Louisiana Voodoo
Historical accounts suggest that in the 19th century, the saints played a prominent role, although amid the 20th-century revival, the veneration of deities from other African diasporic religions became common.
[19] Over time, hoodoo came to describe "the brand of African American supernaturalism found along the Mississippi", entailing the use of charms and spells that made little reference to deities; in this it differs from the specific religion characterized by the term Voodoo.
[36] The earliest records of him date from 1880,[35] and it is probable that he derives from Dan or Da, a deity venerated by the Fon and Ewe people whose worship centred largely around Ouidah.
[52] Interviews with elderly New Orleanians conducted in the 1930s and 1940s suggested that, as it existed in the closing three decades of the 19th century, Voodoo primarily entailed supplications to the saints for assistance.
"[55] She related that, unlike in Haitian Vodou and Cuban Santería, the Roman Catholic saints retained their distinct identities rather than being equated with specific West African deities.
[59] Michelle Gordon believed that the fact that free women of color dominated Voodoo in the 19th century represented a direct threat to the ideological foundations of "white supremacy and patriarchy.
[88] In other instances, Voodoo practitioners sought to hex others by placing black crosses, salt, or mixtures incorporating mustard, lizards, bones, oil, and grave dust on a victim's doorstep.
[89] It is possible that the act of inserting pins into a human-shaped doll to cause harm was erroneously linked to African-derived traditions due to a misunderstanding of the nkisi nkondi of Bakongo religion.
This practice was brought to the United States during the transatlantic slave trade, and African Americans into the twentieth century performed animal blood sacrifices at the crossroads.
At Stagville Plantation located in Durham County, North Carolina, enslaved Africans performed animal sacrifice to call forth spirits for assistance in the slave community.
[99] At the Kingsley Plantation at Fort George Island, Florida, archeologists found evidence of West African animal sacrifice inside a slave cabin.
Archeologists found inside a slave cabin in the northeast section an intact sacrificed chicken and other charms (blue beads and red clay brick) for rituals to conjure spirits for protection.
[101] An African American man in North Carolina sacrificed a chicken at a crossroads "asking salvation from an epidemic" from a disease that killed off his farm animals.
[85] A common gathering in Louisiana Voodoo was on the night of the 23 or 24 June, St John's Eve,[106] with big celebrations on this date has taken place on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain during the 19th century.
[111] The religions of the West African slaves combined with elements of the folk Catholicism practiced by the dominant French and Spanish colonists to provide the origins of Louisiana Voodoo.
[112] Under the French and Spanish colonial governments, Voodoo did not experience strong persecution; there are no records of the Roman Catholic Church waging "anti-superstition campaigns" against the religion in Louisiana.
Their knowledge of herbs, poisons, and the ritual creation of charms and amulets, intended to protect oneself or harm others, became key elements of Louisiana Voodoo.
[127] The religion probably appealed to members of the African diaspora, whether enslaved or free, who lacked recourse to retribution for the poor treatment they received through other means.
[130] In 1855 a mob attempted to seize a practitioner, Elizabeth Sutherland, who they accused of putting spells on people; the local police gave her shelter at the station.
[137] Various practitioners set up shops selling paraphernalia and charms,[138] they also began exploiting the commercial opportunities of the religion by staging ceremonies which charged entry.
[144] Another of the most prominent practitioners of the mid-19th century was Jean Montanée or "Dr John", a free black man who sold cures and other material to various clients, amassing sufficient funds to purchase several slaves.
[133] As part of the government's Works Progress Administration, the Louisiana Writers' Project financed fieldworkers to interview seventy elderly black New Orleanians regarding their experience with Voodoo as it existed between the 1870s and 1890s; many recounted tales of Marie Laveau.
[148] This interview material was used as a partial basis for the journalist Robert Tallant's Voodoo in New Orleans; first published in 1946, it engaged in sensationalist coverage although came to be regarded as the pre-eminent work on the subject throughout the century.
[150] The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s marked a new period in which the New Orleans tourist industry increasingly recognized African American culture as an integral aspect of the city's heritage.
[155] In the latter part of the 20th century, Voodoo saw a resurgence in New Orleans, a phenomenon reflecting some survivals from earlier practices, some imports from other African diasporic traditions, and some consciously revivalist approaches.
[11] Various groups emerged; in 1990 the African American Miriam Chamani established the Voodoo Spiritual Temple in the French Quarter, which venerated deities from Haitian Vodou and Cuban Santería.
[156] A Ukrainian-Jewish American initiate of Haitian Vodou, Sallie Ann Glassman, launched another group, La Source Ancienne, in the Bywater neighborhood; she also operated the Island of Salvation Botanica store.
[157] The most publicly prominent of the new Voodoo practitioners was Ava Kay Jones, a Louisiana Creole woman who had been initiated into both Haitian Vodou and Orisha-Vodu, a U.S.-based derivative of Santería.
[138] In 2014, Newsweek reported a claim—cited to "locals"—that there had been between 2,500 and 3,000 practitioners in New Orleans at the start of the 21st century, but that following Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent dispersal of much of the city's population, that number was down to under 300.
[75] In a 1995 article for The New York Times, Rick Bragg noted that many contemporary practitioners were "white people — nose and tongue piercers, middle-aged intellectuals and men with foot-long ponytails — who enjoy the religion's drumming and cultural aspects.
