The Mummers look to turn the page from past controversies

In 2020, Sam Regalbuto, the newly elected president of the Philadelphia Mummers String Band Association, was summoned to City Council to explain why the parade should exist at all.

In the wake of the Mummers Parade’s latest blackface flap — and a string of other racist and offensive behavior, including depictions of Indians, Native Americans, Mexicans, LGBTQ people, and other groups — Regalbuto and other heads of the four Mummers divisions assured the Council they could better police its participants. The special meeting came after Mayor Jim Kenney threatened to end the iconic event — and amid a larger debate about whether the city should divest completely from the parade. Under Kenney (a former Mummer), the city had already implemented mandatory Mummer sensitivity training and a formal theme-review process.

Regalbuto, whose father was a Mummer before him, told council members that in his 30-plus years on parade planning committees, he never heard a Mummer ask: “How can we offend?”

Threatened with extinction, the Mummers emerged from the controversy far from dead (organizers agreed to a $75 fine and a five-year ban for Mummers wearing blackface).

But they did not escape unscathed.

While crowds have returned, Regalbuto says parade organizers are still navigating the fallout of the combined controversies, and working to rebuild their brand. That includes restoring a frayed relationship with the city, and recovering from lost sponsorships and declining revenue from year-round events that help clubs cover expenses.

Regalbuto recalls a corporate event in Delaware where a five-member string band was turned away in the parking lot after company brass learned Mummers had been hired to play.

“They handed them their checks and said, ‘You’re paid in full. Go home,’” Regalbuto said. “They were told that the vice president of the company did not want homophobics and racists on his property.”

In a statement in December, Kenney said the Philadelphia Commission of Human Relations reported no major incidents at the last two Mummers parades.

“Participants who choose to make racist, homophobic, or other bigoted displays will be held accountable,” Kenney said. “We believe that the culture of the parade is evolving in a positive direction thanks to the collaboration of City government and Mummers leadership.”

The expected cost of this year’s parade is around $230,000, mostly for staffing and equipment, said Charlotte Merrick, a city spokesperson. Since the 2000s, the Mummers and the city have worked to pass the bulk of the parade expenses — including prize money, judges fees, and insurance costs — to Mummers organizations.

That reported progress falls far short for many who believe that the Mummers can’t be saved, and who find it inexcusable that the city still supports a parade with minstrel roots.

“To think that the city is using its infrastructure and public dollars to support this thing that is so structurally racist in its DNA, it’s almost hard for me to have any sense of patience,” said Tayyib Smith, an entrepreneur based in Philadelphia. “It’s an abomination in the 21st century.”

The problem is not any one controversy, he said, but rather decades of offensive behavior.

“It’s the arc of the history of the Mummers for the three generations my family has lived in Philadelphia,” he said.

Regalbuto and Jessica Mazzone, president of the Comic Division, said members have embraced the city’s added screening and training on LGBTQ issues, the nature of satire, and cultural appropriation.

“We’re evolving — we’re always evolving,” Regalbuto said, adding that the Mummers who painted their faces black in 2020 “were two individuals who had political axes to grind with the city, who used the parade as the platform.”

“You’re going to have people stuck in their old ways, and you try and educate those people, but that’s not who we are,” he said. “It overshadows all the charitable work that we do and all the entertainment that we provide.”

Mazzone, who is president of the Rich Porco’s Murray Comic Club, named after her father, Rich Porco, who died in 2021, said themes are vetted now more closely than ever.

“Once we learned that you have to punch above the belt, and not below, everybody understood, and everybody was on board,” she said.

“Could somebody go rogue? Could somebody want to sabotage the Mummers? Yeah. That’s a concern.”

While the city never withdrew financial support, Regalbuto says in the aftermath of the controversies, fewer Mummers were hired to play other city events (Mummers bands regularly provide free performances for charity).

A city spokesperson said the city has not canceled any events with the Mummers.

In 2023, for the first time in 30 years, the parade did not air on PHL17, after the station said it could no longer get enough sponsors for the broadcast. The parade instead aired on WDPN-TV (MeTV2) with the Mummers finding their own sponsors, including an enthusiastic partner in Live! Casino & Hotel.

“One of the biggest things we wanted to show is that we can be self-sufficient,” Regalbuto said. “Now the city does not have the full weight of supporting the Mummers financially.”

An effort to foster diversity by playing music at public libraries was halted by the pandemic, Regalbuto said, but he hopes to start it up again in 2024.

The Mummers have experienced some backlash from within their own ranks in recent years, but club leaders say membership is up.

Austin Sanborn, 32, an acute dialysis nurse at Jefferson Health, who is serving his first year as captain of the Downtowners Fancy Brigade, said his club had nearly 50 new members in 2023.

Sanborn, a third-generation Mummer who marches with more than a dozen family members, has been a Mummer since age 5. He’s one of the younger captains in the parade.

“My mind is on putting on the best show — one that holds a common ground for everyone,” he said. “It’s not about the negative, it’s about what we can do to show people that we are positive. We hope everyone enjoys our show every year.”

That’s more important than ever, agreed Regalbuto. The parade can be the showcase for what the Mummers are really all about, he said.

“So we have to be very careful,” he said. “That we don’t do anything that would be offensive to anyone.”