Fat Tuesday Special: Integrating Mardis Gras (1992) w/ Oliver Thomas

This Day in Esoteric Political History

Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia

History

4.6 • 982 Ratings

🗓️ 21 February 2023

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It’s Fat Tuesday, Jody is in New Orleans, and today we’re bringing you an episode we did last year about the integration of Mardis Gras. It’s one of our favorites.

It’s March 1st, the first day of Mardi Gras in New Orleans. This day in 1992, a city ordinance mandating that all Mardi Gras krewes be integrated in order to march on city streets is in effect — making this a Mardi Gras unlike any in history.

Jody, Niki, and Kellie are joined by New Orleans city Councilman Oliver Thomas (also a poet, actor, and radio host) to talk about what the new law means for the very old tradition, and how difficult it is to enforce legal discrimination laws in largely social contexts.

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And don’t forget about Oprahdemics, hosted by Kellie, coming soon from Radiotopia.

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Our team: Jacob Feldman, Researcher/Producer; Brittani Brown, Producer; Khawla Nakua, Transcripts; music by Teen Daze and Blue Dot Sessions; Julie Shapiro and Audrey Mardavich, Executive Producers at Radiotopia

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone Jody here just a quick message about today's episode so I know I said that we were in the middle of good sport week
0:07.0	Which was three episodes highlighting this new series that I have called good sport
0:11.2	We did one last Sunday. We're gonna get back to it, but I happen to be in New Orleans right now on a trip with my family and I'm taking part in a lot of the Mardi Gras festivities here and I've been thinking a lot about an episode we did last year
0:23.6	with Oliver Thomas about the history of Mardi Gras and today is Fat Tuesday so we
0:29.4	figured we'd just drop that into the feed for today a A lot of you probably didn't hear that
0:34.4	episode when it first ran. It's really great. So to Mark Fat Tuesday, today
0:38.6	we're going to bring you our Mardi Gras episode, then we will get back to
0:42.1	good Sport Week, a couple more episodes, and then we will get back to Good Sport Week, a couple more episodes,
0:44.0	and then we will get back to regular programming.
0:47.0	You'll figure it out, lots of interesting conversations coming away.
0:50.0	Anyway, here we go.
0:51.2	Happy Fat Tuesday, everyone. Happy Mardi Marty Gra, and we'll see you soon.
0:55.0	Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.
1:01.0	My name is Jody Avrogan.
1:04.3	This day, March 1st, 1992.
1:06.9	New Orleans, as it does every early March,
1:09.0	is getting ready for Mardi Gras.
1:10.5	The routes are being finalized,
1:12.1	the costumes prepared, the various crews that performed during the festivities,
1:15.3	planning, everything that they'll need to plan for the marches. This was the 136th annual
1:20.7	Mardi Gras, but something was different in 1992, and that's because this was the first
1:25.6	Mardi Gras since a local city council ordinance passed banning discrimination among the various
	...

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