Case file · Witch trials
Betsy Toledano's Voodoo arrest
In July 1850 New Orleans police broke up a Voodoo gathering and arrested Betsy Toledano, a free woman of colour, and other women; in court she defended Voodoo as an African religion she had a right to practise.
1850 CE · 29.96, -90.07 · status: official
The account
The case, reported in the city's papers, shows how Voodoo meetings mixing free and enslaved people were policed in the years before the Civil War. The women were fined.