Black Mardi Gras krewe brings Bay St. Louis together. A ‘real slice of Mississippi’

When Rickey Lewis moved north as a child in the 1980s, he spent the next five years missing Bay St. Louis, a feeling that deepened every Mardi Gras when the streets of his hometown were fogged with barbecue smoke and littered with beads.

Lewis returned during Carnival twice, and each time he struggled to accept he would have to leave again. That truth felt especially heavy on Mardi Gras Day during those visits, when the Krewe of Real People rolled through a thriving Black business hub locals then called the Back-of-Town in convertible cars, horse-drawn carriages and floats.

The parade was one of his favorites. His earliest memory of it came when he was 5 or 6 years old, riding on a float painted blue and wearing a store-bought Phrygian cap. Lewis was dressed as a Smurf, for reasons that only make sense during Mardi Gras.

“Mardi Gras meant home,” he said. “The Krewe of Real People meant we were around family.”

The krewe meant family, both by blood and by community. Growing up, Lewis’s grandparents and aunt were part of the original Krewe of Real People, which remains the only Black krewe on the Mississippi Coast with a Mardi Gras parade.

Now 48, Lewis is continuing that tradition as an organizer for the Krewe of Real People: Next Generation, renamed after the previous leadership stepped down. The parade marches on in downtown, drawing swarms of new revelers as the population surges in Bay St. Louis, one of the fastest-growing cities on the Gulf Coast.

“It means so much to me for us to keep it going,” Lewis said. “If we don’t, it’s very possible that it fades, and a big parade would no longer exist. This has been a part of my life forever.”

How the krewe started

To outsiders, Carnival can look like an excuse to drink too much, eat too much and collect too many throws that lose value once the holiday has passed. For Lewis and others who celebrate, its meaning runs deeper.

Mardi Gras has long served as a reason to bring people together, even through some of the South’s darkest moments — wars, hurricanes, pandemics. The work begins well before Carnival, as artists build floats from papier mâché, bands rehearse brass lines and drum cadences, and Mardi Gras Indians spend months sewing sequined costumes adorned with crystals and feathers.

Sandra Price and a group of Mississippi coast residents started the Krewe of Real People in 1981 for that very reason: to foster community after the Merry Makers, one of the first Black krewes in Bay St. Louis, discontinued.

“Mardi Gras would come, people would cook at their house or whatever, but there was no union,” Price said.

Money was tight, but that did not discourage the krewe’s founders. The small group could not afford beads, so they created their own throws with chicken wire, while Price created and led her own dance krewe, the Ebony Pearls. Making do with limited resources was something they learned from earlier generations, including an older krewe called the Moss Men, who Price remembered decorating their clothing with moss.

“I know it don’t sound like much,” Price said. “You know, back in the day, we didn’t have much.”

Even the krewe’s name reflected the community Price and the other founders grew up around. Originally, the group was torn between two names — Almost Anything Goes and Real People — both taken from television shows. Price pushed for Real People because, to her, it meant “realistic, energetic and loving people.”

To Lewis, the name carries a similar meaning.

“Real People signifies the everyday person in our community, whether it be the highly educated professional, or it be just a regular working class mom or dad, whether it be the teenagers in college,” Lewis said. “It’s just a real slice of Mississippi, a real slice of America, just a slice of the people that make up the community.”

‘Can’t take it out my blood’

The Krewe of Real People: Next Generation looks much different from the one Price helped build.

The organization now has more funding to support its Mardi Gras Day parade, when car clubs, motorbikes and ATVs fill the street as krewe members throw everything from New Orleans Saints jerseys to paintings.

Beyond Carnival, the krewe hosts food and toy drives for Thanksgiving and Christmas and offers scholarships, working year-round to support the community it represents. Its annual Mardi Gras ball is its largest fundraiser, with ticket sales used to fund those efforts, said the krewe’s president, Lonnie Bradley, whose father was its first king.

The ball carries a different theme every year, with past celebrations including Harlem Nights and Coming to America. On Saturday, the ball honored historically Black colleges and universities — a theme that resonated with many members, including this year’s king and queen, Paul and Joni Farve, both HBCU graduates.

The krewe is doing exactly what Bradley hoped for seven years ago, when he agreed to become the organization’s president under one condition: that it emphasize community over Carnival. After he lost his son to gun violence, he said, the work became “a testimony — the reason why we do what we do.”

“We need to wrap our hands around our community, and I’m not talking about Black and White,” Bradley said. “I’m talking about community, period.”

Some things, however, have not changed. The parade route remains the same, rolling each year past the corner of Sycamore and St. Francis streets in Back-of-Town. During segregation, it was one of the few places where Black residents could celebrate Mardi Gras.

Price never wants to see the route change.

“(Back-of-Town) goes way back, way before I was born. It was pretty much our square,” Price said. “I don’t know how else to put it. You can’t take it out of my blood. It’s embedded in me, you know? I’m grounded in it.”