Joseph Stillwell Cain, Jr. (Joe Cain) (October 10, 1832 – April 17, 1904) is largely credited with the rebirth of Mardi Gras celebrations in Mobile, Alabama, stopped due to the Civil War. In 1867, following the American Civil War and while Mobile was still under Union occupation, Joe Cain paraded through the streets of Mobile, dressed in improvised costume depicting a fictional Chickasaw chief named Slacabamorinico. The choice was a backhanded insult to the Union forces in that the Chickasaw tribe had never been defeated in war. Joe was joined by six other Confederate veterans, parading in a decorated coal wagon, playing drums and horns, and the group became the "L. C. Minstrel Band", now commonly referred to as the "Lost Cause Minstrels" of Mobile.
Read more about Joe Cain: Life and Work, Gravesite, Joe Cain Day
Famous quotes containing the words joe and/or cain:
“This might be the end of the world. If Joe lost we were back in slavery and beyond help. It would all be true, the accusations that we were lower types of human beings. Only a little higher than apes. True that we were stupid and ugly and lazy and dirty and, unlucky and worst of all, that God Himself hated us and ordained us to be hewers of wood and drawers of water, forever and ever, world without end.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“I’ll kill you with my own hands rather than let you put the mark of Cain on my brother!”
—Abraham Polonsky (b. 1910)