Remembering Queen Brown Sugar and great festival parades 

Ask someone who lived in New Iberia in the 1950s and 60s about the Saturday afternoon Brown Sugar Parade during the Louisiana Sugar Cane Festival and Fair and you will likely hear, “That was the best parade … They had the best bands … a lot of rhythm … a lot of fun.” The question asked numerous times around the Teche Area this month got the same answers.

“Because the festival was always in the fall, there was usually an LSU football game the same day as their parade,” said Donald “Doc” Voorhies, remembering his days as a youth. “Dad had season tickets and he’d be ready to go, everybody would, but they always parked to be able to leave for the game after the Brown Sugar Parade. We didn’t miss it. It was the best.”

He said that even on non-football weekends, plans revolved around going to the Brown Sugar Parade.

Seeing the 1957 souvenir booklet at the Bayou Teche Museum, and knowing the difficulty Sami Haygood faced when trying to collect pictures of the historic black parades and sugar cane royalty, inspired the challenge to discover more about the Brown Sugar Parade. The pictures featured in the commemorative book showed a people proud of their society. Their successes should be remembered.

In the Beginning

The Sugar Cane Festival began in 1937, the Louisiana Sugar Cane Festival and Fair Association formed in 1940, according to Glenn Conrad’s book, “New Iberia,” the first edition. Organizing of the Brown Sugar component began in 1949-50, Majorienell Lewis’ freshman year at Jonas Henderson High School. The Robert Green Post of the American Legion was the initial sponsor, according to Conrad’s book, the second edition.

Conrad’s second edition has a chapter on the Afro-Americans of New Iberia with a section on the West End Division of the Sugar Cane Festival. The book said, “a young lady became queen of the (West End) Division’s festival by raising the most money. The king was chosen from among farmers producing the largest tonnage of sugar cane. Later, queens were selected by regulations established by the Festival Association and kings were chosen by the queen.”

Lewis was the first Queen Brown Sugar to actually participate in a competition in 1953. As a student in the first four-year graduating class of Jonas Henderson High School, she recalls the first three queens were chosen by the principle.

Not until the fourth year were a group of teens vying for the title of Miss Iberia from the West End that would then move onto the Queen Brown Sugar competition against other sugar cane producing parishes.

“All we did was appear on the stage, walk across and were judged,” Lewis said.

She doesn’t remember if they were asked questions, it was long ago and she was just 16. Now at 80, though the memories are clear, some of the details have diminished, but not many.

“All I remember was I was number 19 and I wasn’t the last for Miss Iberia. For Queen Brown Sugar there were 4 to 6 others,” Lewis said. “I came from a break at college after summer school. My cousin was running for Miss Iberia and she asked me to run in her place because she was kind of shy.”

Lewis told her cousin that since she had a sponsor, True Friend Benevolent Society, they had to make the decision. The sponsor agreed so Lewis took her cousin’s place wearing “a homemade gown.”

Wearing a strapless white gown and the number 19, Lewis knew she wasn’t the last but she couldn’t see the others to know exactly the number waiting for a decision as to who would represent Iberia Parish for Queen Brown Sugar. To her surprise, she won the preliminary competition and the top title.

“I was as nonchalant as I could be, just going through a procedure. I wasn’t prepared, I wasn’t caring. I was replacing somebody,” Lewis said. “You had to be Miss Iberia before to be in Queen Brown Sugar, just like the white people.”

Two Pageants — Two Parades

Segregation was in full force at that time therefore the black and white royalty were chosen separately, and rode separately in different parades. Much of the activity from the West End Division came from the support of black church groups and black business owners. Joe Rochon and later his son Sylvester Rochon were instrumental in the formation along with pharmacist Sam Cooper, Lewis said.

Starting in the fall of 1949 through 1966 Queen Brown Sugar and her king reigned over the Brown Sugar Parade that featured great high school and college black bands and dance teams, marching Girl Scout and Boy Scout troops, queens from other towns riding in convertibles and homemade floats built on flatbed trucks.

The route started at Bank Street, went down Main, turned onto Hopkins and then west on Field Street before ending up at the West End Park.

Expenses were a challenge for keeping the Brown Sugar Parade and pageant going. A meager allotment from the Sugar Cane Festival was reported in Conrad’s book, far less than what was needed to keep the event going. Lewis and Rose Landry Joseph, who became the last chair of the association from 1962 to 1966 when it disbanded, said people were paying for everything themselves. It just got to be too much.

One unverified rumor suggested that when the queen competition tried to become more like the Miss America contest, things fell apart. Another suggested that a group was leading the parade to take on a wilder side that was not in keeping with the family values intended for the sugar cane industry celebrations. Neither could be substantiated.

The fact that integration was intended to bring two sides together in one accord may have also played a role but the balance is still missing. Without the participation of the West End community in the statewide celebration — held annually in New Iberia — it appears to those attending, the white parade survived, the black did not.

Conrad’s book, with a section dedicated to the black community in Iberia Parish, states the intent of today’s article eloquently. “This is an overview of some of the activities of New Iberia’s black community … It does not pretend to cover the story in detail … only intended to guide the reader to some of the highlights of the local black experience … It is hoped that this essay will spark the interest of some person or group to undertake the larger work.

This thread has been spun, it only needs now to be woven into the historical tapestry of New Iberia. The initial area for black leadership was in the community’s arts, crafts, professions and commerce. Today, Afro-Americans are no longer drifting aimlessly on the periphery of American society; they are slowly but inexorably moving into the mainstream.

It may be that in the future another history of New Iberia will be written that the author will deem it unnecessary to develop a chapter on New Iberia’s black community because there will have existed for such a long time only one New Iberia community,” the book said.

Anyone with photos or memorabilia of the Queen Brown Sugar pageants or parades are encouraged to call the Bayou Teche Museum at 606-5977.

Information can only be preserved for future generations when those who experienced the past are willing to share. But make it quickly — the days are passing too fast.