May Day, A Celebration of Spring and Health

 Spring has “sprung” here in Bossier Parish. The azaleas and other blossoms, and all the bright greenery to go with the purples and pinks, are looking lovely, and it’s comfortably warm and breezy. This transformation is worth celebrating. With the holiday of May Day, people have done so from ancient to more recent times, across the globe and here in Bossier Parish.

May Day began from ancient, pagan Scandinavian and Celtic traditions celebrating the arrival of spring, and both derived from ancient Roman practices. Villagers would go “a-Maying,” picking flowers and secretly leaving them in tiny baskets on neighbors’ doors, crown a Queen of May and dance around a flower and ribbon-bedecked maypole. When these traditions arrived in the New World, Puritans forbade them as relics of paganism. But the holiday persisted in the U.S. Here in Bossier Parish, the celebration of a traditional May Day, has all but disappeared, but there are plenty of folks above at least the age of 50 who can give fondly-remembered firsthand accounts of the celebration.

For local educators, fame could be built on the elegant execution of these performances and festivities, a time for administrators, teachers and children to show off their talents to the community, and for girls to wear some extraordinary dresses, hair ribbons and crowns at school. At Bellevue Academy, near the old parish seat, the Bossier Banner reported in 1867, “Our school teacher, Mrs. Shropshire, supervises the preparation for the occasion. The female portion of her school, together with several of the young ladies of our vicinity, will constitute the Queen and Court…The experience of our teacher in such matters, and her indefatigable energy in preparing the girls and young ladies for the occasion guarantees success. After the ceremonies, a big dinner will be given.”

In 1872, the Banner reported the May Day festivities held at the Fillmore Academy. Tongue in cheek, the reporter said the principal teacher, Mr. Griswold, traded his role of “dictator” for “Master of Ceremonies,” beginning with a speech that was “largely ignored.” Then school girls sang with piano accompaniment, there was the crowing of the May Queen, more songs sung by the girls, then a dinner. “Nobly did the matrons of the neighborhood do their duty that would have been relished by Delmonico himself.” (That was likely a reference to Delmonico’s in New York, the first fine dining restaurant in the U.S.) The meal had pork, ham and Irish potatoes, and strawberries and confections “for the ladies.” The festivities were capped off with a dance to tunes played by a fiddler who played for three hours in the afternoon, then five hours at night, even to jig time. The dance lasted all the way till dawn.

According to a Bossier Banner-Progress paean in 1900 to Bossier educator Professor Joesph E. Johnston, who founded the Pioneer Academy, which became Plain Dealing H.S., and earlier taught at Rocky Mount Academy, the 1887 May Day performance in Rocky Mount under his direction was “an occasion worthy to be recorded in the history of the parish.” A contemporary account of the event in the Bossier Banner-Progress stated, “The May-pole dance was beautiful, and sent one’s fancy flying back through several centuries to Merry Old England. The was crowd was the largest ever assembled at Rocky Mount.”

These celebrations, of course, described the social life of the white elite of the parish. These community celebrations were organized at private schools; a public education system was only just beginning. In the twentieth century, May Day was celebrated within a broader swath of Bossier’s population, among both African-American and white children in public schools, often in connection with social reform movements, such as public health.

Bossier City High School’s May Day (when the school encompassed all grades, from elementary through high school) was enough of a spectacle that a photograph and description of the pageant could be seen on a regular basis in the 1920’s-1930’s in the Shreveport Times. It was such a special occasion that the dedication of its significant, new brick annex building in 1927 and the May Day pageant were combined. Under the direction of Mrs. C.H. McKennon, that year’s “May day fete, the fourth annual event, had four hundred students from elementary through high school grades, performing.” It included a poppy dance, a dance of Violets and Butterflies, a dance of French dolls, a Norwegian Mountain march, an “Indian dance,” a wreath dance, and a parade of tin soldiers. There was the crowning of a queen (Maude Lawson, senior) and a wrapping of the maypole. Between 1,500-2,000 persons attended.

The newspapers of the time, like the schools, were segregated, so mentions of the May Day celebrations in African-American schools were harder to find. In the History Center’s oral history collection, Betsy Bryant Trammell, who attended school in in the 1920’s in her church, Fellowship Baptist, before the Butler school was built for African-American children in Bossier City, remembered they “wrapped a Maypole” (dancing around it with the colored streamers) as one of their special school programs. In fact, wrapping a Maypole was top-of-her-mind when she was asked about what the young students did for fun.

Here at the History Center, we’re always looking for photos or any other mementos from gatherings and special days like May Day (and ordinary days, too) in Bossier Parish. If you can't bear to part with treasured originals, we'd love to have the chance to scan your photos and paper documents. We can add the copies to our collection. The History Center is located at 2206 Beckett St, Bossier City, LA. We are open: M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org

For other fun facts, photos, and videos, be sure to follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB, @bplhistorycenter on TikTok, and check out our blog http://bpl-hc.blogspot.com/.

Images: 

• Dorothy Hebert Wilson in her May Day Costume for Bossier High School in Bossier City, 1929. History Center photo.
• Marie Davis, Queen of May Day at Bossier City HS. From “The Planters Press,” May 01, 1930

Article by: Pam Carlisle

May Day: A Celebration of Nature and Healthful Living in 20th-Century Bossier

 With a timeline spanning centuries, and geographically stretching around the northern hemisphere, the holiday of May Day, observed on May first to celebrate the arrival of spring, has had different meanings, although traditions such as dances around a Maypole, crowning a May queen and gathering flowers for decorating and bestowing on friends and neighbors, remained remarkably consistent.  Last week’s column examined 19th- century May Day celebrations in Bossier Parish. This week’s column examines local May Day celebrations in the first-half of the twentieth century. 

From about 1870, with the industrialization of the country, May Day’s popularity grew from

two related yet divergent movements concerned with the well-being of workers. One movement was initiated by labor leaders who lobbied for reforms such as reducing the common 16-hour workday to 8 hours. This movement was world-wide and especially prominent in Europe. The other movement was less radical for the time and initiated by members of the American upper class who were concerned about the “teeming masses” of immigrants and city dwellers who might be lured by so-called low-class, commercial entertainment such as arcades and carnivals. To their minds, immigrants and workers were in need of “Americanization” and the purifying and healthful influences of nature. 

A 1932 editorial in the Bossier City newspaper, the “Planters Press” emphatically stated that it was not the former movement that popularized May Day celebrations here in Bossier Parish, but the latter:

“In this country May Day is celebrated to officially welcome the Spring, the blooming of the flowers, and the renewed productiveness of the fields. Custom has made various celebrations popular, among the most delightful of which is that of the May Day pageant, the Maypole, and other items of a like nature. Taken all in all, it is a festival of joy and happiness, and (as) such it is welcomed by everyone.

For some reason unknown to the writer at the present time, May Day has also been selected for political displays by Communists the world over. In Europe, the day is always associated with more or less severe riots in which citizens and police engage in battles resulting in injuries and sometimes death…Although the economic condition of thousands of people in our great cities is extremely pitiful, we trust that violence will not arise and that May Day will be for us rather a day of joy than one of blood and destruction.” 

Accounts of 20th-century May Day commemorations in Bossier supported the social reform trend of promoting healthful living, especially among workers and their children, with May Day celebrations in the parish’s public schools. In the 1930’s, these celebrations were held in conjunction with “Health Week” or “Child Welfare Day.”

The April 23, 1931, “Bossier Banner Progress” listed that “Child Welfare Day” is to be observed throughout the parish on May Day. The “Banner’s” May 7th account of that year’s festivities in Haughton does not directly mention child welfare, but it does report the wholesome, decorous activities approved by social reformers. The paper announced that Haughton High School’s 1931 “May Day fete,” “was a success in every way.” (The high school encompassed all grades). Miss Eloise Wyche was chosen queen, along with train bearers and maids. The court members were pupils of the intermediate grades, dressed as “Fairies, elfs, brownies, [and] Japanese children in a drill and dance…” Girls dressed in pastel colonial costumes presented “the ever-charming minuet.” There were songs and presentations such as the “Awakening of the Flowers,” complete with “little Margaret Erickson representing the sun,” and of course, a Maypole dance.

In 1939, a “Banner” article on May 11th titled, “Health Week Will be Observed by Pupils at the Elm Grove School,” outlined programs for the first week of May, culminating in a May festival with every pupil participating.  A play, “The Queen’s Visit,” was presented on May first by the youngest grades, while the 

3 – 5th grades made posters and performed plays on original stories of health and safety.  The sixth and seventh grades performed the play, “The Health City.”  The festival held on May 12th echoed May Days from times past and countries far away. There were European and American dances, a flag drill and a maypole dance, “the crowning event of the celebration.”

Mrs. Fabol Powell Durham, who grew up in the Taylortown/Elm Grove area of rural south Bossier Parish, remembered happily in an oral history interview in the History Center’s collection, “On May Day, our mothers would make us these beautiful little costumes, and we went to what was called Old River, then  part of Red River.  And we had a maypole dance.” Mrs. Betsy Bryant Trammell recalled in her interview that during the 1920’s, the Bossier City school for African Americans “wrapped a Maypole” and had special programs during the first week of May. 

The Bossier Parish Libraries History Center collection has photographs showing the festive costumes school girls would wear for these May Day galas. We are always looking for photos and other mementos from gatherings and special days (and ordinary days, too) in Bossier Parish.  If you can't bear to part with treasured originals, we'd love to have the chance to scan your photos and paper documents. We can add the copies to our collection.  The History Center is located at 2206 Beckett St, Bossier City, LA. We are open: M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org

For other fun facts, photos, and videos, be sure to follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB, @bplhistorycenter on TikTok

Images: 

Photograph of Dorothy Hebert in a Maypole costume for Bossier High School's May Day, 1929.

Photograph of girls in costume for Plain Dealing Elementary School’s Maypole Dance, 1936

Article by: Pam Carlisle

May Day - A Spring Diversion of Blossoms and Pageantry in 19th-Century Bossier

 With a timeline spanning centuries, and geographically stretching around the northern hemisphere, the holiday of May Day, celebrated on May first to revel in the arrival of spring, has had different meanings across time and place. Many traditions, however, such as dances around a maypole, crowning a May queen and gathering flowers for decorating and bestowing on friends and neighbors, remained remarkably consistent across centuries and oceans. This week’s column examines local May Day celebrations of post-bellum nineteenth century. Twentieth-century celebrations will follow next week.

May Day began as ancient, pagan Scandinavian and Celtic traditions celebrating the arrival of spring, and both derived from ancient Roman practices. Villagers would go “a-Maying,” picking flowers and secretly leaving them in tiny baskets on neighbors’ doors, crown a Queen of May and dance around a flower and ribbon-bedecked maypole. When these traditions arrived in the New World, Puritans forbade them as relics of paganism. But the holiday persisted in the U.S.

In the late 1860’s, during post-Civil War Reconstruction, May Day’s popularity got a boost among white upper-class Southerners. The April 20, 1867, “Bossier Banner Progress” professed that May Day would be the uplifting experience they needed to relieve their psychic wounds of defeat and perceived oppression:

“Since the beginning of the late civil war, the holidays have almost ceased to be observed in our section of the country. As an oppressed people, we have no hearts on 22nds of February [George Washington’s birthday] and 4ths of July to vaunt and boast of liberties and of the greatness of our country. We have never observed the Easter holidays, and Christmas has nearly ceased to exhilarate us.”

The absence of Easter celebrations was due to the fact that, according to Stephen Douglas Wilson in the “Baptist Press” (posted April 5, 2012), until the late 19th-century, and even into the 20th-century, Southern Baptist ministers dismissed the idea of designating Easter as a special day of celebration. They believed it was perhaps too pagan and worldly, and also unnecessary, since they deemed that every day should be a celebration of Jesus’ resurrection. (Christmas as a holiday had been held in a similar light, though it had rounded the corner into acceptability just ahead of Easter.) So, instead of Easter in 1867 Bellevue, then the parish seat for Bossier and the home of the “Bossier Banner-Progress,” 

“…our little community has determined to celebrate the return of Spring, which now tardily comes to enliven us after the extremely severe Winter just passed. The ceremony of crowning a May Queen, an old English custom, will take place in the fine grove at the Taliaferro old place, begin at the hour of 4 P.M. on the first day of May.

The follow-up report on Bellevue’s May Day festivities, printed in the “Banner-Progress” on May 4, 1867, was glowing:

The ladies of Bellevue, and its vicinity, under the leadership of Mrs. M.T. Shropshire, the worthy principal teacher at Bellevue Academy, gave the public a splendid ovation on the 1st day of May. The ceremonial of the crowning of the May Queen, was beautifully performed, the young ladies acquitting themselves with éclat. Profs. Fry and Bro., added charms to the occasion by discoursing sweet music from the violin and guitar. A splendid dinner followed, of which the large assembly partook with a seeming relish. At night a ball was given by Profs Fry and Bro., which without a doubt surpassed anything of the kind that ever took place in our village. The article concluded by calling it a “happy day, in which the ladies forced us to forget, for the time, the mournful condition of our country.”

By 1872, a similarly-flourished description of May Day in the village of Fillmore in Bossier Parish also appeared in the “Banner-Progress,” showing it to be a nearly all-day and night extravaganza. The May Day programs from other years in Bellevue also were highlighted in the newspaper. The holiday had “arrived” when the “Banner-Progress” even published a satirical piece about it on May 1st, 1884: “It is May Day, but we will not dance around any absurd May-pole, nor will we stand our daughters on the damp grass to decorate their heads with flower-wreaths and tell them that they are queens of the fifth month of the year.” The maypole, the article quipped, “had long ago given place to the telegraph pole.”

These celebrations, of course, described the social life of the white elite of the parish. These community celebrations were organized within private schools; a public education system had not yet taken hold, and educational offerings for African-Americans were even rarer. Next week’s May Day installment will focus on May Day’s significance in the 20th century, when it was celebrated within a broader swath of Bossier’s population, among both African-American and white children in public schools, often in connection with social reform movements.

Here at the History Center, we’re always looking for photos any other mementos from gatherings and special days (and ordinary days, too) in Bossier Parish. If you can't bear to part with treasured originals, we'd love to have the chance to scan your photos and paper documents. We can add the copies to our collection. The History Center is located at 2206 Beckett St, Bossier City, LA. We are open: M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org

For other fun facts, photos, and videos, be sure to follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB, @bplhistorycenter on TikTok

Images: 

“Around the Maypole.” Image from The Times-Picayune, Sat, May 02, 1896 “

Article by: Pam Carlisle