Sylvester Francis was walking home at the end of Mardi Gras when he saw a part of someone’s costume lying in the street.
30 years later, it became the first official piece in the Backstreet Museum's collection when its doors opened to the public.
"He saw someone take the suit off and discard it, without even looking back," Bruce Barnes, current president of the Backstreet Museum, says about the founder's impulse to nab the garb.
Clearly, it was no longer of any use to its owner since Mardi Gras was over. In fact, all across the city, people were taking off their beautiful custom-made costumes and throwing them in the trash.
To Francis, that was a crying shame.
"That moment sparked him to create a space where people could see the beauty and the work of what it takes to create a Mardi Gras Indian suit," Barnes says.
In 1999, Francis took his collection of costumes, photographs, films, and other paraphernalia from the parts of New Orleans culture that often go unseen and put them on display for all to see. And so, the Backstreet Cultural Museum was born.
Mardi Gras Indian costumes from past years are displayed at the museum. Photo via Barry Solow/Wikimedia Commons.
For non-natives of New Orleans, mention of the city can conjure the image of huge costumed celebrations, joyful second-line brass band parades, and tons of beads.
But there's a whole subculture in New Orleans that many beyond the city limits have never seen. That's because it's made mostly of black groups whose culture was born out of slavery and segregation — parts of history that society often tries to forget.
When Mardi Gras began, anyone who was considered "second-class" was not allowed to participate in the city’s main krewes, or parading groups.
"You couldn’t create a krewe and so forth and say we’re gonna parade down St. Charles Avenue," Barnes says. "It wasn’t allowed." Instead, marginalized groups took to the outer neighborhoods, where they donned masks and outfits and held their own parades.
This pattern of disenfranchised communities establishing groups of their own started out of necessity but then became proud tradition. Over time, these "second-class" traditions became as strong, if not stronger, than the original Mardi Gras celebration itself.
Mardi Gras, 1973. Photo via Porter/Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club of New Orleans/Wikimedia Commons.
Today, many residents of New Orleans are proud members of clubs and groups their ancestors established generations ago.
The first is the Mardi Gras Indians, a black masking group that named itself in an homage to the Native Americans who helped slaves escape to freedom. On Mardi Gras, when the rest of the city takes to the main streets, the Mardi Gras Indians parade through the neighborhoods.
"They’re celebrating another tradition, sort of in defiance of years of enslavement, of segregation, or disenfranchisement from all sorts of different groups of people," Barnes says. Their suits, rescued by Francis, now reside in the Backstreet Museum.
The 2013 parade's King Zulu rides atop his float. Photo via Ford Brackin/Pixabay.
The museum also houses artifacts from the Skull and Bones Gang and the Baby Dolls, two other groups that parade on Mardi Gras.
Barnes himself is the chief of the Northside Skull and Bones Gang, a group of black men who dress as skeletons and go through the neighborhoods of New Orleans with a message.
Says Barnes, "We remind people about living a good, productive life, how to avoid a short life, a life cut too short through drugs, through violence, through all of these things that can potentially happen to you."
Barnes and other members of the Northside Skull and Bones gang pose in costume. Photo via Rick Oliver/Facebook.
But just because the skeletons are all men doesn’t mean that black women are left out of the fun. That's where the Baby Dolls come in.
"Baby Dolls are another black Afro-Creole tradition," Barnes says. "They have bonnets, they have silk satin dresses, baskets that carry baby bottles with drinks in them, like rum and coke, stuff like that." Just like the skeletons, the baby dolls promenade not in the main parade, but around the smaller neighborhoods of town.
A Baby Doll in full costume marches in the 2011 Zulu Mardi Gras parade. Photo via Brad Coy/Flickr.
In reality, all New Orleans parade culture is closely tied with the culture of the disenfranchised — not just the traditions surrounding Mardi Gras.
Insurance and any type of social aid were much more difficult to acquire for people considered to be "second-class." Those people had to look elsewhere for help.
"You lose your job, you get hurt on the job — it's a burden. Or you could drop dead," Barnes says. "The hardest thing for people who don't have money to do is to pay for a funeral."
In response, social aid and pleasure clubs formed in order to help members' afford health care, funerals, and day-to-day necessities when they came upon hard times.
When social aid and pleasure clubs held those funerals, the entire association got involved — which is how those quintessentially New Orleans jazz funeral parades came to be.
Francis himself took part in many of those brass band funerals and kept photos, videos, pamphlets, and more documenting each and every one.
A row of grand marshals parades in front of the Olympia brass band in a 1981 jazz-funeral-style parade. Photo via U.S. National Health Service/Wikimedia Commons.
Today, the Backstreet Museum exists not just to preserve this culture, but to perpetuate it.
"We do different things throughout the year," Barnes says. "People who want to get connected with the spirit of what the city is, the carnival, those kinds of traditions. Anthropologists, sociologists — they all show up."
In a way, the Backstreet Museum has become its own sort of benevolent society, open to community members and the curious alike. Like the social aid and pleasure clubs that preceded it, everyone is welcome.
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All of this will be ours one day. Yay. 
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Mom is totally humiliated after her kindergartner tells the teacher what she does for work
She was clearly mortified.
A mom is embarrassed by her child.
One of the great joys and stresses of parenting is that you never know what will come out of your child’s mouth. When you have young, inquisitive kids, they can say really inappropriate things to people without realizing they were being rude or possibly offensive. TikTok influencer Aurora McCausland (@auroramccausland), known for her DIY cleaning tips, recently told a funny story on the platform about how her son believes she makes a living. The problem was that she heard about it from her child's teacher.
Mom is embarrassed by her child
“The other day, I went and picked my five year old up from school and when I get to his classroom his teacher pulls me inside and says, ‘Hey, today he wanted to tell us about what Mommy does for work and said that Mommy makes videos in her bedroom but only when I'm [he’s] not at home,” McCausland recalled.
Given her body language while telling the story, McCausland was clearly mortified after hearing what her child said to his teacher. It makes it look like she may be posting videos to adult sites while her child is at school, which most people wouldn’t want their son’s teacher to know about.
The good news is that another teacher was there to clarify the young boy's comments by adding, “I think she makes TikTok videos.” The uncomfortable situation was a great invitation to chat with her son about what she does for a living. “So I have to have a conversation with my son about how he tells people what I do for work,” she finished her video.
The funny video went viral, earning over 1.7 million views on TikTok, and inspired many people to share the times when their children had funny ways of explaining their careers. The commenters were a great reminder to parents everywhere that if your child says something embarrassing, it's ok, just about everyone has been through it.
Moms share their most embarrassing moments
A lot of parents spoke up in the comments to show McCausland that she's not the only one to feel embarrassed in front of her child's teacher.
"My son told everyone that we were homeless (because we don’t own our home, we rent)," KBR wrote.
"I work in ortho.. my daughter told her teacher I steal people's knees bc she heard me talking to my husband about a knee replacement," Aingeal wrote.
"My son told a teacher we were living in our car over the summer. Camping. We went camping," Kera wrote.
"In kinder, my son thought Red Bull was alcohol and told his teacher I liked to have beer on the way to school," Ashley wrote.
My niece told her teacher her mom and dad work at the wh*re house. They work at the courthouse," Ellis wrote.
"My husband works as a table games dealer at a casino. Kindergartener, 'Daddy's a Dealer!' We now start every school year clearly stating he works at the casino," CMAC
"My son said we lived in a crack house…There’s a tiny chip in the wall from the doorknob," KNWerner wrote.
"My dad is a hospice chaplain and officiates a lot of funerals. My son and nephew were asked by their preschool teacher if their papa was retired or had a job. They told her his job was to kill people," Tiffyd wrote.
"My son said "my dad left me and I'm all alone" to a random person at the zoo. My husband was just at work," Shelby.
"I am now in my 70s. In my gradeschool, during the McCarthy era, I told my teacher my dad was a communist. He was an economist," Crackerbelly wrote.
"In Kindergarten, my daughter told her teacher that mommy drinks and drives all the time. Coffee. From Starbucks," Jessica wrote.
"Well I once told my kindergarden teacher a man climbs over our fence to visit my mom when her husband is not home... It was a handy man who came to fix gates when they were stuck," Annie wrote.
Ultimately, McCausland’s story is a fun reminder of how children see things through their own unique lens and, with total innocence, can say some of the funniest things. It’s also a great warning to parents everywhere: if you aren’t clear with your kids about what you do for a living, you may be setting yourself up for a very embarrassing misunderstanding. So, even if you think they know what you do ask them as see what they say, you could save yourself from a lot of embarrassment.
This article originally appeared last year and has been updated.