Night Of The Living Dead

Long before many other genres, African-Americans found a place in horror. Perhaps because the origin of the word “zombie” itself is rooted in Haitian Creole, with the very concept tied to Vodou or Voodoo, as it is more popularly written. While popular culture has turned “voodoo” into a freak show, it is actually a religion with deep West African roots that is believed to mingle those roots with the Roman Catholicism that was forced upon enslaved Africans from there. In this country, New Orleans is the “voodoo” epicenter, with the practice taking rise in the late 1790s and 1800s as those fleeing Saint Domingue, the one-time French colony, during the tumultuous Haitian Revolution sought refuge there.