NEW ORLEANS — Ronald Lewis, who earned national media attention for his work preserving New Orleans’ African-American cultural traditions, has died.
Mayor LaToya Cantrell issued a statement late Friday saying Lewis, founder of the House of Dance and Feathers, had died.
"Ronald was the very definition of a culture bearer," the mayor said. "Talk about a survivor. Ronald survived Hurricane Betsy and wouldn’t bow down even after his house was consumed by 14 feet of water during Katrina.... He survived so much, and gave us so much."
Earlier in the week his wife and family friends told WWL-TV that Lewis had been admitted to a local hospital earlier in the week and had been tested for coronavirus. Test results were apparently not back yet, however.
Lewis apparently suffered from diabetes and other medical conditions, according to an Offbeat Magazine online post last year about a fundraiser friends had organized for him.
His cultural museum on Tupelo Street in the Lower Ninth Ward, the House of Dance and Feathers, was created in the early 2000s. He said his wife “banished” his collection of Mardi Gras Indian and social aid and pleasure club costumes, costume supplies and memorabilia to a backyard shed. It grew into a museum. He was also a photographer whose work was displayed there.
“Through the decades, Ronald Lewis has played numerous roles in the New Orleans — and particularly his Lower Ninth Ward — community,” Geraldine Wyckoff wrote in a 2016 Offbeat profile. “He’s masked Indian and skeleton, second lined out the door with social aid and pleasure clubs, taken photographs, curated his museum, The House of Dance & Feathers, and authored a book of the same name…. During Lewis’ lifetime journey in New Orleans’ African-American cultural traditions, he hasn’t wavered in his dedication no matter his role.”
His museum was originally designed to teach local children about New Orleans culture. It took on even greater importance after Hurricane Katrina and the federal levee failures decimated Lewis’ neighborhood.
“When Katrina came, I wanted to rebuild and become a beacon within my community,” Lewis told a National Geographic writer in 2009. “It gave me a venue to tell the world what happened to us. Three and a half years later we’re pushing forward. We’re trying to do anything we can do to keep the glue within our community.”
Lewis, a retired streetcar track repairman with the Regional Transit Authority, was the retired president of the Big 9 Social Aid & Pleasure Club. He was also “gatekeeper” of the North Side Skull & Bone Gang, which appears each Mardi Gras.
He masked Indian for decades, starting as Spy Boy of the Seminole Mardi Gras Indian tribe under Big Chief David Boulier. In 1991, he branched out with Big Chief Edgar Jacobs to begin the 9th Ward Choctaw Hunters.
“Once you get involved in the Mardi Gras Indian culture, you’re always going to be involved—it becomes a part of you,” he told Wyckoff in 2016. “Like I tell people, that’s a cultural addiction. You never stop. You might stop making suits but you’re going to find some way to be involved. Now, my thing is telling our story.”
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