Voodoo Course

The UT Knoxville Evening School’s fall 1973 catalog of noncredit courses announced that Voodoo Magic and Witchcraft would be offered for “the first time anywhere in the United States.” Licensed beauticians and spiritualists Houngan (high priest) Francis Torrence and his wife, Cindy, who had founded a Voodoo Church in Knoxville, were scheduled to teach the class. Denounced from various pulpits throughout the nation as the wire services picked up the story, the Evening School cancelled the course three weeks later on grounds that since a church had been established, the separation of church and state would be abridged by offering a course about a religious denomination.