Krewe

A krewe (/kruː/ KROO) is a social organization that stages parades and/or balls for the Carnival season.

The term is best known for its association with Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans, but is also used in other Carnival celebrations throughout Louisiana (e.g. in Lafayette, Shreveport, and Baton Rouge) and along the Gulf of Mexico, such as the Gasparilla Pirate Festival in Tampa, Florida, Springtime Tallahassee, and Krewe of Amalee in DeLand, Florida with the Mardi Gras on Mainstreet Parade as well as in La Crosse, Wisconsin[1] and at the Saint Paul Winter Carnival.

Following those of New Orleans, Louisiana's next-oldest krewes are mostly based near Lafayette, which crowned its first Rex-style monarch, King Attakapas, in 1897.

[4] The state's oldest extant children's krewe, Oberon, is also based in Lafayette, and was founded in 1928.

[5] Today, most Carnival krewes date their origins to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.