The Vilification of Springfield’s Haitians Taps Into a Long and Troubling History

During the September 2024 Presidential debate, Donald J. Trump, attempting to reclaim the Presidency, made a shocking claim: Haitian immigrants in Ohio suburbs were eating people’s pets. This outrageous accusation sparked a firestorm, with J.D. Vance, the Republican Vice-Presidential nominee and an Ohio native, amplifying the narrative. Vance insisted that 911 calls had been made, alleging that Haitian migrants were capturing geese from local parks in Springfield and eating them. Despite Springfield’s mayor dismissing these claims, the damage was done. Schools were threatened with bomb scares and Haitians in Springfield became targets of violence.

At this week's Vice-Presidential debate, as they debated immigration, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz criticized Vance’s circulation of false stories about Haitian immigrants in Springfield. “And when it becomes a talking point like this, we dehumanize and villainize other human beings,” he said. With a simple but profound plea that showed the stark contrast between the two campaigns on the issue, Walz warned: "It's not true. Don’t do it.”

And yet, Vance doubled down on fabricated statements about Haitian immigrants’ legal status and lies they eat pets and harm the community. Why? Because they tap into the centuries-old custom of criminalizing Black people by portraying their practices as dangerous. This vilification cannot be understood however, without looking at the long history of demonizing Black religions, which has been a cultural foundation of white supremacy, as it presents these groups as threats not only to public safety, but to the moral fabric of the country itself.

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In 1739, the Stono Rebellion in South Carolina, led by enslaved people from Kongo, sent shockwaves through the American South. It was the largest revolt in the North American colonies prior to the American Revolution. The uprising began on Sunday, Sept. 9, while white residents were in church. The rebellion’s leaders used African drums and religious rituals, flying white flags and banners while declaring “Liberty!” as they rallied others to their cause. Between 60 and 100 would join together for freedom, burning homes and killing white masters as they headed south along the King’s Highway. Although a standoff with a large group of assembled white people ultimately ended the rebellion, some Stono rebels evaded capture for six months.

In the aftermath, the white planter class weaponized the religious aspects of the rebellion, portraying Black people as savage, predatory, and dangerous. The primarily Protestant white planters blamed the merger of Spanish Catholicism with African religions for the insurrection, arguing that the “black Christians of the Congo” were likely influenced by Spanish ideas mixed with the military skills they brought with them from Africa. This imagery fueled the creation of slave patrols, led to increased armament among local white populations, and contributed to the enactment of the Negro Act of 1740, which further restricted the enslaved from cultivating their own food, gathering in groups, generating income, or acquiring literacy skills.

The response to the Stono Rebellion laid the groundwork for Antebellum slave codes, as stories of successful maroon settlements, slave revolts in the Caribbean, and the outnumbering of whites by Blacks were infused with tales of threatening witchdoctors and Black magic. During the Antebellum period, Black religions were demonized as evil and dangerous, reinforcing the moral and (white) religious justification for slavery and the arming of white society under the pretense that these spiritual practices posed a threat to the racial social order.

Ideas of “wild” and “backwards” African religions resurfaced during the Haitian Revolution of 1804—the first and only successful slave revolt in the Americas, which led to the establishment of Haiti as a free Black nation. The revolution, rooted in a Vodou ceremony, heightened white fears that Black religious practices were catalysts for Black liberation. In August 1791, a large gathering of enslaved rebels in the mountains of Bois Caiman (Bwa Kayiman) in Haiti, led by Dutty Boukman, a Vodou priest (houngan) and revolutionary leader, included a prayer to the Vodou spirits calling for “liberty or death.” This gathering followed in the footsteps of François Mackandal, a formerly enslaved leader of a fugitive Black settlement and Vodou houngan, who was infamous for burning plantations and attacking White rulers in the cover of the night.

“Nothing is more dangerous,” 18th century French creole writer Moreau de St. Méry declared of the “cult of Voodoo” in Haiti. He told fantastical and terrifying stories which he described as a “system of domination” that “can be made into a terrible weapon.”

The Haitian Revolution has been described by scholars as the realization of white slave owners’ worst nightmare: Black rule. For white rulers, this was not merely a local rebellion but a threat to the global governance of white supremacy. That’s why the punishment for Haiti’s defiance has been severe and long-lasting. In 1824, Haiti agreed to pay 150 million francs to France in reparations for their loss of human property—an exorbitant debt that took 122 years to pay off. In fact, the poverty that persists in Haiti today is directly tied to this economic strangulation.

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But that’s not all. Culturally and politically, Haitians have been continuously demonized, reinforcing the original lie of white supremacy: that slavery was not a brutal system of exploitation, but a benevolent project that benefited the enslaved. White Europeans convinced themselves that they were saving the souls of Africans by enslaving them, civilizing them, and converting them to Christianity. Black religions, like Vodou and Santería, became key targets in this civilizing mission, demonized as pagan, savage, and dangerous. Anti-Blackness and anti-Africanness thus became embedded in the white collective subconscious.

As historian Danielle Boaz shows, tales of “voodoo” were mobilized to oppose slave emancipation and the extension of citizenship rights to African Americans during Reconstruction. Anti-Voodoo rhetoric stoked fears of Black people in New Orleans and other Southern cities, portraying the religions as evil instigators of slave rebellions. In The Mysteries and Miseries of America’s Great Cities (1888), journalist J.W. Buel depicted voodoo in New Orleans through sensationalized accounts of frightening rituals involving drums, sexual orgies, snakes, and black cats, further stoking fears of Black magic and violence. Black religions were unjustly linked with “devil-worship,” sexual degeneracy, the murder of white people, and anarchistic behavior. In 1901, a New York Times article titled “Haiti: Land of the Voodoo” argued that the country was ruled by the drum and carried out animal sacrifice as a form of governance, in order to justify U.S. military intervention.

Such ideas have persisted in modern America, with dangerous consequences. During the 1980s, stigmas of Black and brown “boat people” circulated with stories of tainted blood and “voodoo” religions that contributed to attempts at the deportation of Haitians and detained Cuban refugees (most of whom were Black) and had arrived during the 1980 Mariel Boatlift. At the same time, the U.S. government used unfounded rumors linking Vodou rituals to the onset of the AIDS pandemic as a pretext to mandate HIV tests for Haitian asylum seekers. These misconceptions, which combined notions of blood contamination with misguided fears about Vodou religions, played a role in the establishment of a detention camp for refugees with HIV. A 1983 policy of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention prohibited blood donations from the so-called “‘Four H Club’ (homosexuals, hemophiliacs, heroin users, and Haitians).”

Police have also participated in amplifying these racist stereotypes. During the 1980s, yet another conspiracy theory emerged called the Satanic Panic, a mass public hysteria that emerged from evangelical fears and linked claims of “cult” ritual abuse to Heavy Metal music, youth gaming culture, and alternative religions. Law enforcement agencies, evangelicals, and child psychologists were convinced that an underground network of satanists were abusing children and murdering people. Afro-Caribbean religions like Vodou, Santería and Palo Monte were demonized during the Satanic Panic, with practitioners being falsely accused of engaging in animal and child abuse.

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These lies, which were ultimately debunked, nevertheless caused widespread harm. For example, in Hialeah, Fla., the city attempted to ban Santería through a series of ordinances targeting animal sacrifice, a core component of the religion’s practice. In 1993, the Supreme Court ruled in Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah that the city’s ordinances violated Santería practitioners’ First Amendment rights. Despite this ruling, Afro-Caribbean religions continue to face legal and social attacks, their freedom to practice always conditional.

The power of such baseless accusations by Trump and Vance lies not in their factual basis, but in their resonance with long-standing racial fears about Black and brown people. These anxieties transcend the specific moment of misinformation. Rather they tap into a fears rooted in Christian bias and cultural stigma and then perpetuated by law enforcement, animal rights groups, politicians, and white communities who see non-white immigrants as existential threats to the purity of American neighborhoods.

Ultimately, the political attacks on Haitian migrants are about more than eating people’s pets—they are about power. By framing Black and Brown people as a threat to public morality and safety, politicians like Trump and Vance can justify harsh immigration policies, police violence, and social exclusion. These attacks tap into the same deep-seated racial anxieties that have shaped America since its founding, reminding us that the fight against white supremacy is far from over.

Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesús is Olden Street Professor of American Studies and Chair of the Effron Center for the Study of America at Princeton University and author of Excited Delirium: Race, Police Violence, and the Invention of a Disease (Duke University Press, 2024).

Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.