This page was created by Sondra Bickham Washington.
Beyond NOLA: Exploring Zora Neale Hurston in Bogalusa, Louisiana's Magic CityMain MenuIn the Surrounding CountryUnearthing Hurston's Work in Bogalusa, LouisianaHunting Hoodoo and Telling LiesHurston's Quest to Document Black Culture in LouisianaPerilous Paths and Unknown DangersHurston’s Journey(s) to the Magic City of the Deep SouthHurston’s Route to BogalusaThe Great Doctor RedmondRoots and Healing in the Magic CityCosmic Secrets AboundBogalusa’s Legacy in Hurston Literature and ScholarshipAcknowledgmentsAbout this BookSondra Bickham Washington70c9f57f20f0e0ae883e5f80cd0c6b83f8bc8e46Published by Publishing Without Walls
Surrounding Country - Hoodoo
12024-09-10T14:56:47+00:00Sondra Bickham Washington70c9f57f20f0e0ae883e5f80cd0c6b83f8bc8e4616712plain2025-03-18T18:41:55+00:00Sondra Bickham Washington70c9f57f20f0e0ae883e5f80cd0c6b83f8bc8e46In “Hoodoo in America,” Hurston stated, “Shreds of hoodoo beliefs and practices are found wherever any number of Negroes are found in America, but conjure has had its highest development along the Gulf coast, particularly in the city of New Orleans and in the surrounding country” (318).
Hurston, Zora N. “Hoodoo in America.” The Journal of American Folklore 44, no. 174 (October-December 1931): 318.
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1media/Hurston Route to Bogalusa 1930 Official Louisiana Highway Map.png2024-07-18T19:44:13+00:00In the Surrounding Country72Unearthing Hurston's Work in Bogalusa, Louisianaplain2025-03-27T18:58:07+00:00
Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose. It is a seeking that he who wishes may know the cosmic secrets of the world and they that dwell therein.— Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road
As a world-renowned author, anthropologist, folklorist, filmmaker, playwright, and larger-than-life storyteller, Zora Neale Hurston not only penned this commonly referenced quotation; she lived it.More than sixty years after her death, Hurston’s ability to seamlessly blend genres—storytelling with scholarship, and life writing with literature—continues to inspire widespread critiques and celebrations of her multi-genre oeuvre and her focus on African American culture. In addition to countless critical essays and monographs addressing her literary contributions, several recent projects, including Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” and the PBS documentary Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming a Space, highlight her groundbreaking and controversial ethnographic methodology and experiences in the segregated South that influenced how she researched and developed various publications on Black folktales, religious practices, and life. In particular, some of her most intriguing and widely referenced scholarship concerns African American culture and hoodoo in New Orleans, Louisiana (NOLA), a city so beloved and mythologized that it commonly eclipses all other areas of the state in the American and global psyche. Like those who have succumbed to this city’s mesmerizing effect, scholars have largely overgeneralized and failed to differentiate any area of the Bayou State from the Crescent City in Hurston’s research and writing.
Beyond NOLA departs from this praxis and engages Hurston’s writings and other historical artifacts to uncover the ethnographic research she performed outside of New Orleans “in the surrounding country” that is, in the more remote areas of Louisiana, as she noted in her groundbreaking 1931 article, “Hoodoo in America.” This project focuses particularly on the work she completed seventy miles north of New Orleans in the sawmill town of Bogalusa, which was described as the “Magic City of the Deep South” at the turn of the twentieth century. Bogalusa has largely been ignored in past and present Hurston studies; Beyond NOLA challenges this history through foregrounding archival research and geography to uncover the city’s significance in Hurston studies, highlight the residents and racial environment she encountered while traveling to and through the city on dangerous roadways very similar to the one pictured here, and ultimately expand scholarship on Hurston’s time spent in Louisiana beyond New Orleans.
