Knights of Momus

The Knights of Momus ("KoM") was founded in 1872 and was the second-oldest parading Old Line Krewe in New Orleans Carnival after the Mistick Krewe of Comus and is the third oldest krewe to continuously present a tableau ball, after the Twelfth Night Revelers in 1870.

New Orleans Mardi Gras, 1907. Illustration showing King's float for Momus parade.

Knights of Momus

Abbreviation	KoM
Named after	Momus
Formation	1871 (1871)
Founded at	New Orleans, LA.
Type	Carnival Krewe
Location	New Orleans, LA.

For over 100 years, the Momus parade was a fixture of the New Orleans Mardi Gras parade schedule, parading annually on the Thursday before Fat Tuesday. Since Momus was the Greek god of mockery, the themes of Momus parades typically paid homage to the organization's namesake with irreverent humor and biting satire. The 1877 parade theme, "Hades, A Dream of Momus," caused an uproar when it took aim at the Reconstruction government established in New Orleans after the Civil War. Attempts at retribution by local authorities were largely unsuccessful due to the secrecy of the membership.

In 1991, New Orleans City Council member Dorothy Mae Taylor passed an ordinance that required social organizations, including Mardi Gras Krewes, to certify publicly that they did not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, handicap, or sexual orientation, in order to obtain parade permits and other public licensure. In effect, the ordinance required these, and other, private social groups to desegregate. Momus was one of three historic krewes (with the Mistick Krewe of 1857 and KoP of 1882) that withdrew from parading rather than comply.[1]

Two federal courts later declared that the ordinance was an unconstitutional infringement on First Amendment rights of free association, and an unwarranted intrusion on the privacy of the groups subject to the ordinance.[2] The Supreme Court refused to hear the city's appeal from this decision. Nevertheless, the Momus parade never returned to the streets of New Orleans, although the group still conducts an annual bal masqué on the Thursday before Mardi Gras.