“It began early and grew fast, this romance between New Orleans and parades,” music historian Henry Kmen noted. In keeping with New Orleans’s own peculiar customs, parades in the Crescent City commonly took place on Sundays, a tradition followed by many nineteenth century benevolent associations and today’s social aid and pleasure clubs. Sundays in New Orleans have never been the quiet days of worship and repose generally associated with the Sabbath and not at all like “the gloom of an English Sunday,” as architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe observed during his stay in the city in 1819. Visitors and New Orleanians alike frequently mentioned Congo Square where, on their Sunday holiday, slaves gathered to trade, socialize, and dance. They also noted the longstanding tradition of bands in New Orleans “going about the city early on Sunday mornings, squeaking and rattle-te-banging away . . . and waking everybody.” Militia companies, associations, and clubs of all kinds regularly sponsored Sunday parades to celebrate the innumerable holidays New Orleanians honored. To those who objected to revelry on the Sabbath, the New Orleans Picayune responded by proclaiming that there was “nothing so spirit-stirring as a parade.” An excuse for a parade was always available in a city filled with immigrant holidays, festivals, and secular and religious celebrations of all kinds, including, of course, Mardi Gras. Even the construction of a water works in 1834 inspired fifty workers to wheel their carts through the streets to the accompaniment of a brass band.
Benevolent association parades were common sights in the city by the 1880s. “Almost daily we can see parading some of our thoroughfares a well regaliared [sic] organization of some kind performing their constitutional duties,” The Louisianian commented in 1881. Associations carefully organized their parades, hiring the best brass bands and paying close attention to their dress and regalia. Members usually wore matching uniforms and carried banners and wreaths displaying the club’s motto and emblem. The marshals in the Young Men’s Hope Benevolent Association wore gray derbies in 1887 to distinguish them from the rank and file members who wore white straw hats. At the Screwmen’s Benevolent Association’s sixth anniversary parade, brass bands and banners accompanied 400 “representatives of labor’s sovereignty” who processed down the streets dressed in black suits, blue scarves, and white gloves.