Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Date of Degree
6-2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Program
History
Advisor
David Waldstreicher
Committee Members
Gunja SenGupta
Benjamin Carp
Subject Categories
United States History
Keywords
New Orleans, Voodoo, slavery, resistance, women, Louisiana
Abstract
This dissertation traces the life and legend of Voodoo leader Marie Laveau to illustrate how poisonings have captured the imagination of New Orleanians from the eighteenth through twentieth centuries. Rather than simply expressing racial anxieties, these fantasies of poisonings in fact supported the violence of enslavement, disenfranchisement, and imperialism while also providing slim opportunities for people of color to achieve greater freedom. When confronted with abolitionism, enslavers in New Orleans spread paternalist narratives that enslaved people loved their enslavers and would never harm them. People of color who sold food to purchase themselves or who poisoned their enslavers invoked such fantasies to disguise their resistance. Similarly, Laveau made a career out of organizing Voodoo feasts and dances for an elite white clientele, feeding into their hunger for experiences of racial Otherness. It was only after the Civil War that fears of poisoning spread and cast Laveau and other people of color as practitioners of witchcraft. The dangers of so-called Voodoo poisonings then justified the oppression of Black political progress and the occupation of Haiti in 1915. As the politics of freedom transformed, so too did poisonings evolve within a white supremacist imagination that constantly attempted to contain these threats. Yet people of color still used their culinary labor to poison white supremacy from within and get away with it.
Recommended Citation
Lafuse, Madeline, "Poison in Marie Laveau’s New Orleans: A Cultural History of Food, Freedom, and White Supremacy, 1718-1946" (2024). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/5861
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