During what should have been a joyful 7th birthday at a Mardi Gras parade, a young Black girl in New Orleans caught a gift that stopped her family cold. The child was tossed a Black doll with noose-like beads around its neck from a parade float adorning the phrase “crack pipe,” the child’s mother, Shayna Lee, said.
The throw has ignited outrage citywide, reviving painful memories of racism and lynching in the Deep South, and led to a debate over what the placement of the beads symbolized. The Feb. 14 event has received condemnation from residents and officials alike, and highlighted the undercurrent of racial and gender inequity in one of America’s most historic cities.
Lee said she was stunned, unable to believe that this could appear in what was meant to be a family celebration.
“At first I was actually in shock. Because I was like … there is no way, out of all things that somebody could have thrown off of a float,” Lee told local news station 4WWL about the doll thrown from the Krewe of Tucks parade. “And it’s Black History Month. I’m not understanding how I, of all people or my family, was the chosen one to get this doll. And I was very upset because we have been teaching my daughter about Black history and racism and things like that.”
It is custom for float riders to toss “throws” like beads, stuffed animals, and other knicknacks to revelers. A video shared on social media accounts also showed a white rider on the top deck of a float dangling two other Black, Barbie-like dolls with plastic Mardi Gras beads tied around their neck, reminding some of a noose. It is unclear if it is the same person that threw a doll to Lee’s child. “Crack Pipe” was written on the side of the float, but the float’s title was meant to be “Cracked Pipes” in an attempt to satirize the city’s fragile sewerage and water system.
“It really just hurt that her innocence was taken away because I had to expose her to a darker side of racism and tell her why she wasn’t allowed to play with it. And she was asking to keep the doll,” Lee added.
The Krewe of Tucks announced an internal investigation into the float “given the history of racism in the country” and said that the image is “evocative of a painful history.” The group added that the “practice of putting a bead around a doll” is “typical” and makes it easier to get it “into the hands of the intended parade-goer.” However, the group announced that they terminated the members involved with the float.
For some New Orleans residents, the racial history of Mardi Gras parades made the situation difficult to digest.
For generations, Mardi Gras itself has mirrored New Orleans’ racial hierarchies, with early krewes (social clubs) formed by white elites who excluded Black residents from parades even as Black people labored as support workers along the route. In response, Black New Orleanians built their own Carnival traditions — from the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club to the Black Masking, or Mardi Gras, Indians — carving out space for celebration and resistance in a city that denied them full participation.
“We couldn’t go on St. Charles. We couldn’t go on Canal Street. We couldn’t go on Bourbon Street for Mardi Gras,” said Gerard “Little Bo” Dollis, a Mardi Gras Indian known as Big Chief Bo Dollis Jr.
It was not until the early 1990s that the City Council passed an ordinance requiring krewes to affirm they did not discriminate in order to receive parade permits, a move that forced formal integration on paper but also prompted some of the oldest, all‑white krewes to stop parading rather than open their ranks to Black people, underscoring how deeply Carnival reflects the city’s racial fault lines.
This is what makes the current situation so concerning, residents told Capital B.
“I’m exhausted as a Black woman,” said Iam Tucker, a New Orleans native. “People are saying it was just an accident, but I ride in two parades every year. I never accidentally hung a doll off the side of my float that’s positioned like that.”
“With the state of our political climate, the history of Mardi Gras itself, the actions of this krewe is appalling,” added New Orleans resident Kelly Roberts. “History seems to be repeating itself.”
The city, which is 53% Black and 30% white, has seen a period of intensified racial inequity since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. New Orleans was nearly 70% Black before the storm led to mass displacement and gentrification rose in the aftermath. Since then, as white, wealthier residents have replaced Black ones, a battle over race and culture has played out at the neighborhood level.
“Before the hurricane, New Orleans had [among] the highest percentage of African descent homeowners in the Western Hemisphere. That’s no longer a reality,” Dollis said. “A lot of people that was coming here for the culture and that lived here for the culture is not here no more. … Now there’s some stranger from New York or someone from California that we never met. It changes the culture. New Orleans without Black culture? It wouldn’t be no New Orleans.”
In a statement, the group called the behavior “intolerable and completely contrary” to its values and apologized for “this racist display” that it said “is not who we are.” The krewe has been one of the few integrated social clubs prior to the city designation. The krewe said 30 white dolls and 30 Black dolls were purchased for throwing to “young children” on the parade route. Founded in 1969 and now boasting about 2,500 members, the krewe is known for its irreverent style and “high-energy” daytime parade.
New Orleans Mayor Helena Moreno also denounced the float, saying “the display is deeply offensive, unacceptable, and has no place in our city,” and vowed to work with council leadership to ensure “full accountability.”
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill released a statement saying that she would open an investigation. “It is deeply disgraceful that anyone who was privileged to ride in a New Orleans Mardi Gras parade would choose to stain the entire Krewe and the event in this manner,” she added.
For Tucker, the intent of the imagery doesn’t matter and it will have long-lasting effects.
“When you’re a kid out here in New Orleans, you look forward to Mardi Gras morning like you look forward to Christmas,” Tucker said. “And so the reason that it enraged me like that is I just think about the young Black girl that looks up and sees something like that hanging off of there. You don’t forget that as a child.”