When I say the word voodoo, what do you think of?
Pop culture has led us to believe that voodoo means something mysterious,
a malevolent force, evil or black magic, but in reality voodoo is something quite different.
So what is it exactly? and if it's not evil, why has it been portrayed this way for centuries?
What we're talking about here is Haitian Vodou and New Orleans Voodoo they are not the same
but they are connected.
Vodou is a haitian religion that originated in west Africa.
It has elements of indigenous religious practices and catholicism
and emerged out of the clash of cultures and the birth of new cultures in the new world
during and after the slave trade.
It also played a pivotal role in the haitian revolution which established the first independent black nation.
Vodou has been understood as being at the very root of the rebellion and the revolt in 1791
that led to the war of independence in Haiti and Haiti's ultimate independence from France.
It was a vodous ceremony that kicked off the insurrection invoking the courage to break free
from enslavement and to take over the island from the colonising french.
So from the beginning, Vodou is seen as at the very heart of revolutionary desire, intention
and ultimately power.
And so you can imagine for this reason, leaders in the United States, leaders in Europe
really perceive Vodou as something that could really motivate revolt and ultimately pose a threat
to the colonial order.
This was before the abolition of slavery.
The thought of slaves rising up and overthrowing their colonial masters was the stuff of nightmares
for white europeans and americans.
They absolutely understood its power on a social and military level
meaning they understood how Vodou was being utilised by leaders in the haitian troops.
Vodou became sort of symbolic of all that was unwestern, undeveloped, uncivilised
and all of these things and that narrative has been used,
you know up to the present day to justify imperial interventions in Haiti.
The french weren't the last invading force to occupy Haiti.
In 1915, after a series of political uprisings in the country
and six different presidents over four years, Woodrow Wilson sent in the US marines
under the guise of establishing peace
but in the run-up to world war one, it was more about curtailing german influence in the region
and taking control of Haiti's resources.
The marines treated them appallingly with overt racism and violence .
but they also feared the haitian people because they were different.
And so what you had coming back to the US in the 20s and 30s were these, you know,
wild tales of Vodou ceremonies and, you know, sacrifices and blood rituals
that then very easily became, you know, not animal sacrifices but human sacrifices or baby sacrifices.
There are ways in which that unfamiliarity got transformed into something that made for good media.
[Narrator: The cult of voodoo embodies the worship and fear of devil gods.]
[Whole communities believing themselves under an evil spell indulge in wild orgies to cleanse themselves.]
It was around this time that travel writer William Seabrook wrote a book called The Magic Island
all about Haiti.
He takes these wild tales from the US marines and delivers them as fact to the american people.
Seabrook claims that he has seen zombies, right?
People who have been zombified, turned into ghouls, through the use of voodoo.
He talks about promiscuity, black magic and we take his stories as truth
so much so that Seabrook's fantasies appear in our academic journals here in the US.
these articles came at a time when reconstruction was happening in the south
and black people were coming into some political power.
These sensationalised narratives about Vodou, or voodoo as the americans called it,
were informing white people's irrational fears of what black political power might look like.
[Narrator: Exotic, barbaric the cult of voodoo.]
These voodoo ceremonies creates part of the hysteria that is used to support the idea in the south
that black people shouldn't have these rights, that we get the rise of jim crow, segregation
and the disenfranchisement of black people.
[Narrator: investigating voodoo in Harlem reveals that nearly one-third of harlem's negroes
have become voodoo worshipers.]
All of that, all of those narratives are then lifted almost whole and full into one of our earliest horror films,
which is White Zombie.
[Film narrator: Land of the voodoo.]
White zombie was one of the first ever zombie movies and it opened the door
to countless more films and books featuring the undead and other depictions of Vodou.
The tie that binds most of these films is evil rituals, often it's a large group of individuals,
again that writhing, you know, body outside, a big group, you know, around a flame.
Randomly there's a couple of snakes around people's necks and then some kind of lust.
Typically, in these films these are white men who are using black people and black voodoo
to get to a white woman that they want.
You will awaken to find life everlasting.
The zombie film for many americans was their first experience of Vodou as voodoo.
Black magic and the zombie has just been this really useful metaphor for alienation,
for evil that was beyond the control of good people, good americans, good middle class citizens.
If we can only manage to keep them out, we can remain safe, our values and ideals can remain safe.
[Gunshot rings]
This is the story of Vodou that we've been told over and over again for centuries
but it's just not true.
So what's the reality of this misunderstood religion?
In Haiti, they actually describe themselves more likely as serving the spirits.
There are many different analogies.
You can think of the greek gods or of the catholic saints so they intervene in human affairs
and they determine the outcome for particular individuals or families.
New Orleans Voodoo has a lot of similarities such as its west african and catholic roots
and the devotion to the spirits but it is a separate religion all of its own,
unique to the black Louisiana community from which it grew
and it still remains an integral part of that community to this day.
There's been more of a resurgence in recent years for people to reach back and take it seriously.
Even people who don't consider themselves as practicing Voodoo have some spiritual,
medicinal elements that come from that kind of tradition.
Haitian Vodou and Louisiana or New Orleans Voodoo are huge subjects to delve into
and we barely touch the surface so i'll put some extra links and further reading in the description
if you want to find out more.
if you want to see a film that respectfully represents Louisiana Voodoo
then check out Kasi Lemmon's Eve's Bayou. It's a brilliant film.
Finally, this is the last episode in this series of Black Enough?
Thanks so much for watching and if you want to see the previous episodes
go to the Guardian Youtube channel