhood Restaurant
Manchu Food Store and Chinese Kitchen
1413 N Claiborne Ave
New Orleans, LA 70116
A non-descript neighborhood corner store popular among locals for take-out fried chicken wings and Chinese food.
To Learn More
- Susan Buchanan, “New Orleans Considers Removing Its Claiborne Overpass,” The Louisiana Weekly, December 17, 2012.
- Lolis E. Elie, “Planners Push to Tear out Elevated I-10 over Claiborne,” Times-Picayune, July 11, 2009.
- Carolyn Kolb, “Zulu, Despite Difficulty, Mounts Float and Rules, Times-Picayune, February 23, 1966.
- Laine Kaplan-Levenson, “’The Monster’: Claiborne Avenue before and after the Interstate,” Tripod: New Orleans at 300, WWNO, http://wwno.org/post/monster-claiborne-avenue-and-after-interstate, May 5, 2016.
- John L. Renne, “New Orleans Claiborne Avenue Redevelopment Study: A University of New Orleans Analysis of Best Practices and Public Opinion” (2011). UNOTI Publications. Paper 9.