Take 'Em Down NOLA wants the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club to stop wearing black face paint.
"Is it time for Zulu’s blackface tradition to end? The answer is a global resounding YES!" the organization posted to Facebook.
It comes less than two weeks before Zulu parades on Fat Tuesday.
Take 'Em Down NOLA has been a vocal advocate for removing Confederate monuments and other statues.
The group describes itself as "a coalition of organizers committed to the removal of ALL symbols of white supremacy in NOLA as a necessary part of the struggle for racial & economic justice."
The Facebook post says, "The melanated faces we were born with are beautiful as they are, and those who don’t have melanated skin, need to STOP pretending: wanting the melanated fantasy, but not the melanated reality!"
This comes amid recent controversies surrounding white men who were found to have posed for pictures in blackface.
Zulu, however has said in the past several days that the face paint was not going away.
"Those who incorrectly compare our use of black makeup to 'blackface' minstrelsy can first look to our name to dispel that notion," Zulu Col. Clarence A. Becknell, Sr. said in a statement. "The history of Zulu makes it abundantly clear that nothing about the organization, including the black makeup, was never intended to insult or degrade African-Americans."
Zulu historian Clarence Becknell said that the tradition of dark black makeup on float riders faces was started more than 100 years ago.
"They couldn’t afford the masks," he explained to WWL TV. "To us it didn’t mean anything; it was just a mask."
He says now it is tradition.
"Part of the costume is the blackface," he explained. "We’re not political, we don’t use it for any other reason than just to parade. That’s all."