On Sunday, 16 members of the Young Rollers Social Aid and Pleasure Club danced out the door of the Treme Community Center with every outfit freshly pressed and perfectly decorated.
Ten years ago, Jahmad Randolph, then 15, instilled the club with a mission of nonviolence and launched it with the support of his parents, Markeith and Trishekka “Shekka” Tero, the musicians from Da Truth Brass Band, and his two younger brothers, Markiaj, now 16; and Aiden, now 15.
Markiaj and Aiden were in primary school at the time, but they remember it was their favorite parade. “It was the funnest year,” said Aiden. “It was something new. I felt a real sense of joy.”
Jahmad christened it the Young Rollers, to imbue the club with a certain state of mind, he said, one that was rooted in freedom and motion.
“It makes you feel light. It makes you feel hopeful,” said Randolph, who’s now 24 and working as an elementary-school teacher at Langston Hughes Academy in the 7th Ward.
To combat violence, the club would offer a happier alternative, he decided.
Even for kids dealing with middle-school, that message seemed to be getting across.
Denim Wells, 13, spent the past week practicing steps to use in Sunday’s parade. “I can dance, then drop, then probably crawl coming out of the drop,” said Denim, a first-year parader, as the club waited for their turn to dance out the doors of the Treme Center.
Trombonist Alvin Coco, also 13, said that he, too, had been brushing up his steps for his sixth time parading with the club— a rare moment in his life when he puts down his horn. “I play with Da Truth and they’ll be there with me, to amp me up. But I’m glad to switch it up for the day,” he said. “I get to shine.”
Another important hallmark of the Young Rollers is education. Everyone in the club learns the importance of leaders within the city’s Black culture, specifically the social aid and pleasure club culture, which both Teros grew up with.
One year, the Young Rollers focused on celebrated Treme Brass Band drummer Uncle Lionel Batiste, who is Markeith’s uncle in real life, part of a rich cultural family that had him second-lining by a young age. Another year, the Young Rollers learned about Jerome “Big Duck” Smith, a Freedom Fighter who helped to start the legendary Tamborine & Fan youth program.
“I don’t do anything with my kids if it’s not about a lesson,” Shekka said. “I tell them, ‘Find the answer yourself’ or ask them, ‘What did you learn from that?’”
Sometimes, those involved with Sunday parades can have a competitive, material focus, she said. “But I try not to focus them on having the best shoes or the best band.”
Instead, she said,“I want them to focus on learning the craft of creating their own social aide and pleasure club parade, of keeping the vision alive that our ancestors instilled in us – to dress up and have fun. All it takes is some fabric and some cardboard.”
That educational mindset takes the club a step further, said Young Rollers parents Johnika Smith, whose father, Wellington Ratliff, was a second-line icon with the Pigeontown Steppers club. So she took her son, Stanley Cook, now 18, to Sunday parades all his life.
But until Stanley joined the Young Rollers, his mom said, he didn’t know the tradition’s depth, rooted in Black self-sufficiency and continued pushes for civil rights. “I see growth in him learning the culture more,” she said. “Because the club teaches him that.”
Many hands worked to make the Young Rollers look correct
For Sunday’s parade, traditional, handmade streamers started at each shoulder, ornamented with rows of carnations and ruffles, metallic trim and a white dove on the right shoulder. Along the length of the streamers were geometric shapes covered in an intricate Ankara wax-print fabric that matched Young Rollers’ dresses, neckties and knickerbocker-style shorts. Parading fans that look like paddles were covered with satin, ruffles, trim, and carnations — then carried in each hand.
This level of detail takes months of planning, much of it done by Shekka, a recent nursing-school graduate who searched for the right colors and fabrics in between classes and while waiting after school and marching-band practice for her younger sons, who attend Livingston Collegiate Academy.
After more than two decades of taking her children to parades – starting when they were in strollers – and 25 years of helping to design second-line outfits, she knows what she wants. “A vision gets stuck in my head,” she said.
Some clubs celebrate their annual parades by hiring designers to make custom suits and order custom shoes from Italy.
Others, like the Young Rollers, opt to create the custom-made outfits themselves.
Last week was crunch time in the Teros’ family room in New Orleans East. All week, they spent hours sitting at tables and in armchairs to sew, glue, and cut the final necessary pieces for the 16 members of the Young Rollers that paraded on Sunday. Joining them every evening were their sons, family friend Marlon Dozier, and Young Rollers parents Genika Gibson, whose 14-year-old son Hasan paraded for his first time on Sunday.
As the week began, much of the clothing was ready. They’d hired a tailor to make custom shorts; ordered vests, custom made socks, and navy-blue leather boots. But Shekka decided that the navy buttons on the vests “didn’t have the right vibe.” She and Young Rollers parent Genika Gibson replaced them with red buttons. The heels of the boots were expertly custom-dyed red by Markeith’s cousin, Kenya Kendrick, who comes from a family of longtime 6th Ward shoemakers.
Still ahead of them was the hours-upon-hours of work that it takes to create streamers and fans. That means several nights straight with little sleep, the Teros said.
Then, about 24 hours before the parade, while Markeith and her sons were still perfecting the decorations, Shekka started what she does every year.
She got out the steam iron and began pressing everyone’s outfits for Sunday’s debut, putting them on hangers and labeling them, so that there would be no confusion.
Markeith was nowhere near finished. “I work better when everybody else is asleep,” he said. And now, it’s become tradition: every year, on the night before the parade, Markeith stays up the entire night, making sure that no one from his family parades with anything undone.
Forming the club 10 years ago
The timing of the Young Rollers’ antiviolence message seemed particularly apt this week, because an innocent bystander, Destiny Dunn, 26, was killed last Sunday after shooting broke out near the corner of Washington Avenue and Magnolia Street, shortly after the end of the Original Lady & Men Buckjumpers parade.
The overarching theme has been repeated over and over. Sociologists have even looked at homicide data and parade routes with the idea of disproving the notion that social aid and pleasure club parades, which are tightly controlled by club members, move through neighborhoods that struggle with gun violence but do not themselves cause violence.
Certainly, the Young Rollers is not the first club to adopt an antiviolence message. Yet it may better connect to a younger crowd, since many of the Young Rollers are at an age where they, too, are choosing their directions in life. Still, this week, they made a distinctly positive choice: to glue carnations and ruffles onto streamers so that they could dance down the streets of the 6th and 7th Ward on Sunday.
By age 15, when Jahmad Randolph formed the club, he feels like he was making smart choices for his own future, thanks to a day at work with his father Markeith, who works at a local funeral home.
Jahmad was 13. Markeith had a message for him. “He told me, ‘You could choose this route, lying on one of these beds being prepared for a funeral. You could go to jail. Or you can choose life.”
“That really focused me,” Jahmad said. “It frightened me away from doing anything wrong. Because in the city of New Orleans, that’s all it takes and then you can be gone.”
These days, Jahmad is a reflection of that path, as he teaches youngsters at Langston Hughes, the same school that his mother and his brothers attended. He also now has a baby girl, Auryn, who just turned one year old.
As Da Truth struck up on Sunday, Jahmad picked up his daughter and danced with her down the sidewalk, to loud applause from the crowd outside Treme Center
“They’re never too young to learn!” one woman yelled as the father-daughter duo passed, rolling in a way that looked both light and hopeful — like he’d planned when he’d started the club 10 years earlier, but with an added layer.
“Now, with her, I see life in a new way,” Jahmad said.
