ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how Africa has been seen and understood in New Orleans in relation to racial politics through the lens of Black Masking Indians. African Americans began dressing in suits inspired by Native American dress in the 1800s to pay homage to the indigenous people who gave shelter to enslaved people who ran from bondage and often intermarried with them. Due to the increasingly limited opportunities for people of African descent in post-Reconstruction New Orleans, many individuals resisted white supremacy through informal acts of resistance. In the late nineteenth century, Native Americans were understood in popular culture to be warriors who fought against subjugation at all costs. For centuries, anti-Black rhetoric had dominated popular, scientific, and political discourse in New Orleans, which drove away many remnants of African heritage underground or into disguise. Black Masking Indians historically have a hypermasculine hierarchical and patriarchal structure with a Big Chief leading the group.
