Marie Laveau
Religious Leader
This 19th-century New Orleans Voodoo practitioner lived a life shrouded in mystery and inspired numerous works of art and literature, appearing in assemblage pieces by visual artist Renee Stout and becoming a character in several Marvel Comics publications.
She grew up in the French Quarter of New Orleans as the child of biracial, Roman Catholic parents.
She was the subject of author Jewel Parker Rhodes' 1993 work Voodoo Dreams: A Novel of Marie Laveau.
In 1819, she married a Haitian immigrant named Jacques Paris. She later had as many as fifteen children with a man named Christophe Dominick Duminy de Glapion.
She was the subject of poet Shel Silverstein's 1974 song "Marie Laveau" (written for country singer Bobby Bare).