Rival alumni groups come together for annual city parade

Jermaine Tezeno had to get payback.
The Grambling State graduate, Class of 1999, woke up one morning to find a Southern University sign in his yard. Tezeno waited to retaliate until after the two schools met that year in the annual Bayou Classic in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome.
“We do take the rivalry seriously,” Tezeno said. “After the game, I went to Wal-Mart and bought some black and gold spray paint and painted the score on that sign and stuck it back in her yard the next morning.”
Those are the kind of good-natured high jinks that alumni expect the week of the annual rivalry game between Louisiana’s two flagship historical black colleges (HBCU).
The Tigers and Jaguars meet once again on Saturday in New Orleans.
To help celebrate the game, and rivalry, the Annual Bayou Classic Parade will be held on Thanksgiving Day starting at 3 p.m. in Ville Platte. The parade route begins at the Evangeline Parish Media Center and will end at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center, with a pep rally to follow afterwards.
Grambling alum, and former longtime employee of the Evangeline Parish School Board, Mrs. Annie Lee Janice Edwards will serve as Grand Marshal.
The event is a joint effort by the Evangeline Parish Herman McCall Alumni Chapter for Grambling State and the Southern University Alumni Federation Evangeline Parish Chapter.
“It is the Super Bowl for HBCUs,” Southern Chapter President and Class of 1979 alum Arlene Abrham said. “It is like a big family reunion. Even though we are rivals we are still family. We still love each other. We just don’t like them when we play against them.”
The parade, which is more like a motorcade than a typical float-heavy parade, features pageant queens, local Girl Scout troops, four-wheeler clubs and of course dozens upon dozens of alumni from each school.
The Battle of the Bands between the two schools the day before the game is well-known, and has become an event onto itself. The local parade doesn’t feature any local marching bands but Tezeno is hoping to change that.
“We tried in times past to get bands to come and it hasn’t been too successful,” Tezeno said. “Something we look forward to incorporate more and draw more attention to the parade and the game.”
The friendly rivalry may dominate the festivities but at the end of the day, the parade is way for local alumni to help promote their respective institutions of higher learning.
“I would say the purpose of the event is to promote the game and also to promote both schools,” Tezeno said. “To promote two historically black colleges.”
“We try to get the community involved to go to those schools,” Abrham said. “It is a recruiting tool for us to let the young people know that we are still here.”