Rex, King of Carnival

Rex (founded 1872) is a New Orleans Carnival Krewe which stages one of the city's most celebrated parades on Mardi Gras Day. Rex is Latin for "King", and Rex reigns as "The King of Carnival".

Rex was organized by New Orleans businessmen in part to put on a spectacle in honor of the New Orleans visit of Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich of Russia (remembered locally as "Grand Duke Alexis") during the 1872 Carnival season. Also in the minds of the founders of Rex was the desire to lure tourism and business to New Orleans in the years after the American Civil War.

The Rex parade is put on by an organization called The School of Design.

One member of the Rex Organization is each year chosen to be the monarch of the organization; he is often incorrectly referred to by the (technically redundant) phrase "King Rex". The correct title is simply "Rex". The identity of Rex is made public on Lundi Gras, the day before Mardi Gras. Rex is always a prominent person in the city, one who is usually involved in several philanthropic and civic causes. Being chosen Rex is one of the highest civic honors a person can receive in New Orleans. The Mayor of New Orleans traditionally hands over a symbolic Key to the City of New Orleans to Rex for Mardi Gras Day.

A consort is also chosen each year for Rex, and she is titled the "Queen of Carnival". The queen is always a debutante of the current season. Like Rex, the queen is chosen in the spring of the previous year, and must keep her identity secret until Lundi Gras.

Traditionally, the secretive membership was restricted to New Orleans residents of European ancestry for most of its history, including the first Rex, Louis Solomon a Jewish businessman. However, in 1991 the New Orleans city council passed an ordinance that required social organizations, including Mardi Gras Krewes, to certify publicly that they did not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, gender 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 abandon their traditional code of secrecy and identify their members for the city's Human Relations Commission. The Comus organization (along with Momus and Proteus, other 19th century Krewes) withdrew from parading rather than identify its membership. Rex decided to comply with the new ordinance, rather than disappear from the main event of Mardi Gras Day. 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. The decision of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals appears at volume 42, page 1483 of the Federal Reporter (3rd Series), or 42 F.3d 1483 (5th Cir. 1995). The Supreme Court refused to hear the city's appeal from this decision. Despite this, the other legendary krewes have not returned to the streets to parade. (Proteus later returned in 2000) The Rex organization and the Mistick Krewe of Comus still hold their annual balls together on Mardi Gras night.

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