NEW ORLEANS, La. —
The priest did a kind of Saint Claude strut down the aisle to the front of St. Augustine Church as the Treme Brass Band played a jazzy version of “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.” Already the standing-room-only crowd had been warmed up with swinging renditions of familiar church songs that sounded more Bourbon Street than Broadman hymnal.
Then the Rev. Quentin Moody asked what every soul packed into the 1842 edifice was thinking: “Why can’t it be like this every Sunday?”
Some wore tank tops and flip-flops, and shirts proclaiming they were at the Satchmo SummerFest. Others wore Sunday finery, big hats and high heels. A little girl with a taffeta sash sat next to a biker chick with so many tattoos she looked like a walking Etch-A-Sketch.
There were a lot of little lights, all of them shining.
In the oldest African-American Catholic parish in the U.S., the mass this Sunday was dedicated to music and, in particular, the music of Louis Armstrong. Those of us lucky enough to get a seat sat on the pews that free blacks bought for themselves and for slaves. When the “people of color” began purchasing pews in 1842, white parishioners in the area stepped up their own pew purchases.
The so-called War of the Pews was won by the blacks, but the end result was the most integrated congregation in the country.
This was no ordinary mass, mind you. The priest himself sang a passable “What a Wonderful World” after warning those of us who sing only in the shower that there are no longer any private performances. Certainly his wasn’t, as every other congregant held a camera up to preserve the moment.
The AC and ceiling fans couldn’t compete with packed pews and New Orleans humidity. More than the music was hot. Ushers offered old-fashioned funeral fans, which fanned in time to a rollicking “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”
Until you’ve sat and sweated and heard 10 minutes of “(Gimme That) Old Time Religion” done with flash and brass in a building with perfect acoustics, you’ve not heard good music. It’s enough to make you get religion.
The historic St. Augustine has been church home for many famous people. Everyone from civil-rights activist Homer Plessy to Big Chief Tootie Montana of the Mardi Gras Indians has prayed here.
Yet in 2005, because of declining membership, the Catholic powers of New Orleans scheduled St. Augustine’s closing. But, New Orleans being New Orleans, the decree didn’t wash. People stepped up and spoke out, and noisily asked the diocese to reconsider. It did.
And if the laundry basket full of offerings at the memorial jazz mass was any indication, St. Augustine now has healthy vitals.
After “Amazing Grace” rocked the rafters, a white hearse led the way from the church to the Satchmo SummerFest site, the Old U.S. Mint, second liners following. Several floats, bands, dancing tourists and bead-throwing revelers snaked their way through crowded New Orleans streets that have seen it all.
The colors of the rainbow were also in the faces of people passing by. And I thought to myself, what a strange and wonderful world.
(To find out more about Rheta Grimsley Johnson and her books, visit www.rhetagrimsleyjohnsonbooks.com)
Opinion
N.O. church helps celebrate Satchmo
- Opinion
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Not your mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist
I haven’t seen the Ladies’ Home Journal in about a million years, except maybe in the dentist’s office when I was trying to avoid a television permanently set on Fox News.
Somebody’s grandchild was selling magazines for a school project, and Ladies’ Home Journal was the only one on the list I recognized. Now it comes to the house.
Let’s just say: It’s not my mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal. This month, right behind a feature called “A Country of People Who Never Stop Eating” is one called “Nice Girls Do Get Tattoos.” -
Health care market needs oversight
By Gene Lyons/Syndicated columnist
Sometimes the best journalism explains what’s right under our noses. In Steven Brill’s exhaustive Time magazine cover article, “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us,” it’s the staggeringly expensive, grotesquely inefficient and inhumane way Americans pay for medical care.
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VA’s appalling failures not recent
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
While recent national press attention to ongoing problems at Mississippi’s G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery Veterans Administration Medical Center in Jackson is welcome and needed, the failures of the overall VA service apparatus in Mississippi are not recent problems.
In short, former U.S. Rep. Sonny Montgomery — Mississippi’s “Mr. Veteran” and author of the modern G.I. Bill that bears his name — must be spinning in his grave. There have been significant failures and poor service to veterans documented by state and local media since 2008. -
Dolley Madison politically savvy
By Cokie and Steven V. Roberts/Syndicated columnists
When Dolley Payne Madison became first lady in 1809, she instituted Wednesday evening gatherings at the White House where political rivals could meet and talk. They were called “squeezes” because so many people showed up and crowded the room. As Cokie wrote in her book “Ladies of Liberty": “All were welcome as long as they were appropriately dressed. And all went — skipping a Wednesday night might mean missing a vital piece of political information or being left out of a crucial deal.”
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Mississippi isn’t immune from national college tuition trends
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
Higher education in Mississippi has not been immune from national trends cited in a recent Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report which concludes that over the last five years, the global economic downturn and a “no new taxes” political climate have increasingly shifted the burden of higher education finance to students and parents at a time when enrollment is increasing and the percentage of state support is decreasing. -
Right to vote not ‘racial entitlement
By Donna Brazile/Syndicated columnist
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Shelby County v. Holder — a challenge to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, specifically Section 5, which requires states and localities with a history of voting discrimination against racial and language minorities to get “pre-approved” by the federal government before changing how elections are conducted or voters are registered. -
1st day of spring brings memories
By Wyatt Emmerich/Southside Sun
The first day of spring! My favorite month, April, is just around the corner. Now we just need one big gullywasher to get rid of the pine pollen.
Normally, spring gives me a strong sense of rebirth and renewal, but this spring I seem surrounded by moments crystallizing the passage of time.
It was a year ago, I walked up the porch to my mother’s home to box up her possessions following her funeral. -
Soaking up in tiger paw-shaped hot tub
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist
No springtime ritual was better at Auburn than sitting on hard rocks at a nearby state park to let cold water rush over your feet. You wore cut-off blue jeans and Dr. Scholl’s sandals, the unofficial uniform for coeds in the 1970s, and when you left, you felt ready to tackle tests, term papers and blind dates.
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Medicaid or not, costs will be paid
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
While the battle continues between state Republicans and other fiscal conservatives intent on focusing on the long-terms costs of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act and Democrats, health care advocates and state hospitals intent on focusing on the short-term benefits, the fact remains that one way or another, the costs of providing health care for the poor, the blind, the aged and the disabled will be paid by the taxpayers one way or another.
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Multiculturalism is not rational
By Thomas Sowell/Syndicated columnist
Among the many irrational ideas about racial and ethnic groups that have polarized societies over the centuries and around the world, few have been more irrational and counterproductive than the current dogmas of multiculturalism.
Intellectuals who imagine that they are helping racial or ethnic groups that lag behind by redefining their lags out of existence with multicultural rhetoric are in fact leading them into a blind alley. - More Opinion Headlines
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Not your mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal
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