Hoodoo (spirituality)

"[37] The Code Noir and other slave laws resulted in enslaved and free African Americans conducting their spiritual practices in secluded areas such as woods (hush harbors), churches, and other places.

The leader of the revolt was a free African conjurer named Peter the Doctor, who made a magical powder for the enslaved people to be rubbed on the body and clothes for their protection and empowerment.

Historians suggest the powder made by Peter the Doctor probably included some cemetery dirt to conjure the ancestors to provide spiritual militaristic support from ancestral spirits as help during the slave revolt.

In addition, altars with white candles and offerings are placed in areas where police murdered an African American, and libation ceremonies and other spiritual practices are performed to heal the soul that died from racial violence.

"In their physical manifestations, minkisi (nkisi) are sacred objects that embody spiritual beings and generally take the form of a container such as a gourd, pot, bag, or snail shell.

Archeologists found objects believed by the enslaved African American population in Virginia and Maryland to have spiritual power, such as coins, crystals, roots, fingernail clippings, crab claws, beads, iron, bones, and other items assembled inside a bundle to conjure a specific result for either protection or healing.

[135] At Locust Grove plantation in Jefferson County, Kentucky, archeologists and historians found amulets made by enslaved African Americans that had the Kongo cosmogram engraved onto coins and beads.

[140] Former academic historian Albert J. Raboteau in his book, Slave Religion: The "Invisible Institution" in the Antebellum South, traced the origins of Hoodoo (conjure, rootwork) practices in the United States to West and Central Africa.

[159][160] In addition, at the Kingsmill Plantation in Williamsburg, Virginia, enslaved blacksmiths created spoons that historians suggest have West African symbols carved onto them that have a spiritual cosmological meaning.

[165][166] The practice of carving snakes onto "conjure sticks" to remove curses and evil spirits and bring healing was found in African American communities in the Sea Islands among the Gullah Geechee people.

These areas in Africa were suitable for rice cultivation because of their moist semitropical climate; the European slave traders selected people belonging to ethnic groups from these regions to be enslaved and transported to the Sea Islands.

[177] During the transatlantic slave trade a variety of African plants were brought from Africa to the United States for cultivation, including okra, sorghum, yam, benneseed (sesame), watermelon, black-eyed peas, and kola nuts.

The remedy most commonly used in Black communities in northeast Missouri to ward off a cold was carrying a small bag of Ferula assafoetida; the folk word is asfidity, a plant from the fennel family.

[221] The concepts of Kongo Christianity[222] among the Bakongo people was brought to the United States during the transatlantic slave trade and developed into Afro-Christianity among African Americans that is seen in Hoodoo and some Black churches.

These traits included naturopathic medicine, ancestor reverence, counter-clockwise sacred circle dancing, blood sacrifice, divination, supernatural source of malady, water immersion, and spirit possession.

Examples of enslaved and free Black people using the Bible as a tool for liberation were Denmark Vesey's slave revolt in South Carolina in 1822 and Nat Turner's Rebellion in Virginia in 1831.

After the American Civil War, before High John the Conqueror returned to Africa, he told the newly freed slaves that if they ever needed his spirit for freedom, it would reside in a root they could use.

[263] The earliest known reference to Simbi spirits in the United States was recorded in the nineteenth century by Edmund Ruffin, a wealthy enslaver from Virginia who traveled to South Carolina "to keep the slave economic system viable through agricultural reform".

To obtain the powers of the Bisimbi, Bakongo people in Central Africa and African Americans in the Georgia and South Carolina Lowcountry collect rocks and seashells and create minkisi bundles.

To calm the spirits of ancestors, African Americans leave the last objects they used in life on top of their graves, believing them to contain the last essence of the person before they died, as a way of acknowledging them.

The items are placed inside conjure bags or jars and mixed with roots, herbs, and animal parts, sometimes ground into a powder or with graveyard dirt from a murdered victim's grave.

A Spiritual church in New Orleans called the Temple of the Innocent Blood was led by an African American woman, Mother Catherine Seals, who performed Hoodoo to heal her clients.

Hurston noted that Mother Seals incorporated other African Diaspora practices into her Spiritual church and observed her reverence for a Haitian Vodou snake loa spirit, Damballa.

By the end of the book, Milkman learns he comes from a family of African medicine people, gains his ancestral powers, and his soul flies back to Africa after he dies.

In her "Louisiana Hoodoo Blues", Gertrude Ma Rainey sang about a Hoodoo work to keep a man faithful: "Take some of you hair, boil it in a pot, Take some of your clothes, tie them in a knot, Put them in a snuff can, bury them under the step...."[398] Bessie Smith's song "Red Mountain Blues" tells of a fortune teller who recommends that a woman get some snakeroot and a High John the Conqueror root, chew them, place them in her boot and pocket to make her man love her.

[399] The song "Got My Mojo Working", written by Preston "Red" Foster in 1956 and popularized by Muddy Waters throughout his career, addresses a woman who can resist the power of the singer's Hoodoo amulets.

Hoodoo practitioner Aunt Caroline Dye was born enslaved in Spartanburg, South Carolina and sold to Newport, Arkansas as a child, where she became known for soothsaying and divination with playing cards.

[402][403][404] However, the devil figure in Johnson's song, a black man with a cane who haunts crossroads, closely resembles Papa Legba, a spirit associated with Louisiana Voodoo and Haitian Vodou.

[409][410][411] For example, High John the Conqueror in African American folk stories is a Black man from Africa enslaved in the United States whose spirit resides in a root conjured in Hoodoo.

White merchants profited from African American folk magic and placed stereotypical images of Indians onto hoodoo product labels to sell merchandise that appeared mystical, exotic, and powerful.

Many Hoodoo practices were hidden in Black churches during and after slavery for African Americans to protect themselves. Scholars call the practice of Hoodoo in Black churches the invisible institution because enslaved Black people concealed their culture and practices from whites within the Christian religion. [ 21 ] [ 22 ]
During the slave trade, the majority of Central Africans imported to New Orleans, Louisiana, were Bakongo people. This image was painted in 1886 and shows African Americans in New Orleans performing dances from Africa in Congo Square . Congo Square was where African Americans practiced Voodoo and Hoodoo. [ 36 ]
Honey jars or sweetening jars are a tradition in Hoodoo to sweeten a person or a situation in a person's favor. Traditionally, sugar water is used. [ 46 ]
Paschal Beverly Randolph
Black Herman
Protesters with signs in Ferguson
The Yowa, or Dikenga Cross, is a symbol in Bakongo spirituality that depicts the physical world, the spiritual (ancestral) world, the Kalûnga river (line) that runs between the two worlds, and the four moments of the sun. The Yowa cross is the origin of the crossroads in Hoodoo.
The Kongo cosmogram
An example of an African American face jug from the Edgefield District of South Carolina. Historians suggest face jugs may have functioned like an nkisi , a spirit container. Locals call face jugs "voodoo pots" and "ugly jugs." African American face jugs are similar in appearance to face jugs made by Bantu people in the Kongo region . [ 90 ] [ 91 ]
The 18th-century painting The Old Plantation depicts several examples of Africanisms brought to the Carolinas , including musical instruments, headdresses, dance steps, and spiritual traditions.
Archeologists found an intact nkisi nkondi inside a slave cabin in Brazoria, Texas.
Minkisi (Kongo), World Museum Liverpool - Minkisi cloth bundles were found on slave plantations in the United States in the Deep South . [ 122 ]
Brooklyn Museum 22.198 Cane / This cane is from the Arts of Africa collection. Bantu-Kongo people in Central Africa and African Americans in the United States crafted similar canes. Historians noted similar meanings and religious uses of canes between African and African Americans, who carved animals and human figures onto canes to conjure illness. The difference with African American canes is the North American animals and historical events, such as sharecropping and lynchings , carved onto them. [ 131 ]
A West African gris-gris bag, the origin of the mojo bag (conjure bag) in Hoodoo [ 143 ]
Blacksmiths are respected in Black communities because of their knowledge of the mysteries of metal and its spiritual properties.
A Hoodoo stick was found between the walls of the Bennehan House to curse (hex) the family.
Bible Quilt 1898 / Harriet Powers sewed biblical imagery and African symbols into her quilts.
An example of one of Ms. Hunter's quilts on John's Island , South Carolina.
James Hopkinsons plantation slaves planting sweet potatoes
African American root doctors developed a variety of herbal cures in the American South.
Edisto Island National Scenic Byway - Sweetgrass Baskets - A Gullah Tradition - NARA - 7718281 - Sweetgrass baskets designs and styles are similar to the ones made in West Africa.
African American midwife with a newborn infant
Spiritual Meeting at Father Treadwells Church NOLA. Hoodoo practitioners incorporate Christian imagery on their Hoodoo altars, and some practice Hoodoo in group church settings or are solitary practitioners.
A seal from the Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses
The Christian Holy Bible
Enslaved and free conjurers were leaders of slave revolts in the African Diaspora .
Enslaved and free people held secret Hoodoo and church meetings in hush harbors .
Zora Neale Hurston documented stories about High John the Conqueror from African Americans in the Southern United States.
Gullah Geechee people in the Sea Islands paint their houses blue to ward off evil spirits. [ 252 ]
West African water spirit MIA
In Hoodoo, the pouring of libations is an African practice.
Coffin Point Praise House
A Sankofa Symbol was etched onto the memorial wall at the African Burial Ground National Monument.
Bottle Tree in Central Holmes Cemetery (Yazoo County, Mississippi)
William Wells Brown wrote in his autobiography that he spoke with an enslaved fortune-teller named Frank to learn if his escape from slavery on the Underground Railroad would be successful. [ 326 ]
Universal Hagar's Spiritual Church, New York City
African American conjurers and rootworkers identified as Christian and incorporated the Bible into Hoodoo.
In 1935, Zora Neale Hurston published Mules and Men , her first book about African American folklore and Hoodoo. In 1938, Hurston published Tell My Horse , a book about the practice of Obeah in Jamaica and the practice of Vodou in Haiti. [ 365 ]
Photo of an ex-slave William Watkins from the WPA slave narratives.
Bessie Smith wrote and performed several blues songs that reference Hoodoo.