title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Bakongo spiritual protections influenced African American yard decorations. In Central Africa, Bantu-Kongo people decorated their yards and entrances to doorways with baskets and broken shiny items to protect from evil spirits and thieves. This practice is the origin of the bottle tree in Hoodoo. Throughout the American South in African American neighborhoods, there are some houses that have bottle trees and baskets placed at entrances to doorways for spiritual protection against conjure and evil spirits. In addition, nkisi culture influenced jar container magic. An African American man in North Carolina buried a jar under the steps with water and string in it for protection. If someone conjured him the string would turn into a snake. The man interviewed called it "inkabera."


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: On 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. Blue beads were found among the artifacts, and in African spirituality blue beads attract protection to the wearer. In slave cabins in Kentucky and on other plantations in the American South, archeologists found blue beads and were used by enslaved people for spiritual protection. Enslaved African Americans in Kentucky combined Christian practices with traditional African beliefs.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Historians from Southern Illinois University in the Africana Studies Department documented about 20 title words from the Kikongo language are in the Gullah language. These title words indicate continued African traditions in Hoodoo and conjure. The title words are spiritual in meaning. In Central Africa, spiritual priests and spiritual healers are called "Nganga." In the South Carolina Lowcountry among Gullah people a male conjurer is called Nganga. Some Kikongo words have a "N" or "M" in the beginning of the word. However, when Bantu-Kongo people were enslaved in South Carolina the letters N and M were dropped from some of the title names. For example, in Central Africa the word to refer to spiritual mothers is "Mama Mbondo." In the South Carolina Lowcountry in African American communities the word for a spiritual mother is Mama Bondo. In addition during slavery, it was documented there was a Kikongo speaking slave community in Charleston, South Carolina.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Dr. Robert Farris Thompson was a professor at Yale University and conducted academic research in Africa and the United States and traced Hoodoo's (African American conjure) origins to Central Africa's Bantu-Kongo people in his book "Flash of the Spirit: African & Afro-American Art & Philosophy." Thompson was an African Art historian and found through his study of African Art the origins of African Americans' spiritual practices to certain regions in Africa. 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. These origins developed a slave culture in the United States that was social, spiritual, and religious. Professor Eddie Glaude at Princeton University defines Hoodoo as part of African-American religious life with practices influenced from Africa that fused with Christianity creating an African-American religious culture for liberation.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: A major West African influence in Hoodoo is Islam. As a result of the transatlantic slave trade, some West African Muslims that practiced Islam were enslaved in the United States. Prior to their arrival to the American South, West African Muslims blended Islamic beliefs with traditional West African spiritual practices. On plantations in the American South enslaved West African Muslims kept some of their traditional Islamic culture. They practiced the Islamic prayers, wore turbans, and the men wore the traditional wide leg pants. Some enslaved West African Muslims practiced Hoodoo. Instead of using Christian prayers in the creation of charms, Islamic prayers were used. Enslaved black Muslim conjure doctors' Islamic attire was different from the other slaves, which made them easy to identify and ask for conjure services regarding protection from slaveholders. The Mandingo (Mandinka) were the first Muslim ethnic group imported from Sierra Leone in West Africa to the Americas. Mandingo people were known for their powerful conjure bags called gris-gris (later called mojo bags in the United States). The Bambara people an ethnic group of the Mandinka people influenced the making of charm bags and amulets. Words in Hoodoo in reference to charm bags come from the Bambara language. For example, the word "zinzin" spoken in Louisiana Creole means a power amulet. The Mande word "marabout" in Louisiana means a spiritual teacher. During the slave trade, some Mandingo people were able to carry their gris-gris bags with them when they boarded slave ships heading to the Americas bringing the practice to the United States. Enslaved people went to enslaved black Muslims for conjure services requesting them to make gris-gris bags (mojo bags) for protection against slavery.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Hoodoo also has some Vodun influence. For example, a primary ingredient used in goofer dust is snakeskins. Snakes (serpents) are revered in West African spiritual practices, because they represent divinity. The West African Vodun water spirit Mami Wata holds a snake in one hand. This reverence for snakes came to the United States during the slave trade, and in Hoodoo snakeskins are used in the preparation of conjure powders. Puckett explained that the origin of snake reverence in Hoodoo originates from snake (serpent) honoring in West Africa's Vodun tradition. It was documented from a former slave in Missouri that conjurers took dried snakes and frogs and ground them into powders to "Hoodoo people." A conjurer made a powder from a dried snake and a frog and put it in a jar and buried it under the steps of the target's house to "Hoodoo the person." When the targeted individual walked over the jar they had pain in their legs. Snakes in Hoodoo are used for healing, protection, and to curse people.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: The West African Yoruba origins are evident in Hoodoo. For example, the Yoruba trickster deity called Eshu-Elegba resides at the crossroads, and the Yoruba people leave offerings for Eshu-Elegba at the crossroads. The crossroads has spiritual power in Hoodoo, and rituals are performed at the crossroads, and there is a spirit that resides at the crossroads to leave offerings for. However, the spirit that resides at the crossroads in Hoodoo is not named Eshu-Elegba because many of the African names of deities were lost during slavery; but the belief that a spirit resides at the crossroads and one should provide offerings to it originates from West Africa. The Yoruba crossroad spirit Eshu-Elegba became the man of the crossroads in Hoodoo. Folklorist Newbell Niles Puckett, recorded a number of crossroads rituals in Hoodoo practiced among African-Americans in the South and explained its meaning. Puckett wrote..."Possibly this custom of sacrificing at the crossroads is due to the idea that spirits, like men, travel the highways and would be more likely to hit upon the offering at the crossroads than elsewhere." In addition to leaving offerings and performing rituals at the crossroads, sometimes spiritual work or "spells" are left at the crossroads to remove unwanted energies.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: In Annapolis, Maryland, archeologists uncovered evidence for West African and Central African practices. A Hoodoo spiritual bundle that contained nails, a stone axe and other items was found embedded four feet in the streets of Maryland near the capital. The axe inside the Hoodoo bundle showed a cultural link to the Yoruba people's deity Shango. Shango was (and is) a feared Orisha in Yorubaland, because he is associated with lightning and thunder, and this fear and respect towards thunder and lightning survived in African American communities. Folklorist Puckett wrote..."and thunder denotes an angry creator." Puckett recorded a number of beliefs surrounding the fear and respect for thunder and lightning in the African American community. In Hoodoo objects struck by lightning hold great power. However, the name Shango and other African deity names were lost during slavery. Therefore, the name Shango does not exist in Hoodoo, but just the name the thunder god. Enslaved and free blacks in New York were known among the whites in the area to take an oath to thunder and lightning. During the 1741 slave conspiracy in New York, African American men took an oath to thunder and lightning.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Other Yoruba influences in Hoodoo is the use of iron. In West Africa, blacksmiths are respected because they are connected to the spirit of metal (iron). Among the Yoruba, the Orisha spirit Ogun corresponds to iron, and Ogun is called the "god of iron." West African people enslaved in the United States kept the respect for enslaved blacksmiths on the plantation, and recognition for iron. Horseshoes are made from metal and are used for protection in Hoodoo. In Maryland archeologists unearthed at the Wye House artifacts that linked to the Yoruba people's spiritual belief and practice in the reverence of Ogun, which is why African-Americans incorporate horseshoes and metal tools in Hoodoo because there is a spirit that corresponds to metal that can be invoked for protection from physical and spiritual harm. Yoruba cultural influences survived in Hoodoo, but the names and symbols of Orisha spirits are not present in Hoodoo because that information was lost during slavery; therefore just the natural elements that corresponds to each Orisha remain.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: 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. In Alexandria, Virginia historians found in a slave cabin a wrought-iron figure made by an enslaved blacksmith in the eighteenth century which looked similar to Ogun statues made by blacksmiths in West Africa by the Edo, Fon, Mande and Yoruba people. West African blacksmiths enslaved in the United States were highly respected and feared by enslaved blacks because they had the ability to forge weapons. Gabriel Prosser was an African American enslaved in Richmond, Virginia and was a blacksmith. In 1800, Gabriel Prosser planned a slave revolt in Virginia. Historians assert that Prosser became the leader of the planned rebellion because he was a blacksmith, and enslaved people respected and feared blacksmiths because of their ability to forge weapons and their connection to the spirit of iron. Prosser and other enslaved blacksmiths made weapons for the rebellion, but the revolt never happened because two slaves informed the authorities.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: At Stagville Plantation located in Durham County, North Carolina archeologists found artifacts made by enslaved African Americans that linked to spiritual practices found in West Africa. The artifacts found was a divining stick, walking stick, and cowrie shells. Stagville Plantation was owned by a wealthy slaveholding family called the Bennehan family; they enslaved 900 African American people. Stagville was one of many large slave plantations in the American South. Inside the Bennehan house, a walking stick was found placed in between the walls to curse the Bennehan family. An enslaved person secretly placed a walking stick to put evil spirits on their enslavers, putting a curse on the family for enslaving them. The walking stick was carved into an image of a West African snake spirit (deity) called Damballa. In West-Central Africa and in African-American communities, only initiates trained in the secrets of the serpent and spirits were allowed to have a conjure stick. These sticks conjured illness and healing, and the spirit of a conjure stick can warn the conjurer of impending danger. Cowrie shells were found on the site and was used by enslaved African Americans to connect with the spiritual element of water "to ensure spiritual guidance over bodies of water." In West Africa, cowrie shells were used for money and corresponds to African water spirits.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Other African cultural survivals among the Gullah people is giving their children African names. Linguists noticed identical or similar sounding names in the Gullah Geechee Nation that can be traced to Sierra Leone, a country in West Africa. Some African Americans in South Carolina and Georgia continue to give their children African names. This is done for spiritual and cultural reasons. The spiritual reason is for their ancestors to provide their children spiritual power and spiritual protection. The cultural reason is so their children will know what region in Africa their ancestry is from.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: The practice of carving snakes onto "conjure sticks" to remove curses, evil spirits, and bring healing was found in African American communities in the Sea Islands among the Gullah Geechee people. Snake reverence in African American Hoodoo originated from West African societies. Another practice in Hoodoo that has its origins from West Africa is to moistened conjure bags and luck balls with whiskey (rum). It is believed that conjure bags and luck balls have a spirit, and to keep its spirit alive conjurers feed them whisky once a week. The practice has its roots from the Guinea Coast of Africa. The practice of foot-track magic in Hoodoo has its origins from Ghana. A person's foot track is used to send someone away by mixing their foot track with herbs, roots, and insects, specific ingredients used in Hoodoo to send someone away, and grind into a powder and place the powder in a container and throw it into a flowing river that leaves town and in a few days the person will leave town. Among the Tshi people in Ghana, spirit possession is not limited to people, but objects inanimate and animate can become possessed by spirits. This same belief among blacks in the South was documented by folklorist Puckett.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Other West African influences in African-American spirituality is seen in quilt making. African American women made quilts incorporating West African crosses and the Bakongo cross of the Kongo cosmogram. For example, an African American woman named Harriet Powers made quilts using Bakongo and other West African symbols. On one of Harriet Powers quilts was a cross with four suns showing Bakongo influence quilting the Kongo cosmogram onto her quilts. Other African symbols were seen in Powers quilts. However, scholars suggests Harriet Powers cross symbols may also be a West African cross, as West Africans also had crosses as symbols, but the meaning and use of crosses in West Africa was different from the Bakongo people in Central Africa. Fon influence and artistic style was seen in Powers quilts as well. Harriet Powers was born enslaved in Georgia in 1837, and scholars suggest Powers may have been of Bakongo or Dahomean descent. African-American quilts are influenced by American quilt making and West African designs. Adinkra symbols and other African symbols are sewed into fabrics for spiritual purposes. Quilt makers in the African American community also sewed mojo bags and placed roots, bones, and other items inside bags for protection. Another example, was Louiza Francis Combs. Louiza Francis Combs was born in Guinea and came to the United States in the 1860s. Her quilts incorporate West African features of "a red striped pattern, patchwork, and two broad asymmetrical panels." This pattern design is similar to the Mande peoples religious concepts that evil spirits travel in a straight path, and to protect ones self from evil spirits broken lines and fragmented shapes are sewn into fabrics and quilts. Some of the meanings of the African symbols sewed into quilts were held secret. Scholars suggests some of the African American women who made quilts might have been in a secret society that retained the true spiritual meanings of the symbols seen in their quilts. Only initiates trained in quilt making received the spiritual meanings of the African symbols. Some of the symbols mention the crossroads, the Kongo cosmogram, and the ancestors. Certain colors are used in quilts to protect from evil and invoke ancestral spirits. Scholars interviewed an African American quilt maker in Oregon and have found Yoruba inspirations in her quilts. Her quilts looked similar to the Egungun regalia patterns of the Yoruba people in West Africa, where she incorporated "striped-piecing techniques that pay tribute to her ancestors."


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Zora Neale Hurston, an African-American cultural anthropologist and Hoodoo initiate, reported in her essay, "Hoodoo in America," that conjure had its highest development along the Gulf Coast, particularly in New Orleans and its surrounding rural areas. These regions were settled by Haitian immigrants at the time of the overthrow of the French rule in Haiti by Toussaint Louverture. Thirteen-hundred Haitians (of African descent, along with their White ex-masters) were driven out, and the nearest French refuge was the province of Louisiana, then under Spanish control. African Haitians brought with them their conjure rituals modified by European cultural influences, such as Catholicism. While some retained Haitian Vodou practices, others developed their own regional Hoodoo. Unlike the continental North American slaves, slaves in the Caribbean islands were encouraged to make themselves as much at home as possible in their bondage, and thus retained more of their West African customs and language.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: African Americans had their own herbal knowledge that was brought from West and Central Africa to the United States. European slave traders selected certain West African ethnic groups for their knowledge of rice cultivation to be used in the United States on slave plantations. The region of Africa these ethnic groups were taken from for rice cultivation was called the "Rice Coast," made up of what is now Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. These areas were suitable for rice cultivation in Africa because of their moist semitropical environments, and European slave traders selected ethnic groups from these regions and enslaved them in the United States in the Sea Islands—a climatically similar area. 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. "West African slaves brought not only herbal knowledge with them across the Atlantic; they also imported the actual seeds. Some wore necklaces of wild liquorice seeds as a protective amulet. Captains of slaving vessels used native roots to treat fevers that decimated their human cargo. The ships’ hellish holds were lined with straw that held the seeds of African grasses and other plants that took root in New World soil." African plants brought from Africa to North America were cultivated by enslaved African Americans for medicinal and spiritual use for the slave community, and cultivated for white American slaveholders for their economic gain. African Americans mixed their knowledge of herbs from Africa with European and regional Native American herbal knowledge. In Hoodoo, African Americans used herbs in different ways. For example, when it came to the medicinal use of herbs, African Americans learned some medicinal knowledge of herbs from Native Americans; however, the spiritual use of herbs and the practice of Hoodoo (conjuring) remained African in origin as enslaved African-Americans incorporated African religious rituals in the preparation of North American herbs and roots. Spiritual ritual preparations of herbs and roots were important to enslaved people as they believed combining ceremonies and prayers with medicinal preparations would imbue the medicines with spiritual power and invoke healing spirits that would make the herbal remedies more effective in healing. Enslaved African Americans also used their knowledge of herbs to poison their enslavers.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: During slavery, some enslaved African Americans served as community doctors for Blacks and whites, despite many white Americans being cautious of black doctors because some enslaved Africans poisoned their masters. Enslaved Africans found herbal cures for animal poisons and diseases that helped both black and white Americans during slavery. For example, African traditional medicine proved beneficial during a smallpox outbreak in the colony of Boston, Massachusetts. An enslaved African named Onesimus was enslaved by Cotton Mather who was a minister in the colony. Boston was plagued by several smallpox outbreaks since the 1690s. Onesimus "introduced the practice of inoculation to colonial Boston" which helped reduce the spread of smallpox in the colony. Onesimus told Mather that when he was in Africa, Africans performed inoculations to reduce the spread of diseases in their societies. An enslaved man was given his freedom when he discovered a cure for a snake bite using herbal medicines.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Enslaved African Americans most often treated their own medical problems themselves using the herbal knowledge they brought with them from Africa, as well as some herbal knowledge learned from regional Native Americans. Many slaveholders lacked the knowledge to treat their slaves' medical conditions, while some simply did not care. Laws passed preventing enslaved African Americans from providing medical care for themselves further exacerbated this problem. Slaveholders passed preventative medical laws on their slaves because they feared enslaved people would poison them with their herbal knowledge. In 1748, Virginia passed a law to prevent African Americans from administering medicines, because white Americans feared African American folk practitioners would poison them with their herbal knowledge. However, some white Americans in Virginia continued to rely on African American herbal doctors because their cures were better than the white doctors'. Enslaved Jane Minor was emancipated because of her medical expertise during an 1825 fever epidemic in Virginia and eventually ran her own hospital, using her earnings to free at least 16 slaves. In addition, in 1749 in South Carolina the General Assembly passed a law prohibiting slaves from practicing medicine or dispensing medication, punishable by death. Slaveholders feared a possible slave revolt and being poisoned by their slaves, so much so that white Americans refused to allow enslaved African Americans medical knowledge. Many of the medicines used by white Americans were chemical, while African Americans used the natural herbs and roots and made them into teas.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: In a 1911 autobiographical account, Reverend Irving E. Lowery, who was born enslaved in Sumter County, South Carolina in September 1850, recalled an incident where an enslaved woman named Mary on the Frierson plantation was believed to have died from conjure. A rumor circulated that an enslaved woman named Epsey from another plantation poisoned Mary because she was jealous of the attention Mary received from a man on another plantation whom Epsey was romantically interested in. According to Lowery's written account, it was rumored that Epsey received a poison from an enslaved conjurer and secretly administered it to Mary, who died six months later. Lowery wrote that many of the conjure practices of enslaved blacks in Sumter County were influenced by Vodun from West Africa.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Among enslaved people there was a spiritual belief to refuse to plow a field in a straight path. Some enslaved people believed in the West African Mande concept that evil spirits travel in a straight path, and to protect from evil spirits, enslaved African Americans refused to plow fields in a straight path to break lines for spiritual protection against malevolent spirits.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Enslaved African American women used their knowledge of herbs to induce miscarriages during pregnancy to prevent slaveholders from owning their children and to prevent their children being born into slavery. In the nineteenth-century, black women used herbs such as penny royal and senna to induce abortion. Enslaved African Americans only trusted their own doctors and not white doctors, because enslaved doctors cures were better than white doctors. African American enslaved and free learned the local flora, and knew what plants to use for treating illnesses. Enslaved herbal doctors were the primary doctors on slave plantations, and some of them also practiced conjure. Before and after the Civil War, African Americans adjusted to their environments and learned the local flora from Indigenous peoples, books, and their study of plants.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Zora Neale Hurston conducted research in African American communities and documented the herbal practices of Blacks. African American rootworkers sometimes served two roles, a herbal doctor or conjure doctor. African American herbal doctors used their knowledge of herbs to treat diseases, such as heart disease, arthritis, cold, flu, and other illnesses. African American conjure doctors performed apotropaic magic and used herbs to remove curses, evil spirits, and bring good-luck, and sometimes there were a few African American rootworkers that did both. Hurston documented a traditional Hoodoo herb gatherer called a "swamper." This person gathers their herbs and roots from swamps (wetlands). Rather a Hoodoo practitioner is a swamper or not, collecting certain roots and herbs in nature requires a prayer before taking the root or herb, an offering to the spirit of the plants, and a ceremony. If there are snakes that guard herbs and roots the snakes should not be killed by the Hoodoo practitioner.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: It was documented in an Ohio slave narrative that enslaved African Americans combined conjure with herbal healing. Spiritual charms imbued with power through prayer was combined with herbal teas to treat chronic illness. In South Carolina, enslaved people treated worms using gypsum weed. Rheumatism was treated by massaging eelskin onto affected areas or ingesting a decoction of oakbark or pokeberry tea. Some illnesses are caused by sorcery (conjure) and the only remedy is to reverse the curse back onto the person who conjured it or clear it with conjure. Traditional herbal healing remains a continued practice in the Gullah Geechee Nation. Gullah people gather roots from their backyards and gardens and make medicines to heal diseases and treat illnesses. In northeast Missouri, historians and anthropologists interviewed African Americans and found continued West African herbal traditions of using roots and herbs to treat illnesses. The knowledge of how to find herbs in nature and make them into teas and tonics continued in African American communities. The remedy most commonly used in black communities in northeast Missouri to ward and fight off catching a cold was carrying a small bag of "Ferula assafoedita;" the folk word is "asfidity," a plant from the fennel family.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: In other regions of the South, African Americans made "asfeddity balls" placed around a baby's neck to relieve pain. The inside of the beech tree bark was boiled in water to treat cold and pneumonia. Bay leaf was used by African Americans to attract money by placing a bay leaf next to a dollar bill inside a wallet or a purse and the person will always attract money. Coffee grounds are used to predict the future. To cause misfortune in a family's home, cayenne pepper is mixed with sulfur and crossing incense and sprinkled around the home of the target. To bring relief from corns and callouses baking soda, castor oil, and lard is made into a paste and wrapped around the affected area using a cloth. To cure cuts, African Americans place spider webs and turpentine on wounds. Devil shoestring placed in the pocket brings good luck, and will trip up the devil. It is believed that placing an egg in the hand of a murder victim when they are in their coffin will cause the murderer to surrender to the police in three days. Mustard seeds sprinkled around the bed before going to sleep will protect someone from a boo hag (a person who can astral travel and leave their body at will and attack people in their sleep) from draining their life force. To treat heart ailments nutmeg was ground into a powder and mixed with water and drunk once a week. To bring the body temperature down jimson weed was tied around the head and ears. To treat measles, pine leaves (mullen leaves) was boiled into a tea. To treat the common cold pine straw was made into a tea. Salt is used to prevent a troublesome person from returning to your home by throwing salt behind the person as they walked out the house and they would never return. To cleanse the soul and spirit salt baths are taken. To prevent evil spirits from entering the home sulfur was sprinkled around the outside of the house. The bark from a red oak tree was boiled into a tea to reduce a fever or chills. The term "smelling" meant someone had the ability to detect spirits by scent; smelling cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger meant spirits were present. To ease frequent coughs and colds liquid tar was added to hot water.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: African American midwives were the primary care for pregnant Black women and nursing mothers during and after slavery. By the mid-twentieth century, licenses were required for all women to become a midwife. Prior to certification, segregation laws prevented black women from entering hospitals that provided medical care for white people. Also, many African Americans did not trust white medical doctors, because some were known to conduct medical experiments on Blacks. African American women midwives provided medical care for nursing and pregnant Black women in their communities by treating them with herbal medicines. In addition, many African American midwives practiced Hoodoo. Hoodoo and midwife practices were combined in African American communities. During childbirth, African American midwives spiritually protected the house because it is believed that evil spirits might harm a new born spirit being born into the world. Protective charms were placed inside and outside of the house, and Black midwives prayed for spiritual protection for the mother and new born baby. After the baby was born, the umbilical cord called the "navel string" by midwives and the afterbirth was burned or buried. Proper handling of the umbilical cord and placenta ensured the mother would have another child. If these items were not properly handled by the midwives it is believed the woman would not have any more children.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Since the 19th century there has been Christian influence in Hoodoo thought. African American Christian conjurers believe their powers to heal, hex, trick, and divine comes from God. This is particularly evident in relation to God's providence and his role in retributive justice. For example, though there are strong ideas of good versus evil, cursing someone to cause their death might not be considered a malignant act. One practitioner explained it as follows:<poem>"In hoodooism, anythin' da' chew do is de plan of God undastan', God have somepin to do wit evah' thin' you do if it's good or bad, He's got somepin to do wit it ... jis what's fo' you, you'll git it." A translation of this is, "In hoodooism, anything that you do is the plan of God, understand? God has something to do with everything that you do whether it's good or bad, he's got something to do with it... what is for you, will come to you."</poem> Several African spiritual traditions recognized a genderless supreme being who created the world, was neither good nor evil, and which did not concern itself with the affairs of mankind. Lesser spirits were invoked to gain aid for humanity's problems.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Not only is Yahweh's providence a factor in Hoodoo practice, but Hoodoo thought understands the deity as the archetypal Hoodoo doctor. From this perspective, biblical figures are often recast as Hoodoo doctors and the Bible becomes a source of spells and is, itself, used as a protective talisman. This can be understood as a syncretic adaptation for the religion. By blending the ideas laid out by the Christian Bible, the faith is made more acceptable. This combines the teachings of Christianity that Africans brought to America were given and the traditional beliefs they brought with them. This practice in Hoodoo of combining African traditional beliefs with the Christian faith is defined as Afro-Christianity. During slavery, free and enslaved black Hoodoo doctors identified as Christian, and some root workers were pastors. By identifying as Christian, African American conjurers were able to hide their Hoodoo practices in the Christian religion. The beginnings of the African American church has its roots in African traditions. When Africans were enslaved in America they brought their religious worldviews with them that was synchronized with Christianity. These African worldviews in Black churches are, a belief in a Supreme deity, ancestral spirits that can be petitioned through prayer for assistance in life, spirit possession, laying on of hands to heal, ecstatic forms of worship using drums with singing and clapping, and respecting and living in harmony with nature and the spirits of nature. For example, in Hoodoo the divine can be commanded to act through the use of mojo bags, prayers, spiritual works or "spells" and laying tricks. One does not have to wait on God, but can command the divine to act at will through the use of Hoodoo rituals. This is what makes African American Christianity in Hoodoo different from other forms of Christianity. By seeing God in this way, Hoodoo practices are preserved in and outside the Black church. Also, ghosts and haunts can be controlled in Hoodoo because they emanate from God. Rootworkers control spirits through the use of Hoodoo rituals by capturing spirits using the spiritual tools used in Hoodoo. The difference between Afro-Christianity and European American Christianity is that spirits can be controlled by using the herbal ingredients in nature, because the herbs and nature have a spirit, and if the spirits of nature and the divine can be influenced so can other spirits such as ghosts.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: During the 1930s, some observers of African American Christianity (or Afro-Christianity) saw how church services of African Americans was similar to Voodoo ceremonies. The possession during a baptismal service at a black Spiritual church was no different from a possession in a Voodoo ceremony, as the body movements, babbling in sounds, eye rolls, and other body jerks were similar. However, in Black churches it is called touched by the Holy Spirit, in Voodoo ceremonies African spirits mount or possess participants, but the response of possession is the same.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: The origins of Afro-Christianity began with Bantu-Kongo people in Central Africa. Prior to Bakongo people coming to the United States and enslaved on plantations, Bakongo (Bantu-Kongo) people were introduced to Christianity from European missionaries and some converted to the Christian faith. Bantu-Kongo people's sacred symbol is a cross called the Kongo cosmogram (+) that looks similar to the Christian Cross. A form of Kongo Christianity was created in Central Africa. Bantu-Kongo people combined Kongo spiritual beliefs with the Christian faith that were nature spirits and spirits of dead ancestors. The concepts of Kongo Christianity 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 in some Black churches. As a result, African-American Hoodoo and Afro-Christianity developed differently and was not influenced by European American Christianity as some African Americans continued to believe in the African concepts about the nature of spirits and the cosmos coming from the Kongo cosmogram.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: A work published in 2013 on Hoodoo lays out a model of Hoodoo origins and development. "Mojo Workin: The Old African American Hoodoo System" by Katrina Hazzard-Donald discusses what the author calls: the ARC or African Religion Complex which was a collection of eight traits which all the enslaved Africans had in common and were somewhat familiar to all held in the agricultural slave labor camps known as plantations communities. Those traits included naturopathic medicine, ancestor reverence, counter clockwise sacred circle dancing, blood sacrifice, divination, supernatural source of malady, water immersion and spirit possession. These traits allowed Culturally diverse Africans to find common culturo-spiritual ground. According to the author, Hoodoo developed under the influence of that complex, the African divinities moved back into their natural forces, unlike in the Caribbean and Latin America where the divinities moved into Catholic saints.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Hoodoo practitioners often understand the biblical figure Moses in similar terms. Hurston developed this idea in her novel "Moses, Man of the Mountain", in which she calls Moses, "the finest Hoodoo man in the world." Obvious parallels between Moses and intentional paranormal influence (such as magic) occur in the biblical accounts of his confrontation with Pharaoh. Moses conjures, or performs magic "miracles" such as turning his staff into a snake. However, his greatest feat of conjure was using his powers to help free the Hebrews from slavery. This emphasis on Moses-as-conjurer led to the introduction of the pseudonymous work the "Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses" into the corpus of Hoodoo reference literature. In the twentieth century, "The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses" was cheaply printed and sold in spiritual shops near black neighborhoods and purchased by African-Americans.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: In Hoodoo, "All hold that the Bible is the great conjure book in the world." It has many functions for the practitioner, not the least of which is a source of spells. This is particularly evident given the importance of the book "Secrets of the Psalms" in hoodoo culture. This book provides instruction for using psalms for things such as safe travel, headache, and marital relations. The Bible, however, is not just a source of spiritual works but is itself a conjuring talisman. It can be taken "to the crossroads", carried for protection, or even left open at specific pages while facing specific directions. This informant provides an example of both uses:


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Whenevah ah'm afraid of someone doin' me harm ah read the 37 Psalms an' co'se ah leaves the Bible open with the head of it turned to the east as many as three days.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Author, Theophus Harold Smith, explained in his book, "Conjuring Culture: Biblical Formations in Black America," that the Bible's place is an important tool in Hoodoo for African Americans' spiritual and physical liberation. The bible was used in slave religion as a magical formula that provided information on how to use herbs in conjure and how to use the bible to conjure specific results and spirits to bring about change in the lives of people, which is a continued practice today. Root workers remove curses reading scriptures from the Bible. At the same time as root workers can remove a curse using the Bible, they can also place curses on people with the Bible.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Enslaved and free blacks used the Bible as a tool against slavery. Free and enslaved people that could read found the stories of the Hebrews in the Bible in Egypt similar to their situation in the United States as enslaved people. The Hebrews in the Old Testament were freed from slavery in Egypt under the leadership of Moses. Examples of enslaved and free blacks using the Bible as a tool for liberation were Denmark Vesey's slave revolt in South Carolina in 1822 and Nat Turner's insurrection in Virginia in 1831. Vesey and Turner were ministers, and utilized the Christian faith to galvanize enslaved people to resist slavery through armed resistance. In Denmark Vesey's slave revolt, Vesey's co-conspirator was an enslaved Gullah conjurer named Gullah Jack who gave the slaves rootwork instructions for their spiritual protection for a possible slave revolt. Gullah Jack and Denmark Vesey attended the same church in Charleston, South Carolina and that was how they knew each other. However, Nat Turner was known among the slaves to have dreams and visions that came true. In the Hoodoo tradition, dreams and visions comes from spirits, such as the ancestors or the Holy Spirit in the Christian faith. Relying on dreams and visions for inspiration and knowledge is an African practice blended with the Christian faith among enslaved and free African Americans. After Nat Turner's rebellion, laws were passed in Virginia to end the education of free and enslaved blacks, and only allow white ministers to be present at all church services for enslaved people. White ministers preached obedience to slavery, while enslaved and free black ministers preached resistance to slavery using the stories of the Hebrews and Moses in the Old Testament of the Bible. There was a blend of African spiritual practices in both slave revolts of Vesey and Turner. Vesey and Turner used the Bible, and conjure was used alongside the Bible.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Nat Turner's mother came from a slave ship from Africa. Research has not determined what part of Africa Nat Turner's mother is from. However, Turner's mother had a profound spiritual influence in his life. His mother taught him about African spirituality that was evident in his life as he used visions and celestial interpretation of planetary bodies to understand messages from spirit. Turner believed the eclipse of the sun was a message from God to start a slave rebellion. Academic research from Virginia records on the Nat Turner slave revolt suggests that an occult religious ritual anointed Turner's raid. These practices among the enslaved population created a Hoodoo Christian Church or "Hoodoonized" version of Christianity on slave plantations, where enslaved Africans escaped into the woods at night and practiced a blend of African spirituality with Christianity. Hoodoo countered European American Christianity as enslaved African Americans reinterpreted Christianity to fit their situation in America as enslaved people. For example, God was seen as powerful and his power can help free enslaved people. This created an "invisible institution" on slave plantations as enslaved Africans practiced the ring shout, spirit possession, and healing rituals to receive messages from spirit about freedom. These practices were done in secret away from slaveholders. This was done in the Hoodoo church among the enslaved. Nat Turner had visions and omens which he interpreted came from spirit, and that spirit told him to start a rebellion to free enslaved people through armed resistance. Turner combined African spirituality with Christianity.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: "Mojo Workin: The Old African American Hoodoo System" also discusses the "High John the Conqueror root" and myth as well as the "nature sack." In African American folk stories, High John the Conqueror was an African prince who was kidnapped from Africa and enslaved in the United States. He was a trickster, and used his wit and charm to deceive and outsmart his slaveholders. 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 his spirit would reside in a root they could use. According to some scholars, the origin of High John the Conqueror may have originated from African male deities such as Elegua who is a trickster spirit in West Africa. By the twentieth century, white drugstore owners began selling High John the Conqueror products with the image of a white King on their labels commercializing hoodoo. Zora Neal Hurston documented some history about High John the Conqueror from her discussions with African Americans in the South in her book, "The Sanctified Church." Some African Americans believed High John the Conqueror freed the slaves, and that President Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War did not bring freedom for Blacks. According to one woman, Aunt Shady Anne Sutton interviewed by Hurston, she said: "These young Negroes reads they books and talk about the war freeing the Negroes, by Aye Lord! A heap sees, but a few knows. 'Course, the war was a lot of help, but how come the war took place? They think they knows, but they don't. John de Conqueror had done put it into the white folks to give us our freedom." Anne Sutton said High John de Conqueror taught Black people about freedom and to prepare for their freedom in an upcoming war. The High John the Conqueror root used by African Americans prevented whippings from slaveholders and provided freedom from chattel slavery. The root given to Frederick Douglass was a High John root that prevented Douglass from being whipped and beaten by a slave-breaker. Former slave Henry Bibb used the High John root to protect himself by chewing and spitting the root towards his enslaver.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: A spirit that torments the living is known as a Boo Hag. Spirits are conjured to cure or kill people, and predict the future. Spirits can also help people find things. One slave narrative from South Carolina mentioned a pastor who spoke to spirits to help him find some hidden money. This record from a slave narrative revealed how Hoodoo and the Black church was intertwined. Another slave narrative from Indiana mentioned a location that the African American population refused to enter because "it was haunted by the spirits of black people who were beaten to death." This location was so feared by the blacks in the area that they placed a fence around it. Wearing a silver dime worn around the ankle or neck can protect someone from evil spirits and conjure. Another method to protect from evil spirits was to carry a small bag filled with salt and charcoal. In Indiana, African-Americans sprinkled chamber lye on the front and back steps to prevent evil spirits from entering the home. Curses can come from malevolent spirits not conjured by a conjurer, and evil spirits are more active at night. Another spirit feared in Gullah culture is the "plat eye." The play eye is a one-eyed ghost that can morph into various forms. It is conjured when a person buries the head of a murdered man inside a hole with treasure.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Communication with spirits and the dead (ancestors) is a continued practice in Hoodoo that originated from West and Central Africa. Nature spirits in Hoodoo called Simbi originates from the Kongo people and are associated with water and magic in Central Africa and in Hoodoo. Simbi singular, and Bisimbi plural, are African water spirits. This belief in water spirits was brought to the United States during the transatlantic slave trade and continues in the African American community in the practice of Hoodoo and Voodoo. The Bisimbi are water spirits that reside in gullies, streams, fresh water, and outdoor water features (fountains). Academic research on the Pooshee Plantation and Woodboo Plantation in South Carolina, showed a continued belief of African water spirits among enslaved African Americans. Both plantations are "now under the waters of Lake Moultrie."


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: The earliest known record of simbi spirits was recorded in the nineteenth century by Edmund Ruffin who was a wealthy slaveholder from Virginia, and traveled to South Carolina "to keep the slave economic system viable through agricultural reform." In Ruffin's records he spelled simbi, cymbee, because he did not know the original spelling of the word. In Ruffin's records, he recorded a few conversations he had with some of the enslaved people. One enslaved boy said he saw a cymbee spirit running around a fountain one night when he was trying to get a drink of water. Another enslaved man said he saw a cymbee spirit sitting on a plank when he was a boy before it glided into the water. The Simbi (cymbee) spirits can help with healing, fertility, and prosperity. Baptismal services are done by rivers to invoke the blessings of the Simbi spirits to bring healing, fertility, and prosperity to people. West Africans and African Americans wear white clothing to invoke the water spirits during water ceremonies. Simbi spirits reside in forests, mountains, and the water and are responsible for the life and growth of nature. These beings are feared and respected. Simbi spirits are the guardians of the lands and the people that reside there. If someone disrespected a simbi by destroying the simbi's natural habitat, that simbi could take their life by drowning them in water. To obtain the powers of the simbi spirits, Bakongo people in Central Africa and African Americans in the Georgia and South Carolina Lowcountry collect rocks and seashells and create minkisi bundles. The appearance of the simbi spirits are male or female. Some have long black hair and resemble mermaids, while others look like albinos. In African-American folklore there is a story about a girl named Sukey meeting a mermaid named Mama Jo. Mama Jo in the story helps and protects Sukey and financially supported her by giving her gold coins. This story comes from the belief in Simbi spirits in West-Central Africa that came to the United States during the trans-atlantic slave trade. In West-Central Africa, there are folk stories of people meeting mermaids.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: It is believed one's soul returns to God after death, however their spirit may still remain on Earth. Spirits can interact with the world by providing good fortune or bringing bad deeds. Other spirits revered in Hoodoo are the ancestors. In Hoodoo, the ancestors are important spirits that intercede in people's lives. Ancestors can intercede in the lives of people by providing guidance and protection. The practice of ancestral veneration in Hoodoo originated from African practices. However, if ancestors are not venerated they can cause trouble in their families lives. Ancestors are venerated through prayers and offerings. In Hoodoo, ancestors can appear in people's dreams to provide information and guidance.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Parents who died suddenly or by accidental death are believed to return in spirit and visit their children. This causes spiritual harm on the child as the spirit of the parent might haunt their children. To prevent this from happening, small children and babies of the deceased parent are passed over the coffin of the deceased to prevent the spirit of the parent from returning to visit their children. Former slave Reverend Irving E. Lowrey recorded this practice in his slave narrative when he visited the funeral of Mary an enslaved woman who died from being poisoned, and her small infant was passed over her coffin so her spirit would not return and visit her baby which would haunt and scare the baby. Lowrey wrote in his narrative: "Mary's baby was taken to the graveyard by its grandmother, and before the corpse was deposited in the earth, the baby was passed from one person to another across the coffin. The slaves believed that if this was not done it would be impossible to raise the infant. The mother's spirit would come back for her baby and take it to herself. This belief is held by many of the descendants of these slaves, who practice the same thing at the present day." The practice of passing babies and small children over coffins to prevent the spirits of deceased parents from visiting their children continues in Gullah Geechee communities in the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: To have a strong connection with the ancestors in Hoodoo, graveyard dirt is sometimes used. Graveyard dirt from the grave of an ancestor provides protection. Graveyard dirt taken from the grave of a person who is not an ancestor is used to harm an enemy or for protection. However, before taking graveyard dirt one must pay for it with three pennies or some other form of payment. Graveyard dirt is another primary ingredient used in goofer dust. Graveyard dirt is placed inside mojo bags (conjure bags) to carry a spirit or spirits with you, if they are an ancestor or other spirits. Dirt from graveyards provides a way to have connections to spirits of the dead. To calm the spirits of ancestors, African Americans leave the last objects used by their family members and lay them on top of their grave as way to acknowledge them and it has the last essence or spirit of the person before they died. The cemetery is seen as a final resting place for the dead and as a doorway to the realm of the spirits. In Hoodoo, the spirits of the dead can be petitioned or conjured to carry out certain tasks for the conjurer that are positive or negative. This practice of ancestral reverence, using graveyard dirt, working with spirits of the dead, and decorating graves of family members and giving food offerings to dead relatives so they will not haunt the family, originated from Central Africa's Kongo region that was brought to the United States during the transatlantic slave trade. Also, the West African practice of pouring libations continues in the practice of Hoodoo. Libations are given in Hoodoo as an offering to honor and acknowledge the ancestors.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Those in the west coast of Africa the Ewe -speaking natives make offerings such as food or drinks usually pouring palm wine and bananas beer over an ancestors graves. Church members are commonly known to be buried with their feeting facing east so they can rise in the last day towards the sun, whereas, sinners are buried the opposite way to not cause them harm from the light. Other known tale such as ghost not being able to cross the water is well-known. If a hoodoo doctor wanted to conjure a ghost across the water a mirror ceremony is held. Spirits who have died from sickness in bed can walk among the living any night besides Friday nights, those are reserved for those who have passed in the dark.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Those who have passed because of their capturers can get justice in the afterlife using Hoodoo. For example, "If a murder victim is buried in a sitting position, the murderer will be speedily brought to justice." The victim who is sitting in front of the throne can request justice to be done. Leaving an egg in a murdered victims hand can prevent those who took their life not to wander to far from the scene. The egg representing life of the murderer is being held by the victim.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: In West African religions, people are given a destiny from God. It is believed someone can alter parts of their destiny through rituals and conjure. The belief in destiny in Hoodoo has its roots in West African religions. A skilled conjurer can alter a person's destiny through divinities or evil forces. This means a conjurer can shorten someone's life by conjuring death onto them. A conjurer can protect a person's destiny from another conjurer who is trying to change it. To know a person's destiny divination is used. Divination is also used to know what rituals should be performed and what charms should be worn to either protect or alter a person's destiny.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: In a process known as "seeking", a hoodoo practitioner will ask for salvation of a person's soul in order for a Gullah church to accept them. A spiritual leader will assist in the process and after believing the follower is ready they will announce it to the church. A ceremony will commence with much singing, and the practice of a ring shout. The word "shout" derived from the West African Muslim word saut, meaning "dancing or moving around the Kaaba." The ring shout in Black churches (African American churches) originates from African styles of dance. Counterclockwise circle dancing is practiced in West and Central Africa to invoke the spirits of the ancestors and for spirit possession. The ring shout and shouting looks similar to African spirit possession. In Hoodoo, African Americans perform the ring shout to become touched or possessed by the Holy Spirit and to communicate with the spirits of dead ancestors. African Americans replaced African spirits with the Christian God (Holy Spirit) during possession. In African American churches this is called "catching the spirit." African Americans use music, clapping, and singing during the ring shout and in modern-day shouting in Black churches to bring down the spirit. The singing during the ring shout has Christian meaning using biblical references. During slavery enslaved Africans were forced to become Christian which resulted in a blend of African and Christian spiritual practices that shaped Hoodoo. As a result, Hoodoo was and continues to be practiced in some Black churches in the United States. In the Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor area, praise houses are places where African Americans gather to have church and perform healing rituals and the ring shout. The ring shout in Hoodoo has its origins in the Kongo region of Africa with the Kongo cosmogram. During the ring shout African Americans shuffle their feet on the floor or ground without removing their feet from the floor in order to create static electricity from the earth to connect with the spiritual energy of the earth. By connecting with the spiritual energy of the earth they are also connecting with the spirit of the creator because God created the earth; this is bringing down the spirit. Also, this is done to connect with ancestral spirits. This practice includes singing and clapping. The spiritual energy intensifies until someone is pulled into the center of the ring shout by the spirit that was brought down. This is done to allow spirit to enter and govern the ring. Researchers noticed the African American ring shout look similar to counterclockwise circle dances in West Africa. In West Africa during a funeral, a counterclockwise circle dance is performed to send the soul to the ancestral realm (land of the dead), because energy and souls travel in a circle. This practice in West Africa continued in the Gullah Geechee Nation where African Americans perform a ring shout over a person's grave to send their soul to the ancestral realm. In addition, the ring shout is performed for other special occasions not associated with death. The ring shout continues today in Georgia with the McIntosh County Shouters. In 2016, Vice News went to St. Helena Island, South Carolina and interviewed African Americans in the Gullah Geechee Nation and recorded some of their spiritual traditions and cultural practices. Their recordings showed African cultural and spiritual practices that survived in the Gullah Nation in South Carolina. The video showed a ring shout, singing, and other traditions. In addition, African Americans in South Carolina are fighting to keep their traditions alive despite gentrification of some of their communities. In 2017, the Smithsonian Institution interviewed African Americans and recorded the ring shout tradition practiced in the Gullah Geechee Nation in Georgia. The songs sung during the ring shout and in shouting originated from their ancestors from Africa who replaced African songs and chants with Christian songs and biblical references.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: This seeking process in Hoodoo accompanied with the ring shout is also an initiation into Hoodoo. African Americans in the Sea Islands (Gullah Geechee people) performed initiations of community members by combining West African initiation practices with Christian practices called "Seeking Jesus." Young people spent time in nature "seeking Jesus," and received guidance from Black religious leaders. The spiritual mothers of the African American community provided prophetic guidance to those "seeking." After their initiation, initiates were accepted into the religious black community. Zora Neale Hurston wrote about her initiation into Hoodoo in her book Mules and Men published in 1935. Hurston explained her initiation into Hoodoo included wrapped snakeskins around her body, and lying on a couch (sofa) for three days nude so she could have a vision and acceptance from the spirits. In addition to lying on a couch nude wrapped in snakeskins for her initiation, Hurston had to drink the blood of the Hoodoo doctors who initiated her from a wine glass cup. There are other ways people become a Hoodoo doctor. One is through a mentor under an apprenticeship or they were born into a family of practitioners. Initiations are not required to become a Hoodoo doctor or rootworker.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Archeologists in New York discovered continued West-Central African burial practices in a section of Lower Manhattan, New York City which is now the location of the African Burial Ground National Monument. Archeologists and historians noted about 15,000 Africans were buried in a section of Lower Manhattan that was named the "Negroes Burial Ground." Over 500 artifacts were excavated showing continued African traditions in New York City's African American community. Some of the artifacts came from West Africa. Only 419 Africans buried were exhumed, and from their discoveries archeologists and historians found African cultural retention in African Americans burial practices. At the site, 146 beads were found and nine within that number came from West Africa. The other beads were manufactured in Europe but were used by enslaved and free people for their burial practices incorporating an African spiritual interpretation to European beads. For example, many of the Africans buried including women, men, and children had beads, waist beads, and wristlets. Beads in African society bring protection, wealth, fertility, and health to the wearer. In West Africa, African women wear beads around their waist for beauty. At the African Burial Ground, archeologists found beads wrapped around the waist of the burial remains of enslaved African American women. Also, about 200 shells were found with African remains. Beads, shells, and iron bars are associated with the Yoruba deity Olokun a spirit that owns the sea. Shells are associated with water and help the soul transition in the afterlife, because seashells help the soul move from the realm of the living into the realm of the dead (ancestors) which is associated with water. Other artifacts found at the African Burial Ground were shiny objects and reflective materials. These were used by Africans to communicate with spirits, because shiny and reflective materials were able to capture the "flash of the spirit." Between 1626 and 1660s, the majority of Africans imported to colonial New York were from the Kongo Angolan region, because New York was colonized by the Dutch. Historians and archeologists found Kongo related artifacts at the African Burial Ground such as minkisi and Nkisi bundles buried with African remains. These Nkisi and minkisi bundles became the conjure bags in Hoodoo.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: After 1679, the majority of Africans imported to colonial New York were from West Africa because colonial rule of New York shifted from the Dutch to the English in 1664. West Africans imported to the colony were Akan, Fon, Yoruba, and other ethnic groups. These diverse African ethnic groups brought their traditional cultures with them and adorned their dead with adornments made from American materials but had an African design and meaning to them. Archeologists found a Ghanaian burial practice that was a funerary clay pipe with a Ghanaian design called "ebua" was found with the remains of an African American woman. In addition, archeologists excavated conjure bags (mojo bags) at the site. The conjuring bundles had crystals, roots, beads, feathers, animal parts, and other items to communicate with spirits and for protection. Other artifacts found at the site that linked to West Africa researchers suggests was the finding of an Akan Sankofa Symbol found on a coffin. The Akan Sankofa Adinkra symbol means to remember ones ancestors, and look to the future while not forgetting the past. In addition, West African spiritual beliefs mixed with the Christian faith, and free and enslaved West Africans started their own African Methodist Episcopal Zion Churches in New York City. The African Burial Ground reserved a location called the Ancestral Libation Chamber for people to perform spiritual ceremonies to pay their respect for the enslaved and free Africans buried at the monument. African Americans and other African descended peoples continue to travel to the African Burial Ground from across the country and around the world and perform libation ceremonies to honor the 15,000 plus African people buried in New York City.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Bantu-Kongo burial practices by African Americans were found in Florida. Researchers noticed the similarities of grave sites of African Americans in Florida and those of the Bakongo people in Central Africa. Headstones with a T shape were seen in Black cemeteries and at grave sites in the Kongo region. The T shape headstone peculiar to black cemeteries in north Florida during the 1920s through the 1950s corresponds to the lower half of the Kongo cosmogram that symbolizes the realm of the ancestors and spiritual power. In Bantu-Kongo spirituality the spirit realm is in the color white. African Americans decorated the graves of their family members with white items such as white conch seashells representing the watery divide located on the horizontal line of the Kongo cosmogram that is a boundary between the realm of the living and the realm of the dead. By placing seashells on graves, African Americans were creating a boundary (barrier) between the recently deceased and them, keeping the spirit in the realm of the dead below the Kongo cosmogram. The practice of placing seashells on top of graves in African American cemeteries continued beyond the 1950s, and was found in Archer, Florida. Researchers found other continued Bakongo burial practices in black cemeteries in Florida. In the Kongo region, Bakongo people placed broken objects on top of graves so the recently deceased can travel to the land of the dead. The broken items symbolize the person's connection to the living was broken by their death, and they need to return to the realm of the dead. This practice was found in African American cemeteries in Florida and among the Gullah Geechee people in the Sea Islands in the United States. The conjure practices of African Americans in Georgia was influenced by Bakongo and other West African ethnic groups when a slave ship the Wanderer illegally imported 409 enslaved Africans to Jekyll Island, Georgia in 1858.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Hoodoo is linked to a popular tradition of bottle trees in the United States. According to gardener and glass bottle researcher Felder Rushing, the use of bottle trees came to the Old South from Africa with the slave trade. The use of blue bottles is linked to the "haint blue" spirit specifically. Glass bottle trees have become a popular garden decoration throughout the South and Southwest. According to academic research, bottle trees originated in the Kongo region. The bottle tree practice has been found in the Kongo region in Central Africa, and in the Caribbean. African descended people in the African Diaspora decorated trees with bottles, plates, pieces of broken pots, and other items to drive away evil. This practice was brought to the United States during the transatlantic slave trade. The purpose of bottle trees is to protect a home or a location from evil spirits by trapping evil spirits inside the bottles. How bottle trees worked was that spirits would be attracted to the sunlight that is seen flickering inside the bottle as the sunlight passes through it trapping the spirit in the bottle and banishing the spirit with sunlight. Sometimes items such as stones or graveyard dirt is placed inside the bottle to further attract the spirit to the bottle in order to trap it.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: In Hoodoo, personal concerns are used such as, hair, nail-clippings, blood, bones, and other bodily fluids are mixed with ingredients for either a positive or a negative effect. These items are placed inside conjure bags or jars and mixed with roots, herbs, animal parts, and graveyard dirt from a murdered victim's grave and sometimes ground into a powder. The cursed items are buried under a person's steps to cause misfortune. To prevent from being "fixed" (cursed) it is considered a good idea to burn loose hairs, combed or fallen from the head, so a conjurer cannot make a cursing powder from a person's hair. Placing personal concerns in containers and burying them to cause harm was found in West African countries of Nigeria and Benin.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: The purpose of Hoodoo was to allow people access to supernatural forces to improve their lives. Hoodoo is purported to help people attain power or success ("luck") in many areas of life including money, love, health, and employment. As in many other spiritual and medical folk practices, extensive use is made of herbs, minerals, parts of animals' bodies, an individual's possessions, candles, colored candles, incense, and other spiritual tools are used in Hoodoo to bring healing, protection, love and luck. For example, to prevent separation of a husband and wife couples relied on rootwork and conjure. One example documented in a slave narrative was to take a rabbit's forefoot, a loadstone, take nine hairs from the top of the head, and place all ingredients in a red flannel bag and bury it under the steps at the front door. To protect from conjure, a hole was punched through a dime and a string was inserted inside the hole and the dime was tied to the left ankle. In Hoodoo, men who want to keep their wife faithful will take her slip or piece of her bra and for each night tie nine knots with it, and the man should wear this in his pocket which will prevent his wife from having an affair. Chickens are used in rootwork and conjure to find a "work" (spell) a conjurer buried in the ground to cause misfortune. In West-Central Africa and in the Gullah Geechee Nation in the South Carolina and Georgia Lowcountry, chickens are free to roam the property as they have a natural spiritual ability to locate cursed items buried in the ground.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: How Hoodoo magic works is by working with the spirits of roots, herbs, insects, calling ancestors, and other spirits to activate the work for manifestation. Contact with ancestors or other spirits of the dead is an important practice within the conjure tradition, and the recitation of psalms from the Bible is also considered spiritually influential in Hoodoo. Due to Hoodoo's great emphasis on an individual's spiritual power to affect desired change in the course of events, Hoodoo's principles are believed to be accessible for use by any individual of faith. Hoodoo practice does not require a formally designated minister.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: The West and Central African practice of leaving food offerings for deceased relatives and to feed the spirits either ancestors or petition other spirits that are not ancestors by giving them offerings of food, water, or rum (whiskey) continues in the practice of Hoodoo. Providing spirits offerings of libation empowers the spirits because it feeds them. Also it honors the spirits by acknowledging their existence. These offerings of food and liquids and the pouring of libations are left at gravesites or at a tree. This practice of offerings and libations is practiced in the Central African country of Gabon and other parts of Africa and was brought to the United States during the transatlantic slave trade.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Conjure can be made using many things or nothing at all. At times there are items commonly used in Hoodoo if need be. "Fast Luck" and "Red Fast Luck" an herbal scrub is used to bring luck into stores or a persons life. "Essence of Van Van" and "Fast Scrubbing Essence" are mixtures of one to thirteen oils containing herbs such as cinnamon, wintergreen, lavender, and so forth. Colors are also important in Hoodoo to conjure different results the person is looking for. For example, "Red, for victory. Pink, for love (some say for drawing success). Green, to drive off (some say for success), Blue, for success and protection (for causing death also), Yellow. For money, Brown, for drawing money and people."


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Divination in Hoodoo originated from African practices. In West-Central Africa, divination was (and is) used to determine what an individual or a community should know that is important for survival and spiritual balance. In Africa and in Hoodoo, people turn to divination seeking guidance about major changes in their life from an elder or a skilled diviner. Conjure doctors diagnose illnesses and determine treatments using divination. This practice was brought to the United States during the transatlantic slave trade and was later influenced by other systems of divination. There are several forms of divination traditionally used in Hoodoo.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Practitioners sometimes incorporate planetary and elemental energies in their spiritual work (spells). Rootworkers in Indiana trained under African-American astrologers in black communities. Numerology is also used in Hoodoo and combined with astrology for spiritual works. African-Americans in Indiana (in the 1980s into present day) combine numerology, astrology, African mysticism and Voodoo and Hoodoo creating a new spiritual divination practice and system of magic unique to African-Americans. For example, Nat Turner took the sign of an eclipse of the sun as a sign from God to start his slave revolt in Southampton County, Virginia in 1831.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: The practice of Augury is deciphering phenomena (omens) that are believed to foretell the future, often signifying the advent of change. Before his rebellion, Nat Turner had visions and omens from spirit to free the enslaved through armed resistance. In African American communities a child born with a caul over their face is believed to have psychic gifts to see spirits and see into the future. This belief in the caul on a baby's face brings psychic gifts was found in West Africa in Benin (Dahomey). After the baby is born, the caul is taken off the baby's face and is preserved and used to drive away (or banish) ghosts. It is believed a child born at midnight will have second sight or extrasensory perception about events.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Cartomancy is the practice of using Tarot and poker playing cards to receive messages from spirit. This form of divination was added later in Hoodoo. There are some Hoodoo practitioners that use both.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Cleromancy is the practice of casting small objects such as shells, bones, stalks, coins, nuts, stones, dice, and sticks for an answer from spirit. The use of bones, sticks, shells and other items is a form of divination used in Africa and in Hoodoo in the United States.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Oneiromancy is a form of divination based upon dreams. Former slaves talked about receiving messages from ancestors and spirits about impending danger or advice about how to save money. Harriet Tubman believed her dreams were given to her from God on how to rescue her family from slavery on the Underground Railroad. Tubman told biographers she had dreams flying over fields which let her know where to go and where the safe places were to hide freedom seekers.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: The walking boy was a traditional form of divination practiced by African Americans on slave plantations, and the practice continued after chattel slavery. A conjurer would take a bottle and tie a string to it and place a bug inside the bottle. The conjurer pulled the bottle as the bug moved. What ever direction the bug moved inside the bottle the conjurer knew where a spell bottle was buried that caused misfortune or where the person lived who buried the bottle.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Enslaved African-Americans held diviners in high respect because they had knowledge about events unknown. By using divination, enslaved conjurers knew if a slave would be whipped, sold or escape to freedom. Autobiographies of former slaves wrote about enslaved people seeking council from enslaved diviners.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: The Spiritual church movement in the United States began in the mid-nineteenth century. The African American community was a part of this movement beginning in the early twentieth century, and several Spiritual churches are in African American communities. African Americans started independent Spiritual churches as a way for them to hide their African practices from whites by synchronizing African traditions with the Christian faith. Some Black Spiritual churches incorporated elements of Hoodoo and Voodoo practices. There were some Spiritual churches documented by Zora Neale Hurston that incorporated Hoodoo practices. A Spiritual church in New Orleans called The Eternal Life Christian Spiritualist Church led by an African American woman, Mother Catherine Seals, performed Hoodoo to heal her clients. Mother Catherine Seals healed a church member sacrificing a chicken by slitting it live and tied it to a person's leg for two days. This is a continued African tradition of using chickens to heal and conjure protection. Other African Diaspora practices Mother Catherine Seals incorporated into her Spiritual church as noted by Zora Neale Hurston was Seals reverence to a Haitian Vodou snake loa spirit Damballa. A snake design was painted on a wall at Mother Seal's church. Another African American Spiritual church leader had a plastic snake on his altar. Snake reverence among African Americans in Voodoo and Hoodoo originates from West Africa. This Spiritual church had a branch in Memphis, Tennessee where African-Americans attended to practice Hoodoo secretly inside of the church. New Orleans and Memphis have several Spiritual churches where Hoodoo and Voudou is practiced. Rituals of healing, communing with ancestral spirits, worship services, shouting, eclectic belief systems, Hoodoo and Voudou elaborate rituals are taken place inside the churches.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Washington "Doc" Harris an African American from Memphis, Tennessee founded the Saint Paul Spiritual Holy Temple. The Spiritual church was nicknamed by the blacks in the area as "Voodoo Village." Although no actual Voodoo took place inside his Spiritual church; however, Hoodoo was practiced in the church. Doc Harris was known to make mojo bags that looked similar to the Kongo-based minkisi bundles, and he removed curses from people using Hoodoo. Doc Harris built his church in a secluded area in the black community so he and his family can practice their traditions in private. African Americans in Spiritual churches blended African spiritual traditions and African spirits with Christianity creating a uniquely African-American religion. African American Hoodoo religious and spiritual leaders in Spiritual churches did not refer to themselves as rootworkers or hoodoo doctors, but as "spiritual advisors," to avoid negative attention from their community and the local authorities. Hiding Hoodoo practices inside Black churches was necessary for African Americans because some people were lynched for practicing Hoodoo. In September 1901 the newspaper, the "Chicago Tribune", reported two people were lynched for practicing hoodooism. Despite these circumstances, African American Spiritual churches provided food and other services for the black community.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Another spiritual institution African Americans hid their Hoodoo practices was in the Sanctified Church started in Memphis, Tennessee. Bishop Charles Harrison Mason and other African American ministers founded the Church of God in Christ in the early twentieth century which has a predominantly African American membership. Bishop Charles Harrison Mason was known among the members of his congregation to heal church members using roots, herbs and conjure oils. Bishop Mason and other Pentecostal pastors were rootworkers and used spiritual tools to remove demons and curses off church members. The removal of evil spirits from church members in Black Pentecostal churches involves prayer, playing Black gospel music, conjure oils and other Hoodoo tools. Author Zora Neal Hurston wrote in her book "The Sanctified Church," the spiritual beliefs and conjure practices of the Black congregation in Sanctified Churches. African Americans talked about nailing a horse shoe over the door to ward off evil and making conjure balls to remove diseases. British historians traced the origins of the creation of conjure balls in Hoodoo to the West African practice of creating gris-gris charms and the Central African practice of creating minkisi containers. As white spiritual merchants exploited hoodoo and turned it into just tricks and spells, African Americans moved more of the traditional Hoodoo practices of animal sacrifice, incorporating animal parts in spiritual work, Holy Ghost shouting, the ring shout, and other practices were synchronized with Christianity which took the Hoodoo practiced by African Americans underground. Some Sanctified Churches in African American communities continue to incorporate Hoodoo. African American religious institutions are not just places of worship and spirituality, but are also places to discuss injustices in their communities and how to unite to bring about political and spiritual transformations for African Americans.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Hoodoo functioned more as a tool of spiritual healing within Black Protestantism. African American pastors combined Pentecostalism, African-derived traditions of Hoodoo, Voodoo, conjure, and rootwork to heal church members of physical and spiritual ailments. Prosperity theology was taught to church members as they believed God wants his children to be prosperous, and prosperity came to those by having faith in God. For example, Reverend Ike preached prosperity to his congregation. African American faith movements is about having faith in Gods power through fasting, prayer, and sometimes using conjure. Some Black church members believed the power to heal, prophecy, conjure, and curse came from God, however, other church members believed the power to curse came from Satan and only God's power can remove a demonic curse. Deliverance ministry was preached by Black ministers to rage warfare against demons was also a part of Hoodoo culture in that by praying to God and ancestral spirits can remove demonic curses.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Zora Neale Hurston often employs Hoodoo imagery and references into her literature. In "Sweat," the protagonist Delia is a washwoman with a fear of snakes. Her cruel husband, Sykes, is a devotee of Li Grande Zombi and uses her ophidiophobia against her to establish dominance. Delia learns Voodoo and Hoodoo and manages to hex Sykes. Another book by Zora Neale Hurston features Hoodoo hexes and spells as well as a Hoodoo doctor. Zora Neale Hurston's professional career was an anthropologist and a writer. Hurston documented African American folklore and spiritual practices in Black communities in the United States and the Caribbean. Hurston traveled to Eatonville, Florida and New Orleans, Louisiana and wrote about the spiritual practices of Blacks publishing her findings in books and articles providing readers knowledge of African American spirituality.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Charles Waddell Chesnutt was a mixed race African American author who wrote African-American folklore in his literature using fiction to reference the culture of Hoodoo is his writings. In 1899, Chesnutt published "The Conjure Woman" that tells the story of African Americans after the Civil War and how they used conjure to fix their everyday problems. In addition, Chesnutt does not portray the African American characters in the book as racially inferior to whites. The African Americans in the book use their wit and intelligence combining Hoodoo practices to solve their problems. The style of writing is phonetic. Chesnutt wrote the book how African Americans in the South spoke during his time. This allows readers an example of African American Vernacular and culture. Also, the book discusses the North's economic opportunist exploitation of the South during the Reconstruction Era and how African Americans navigated through this process in their communities.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Another writer who focused on African American spirituality in their literature is Ishmael Reed. Ishmael Reed criticizes the erasure of the African American from the American frontier narrative, as well as exposing the racist context of the American dream and the cultural evolution of the military-industrial complex. He explores the role of Hoodoo in the forging of a uniquely African-American culture. Reed writes about the Neo-hoo-doo aesthetic in aspects of African American culture such as dance, poetry and quilting. His book "Mumbo Jumbo" has many references to Hoodoo. "Mumbo Jumbo" has been considered as representing the relationship between the westernized African American narrative and the demands of the western literary canon, and the African tradition at the heart of Hoodoo that has defied assimilation. In his book "Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down," the protagonist the Loop Garoo kid acts as an American frontier travelling with the Hoodoo church and cursing 'Drag Gibson' the monocultural white American landowner.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: "In Mama Day" by Gloria Naylor, Mama day is a conjure woman with an encyclopedic knowledge of plants and the ability to contact her ancestors. The book focuses on benevolent aspects of Hoodoo as a means of elders helping the community and carrying on a tradition, with her saving Bernice's fertility. "Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo" also explores the deep connection between community empowerment and Hoodoo, in the story, Indigo has healing abilities and makes Hoodoo dolls.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: A professor from Swarthmore College studied the depictions of Hoodoo and Voodoo in comic books from 1931 to 1993. White comic book creators portrayed Black folk religions as evil showing demonic possessions in comic books. Blackfaced stereotypical images of African Americans were drawn in comics to vilify Black people and their folk religions. Black American comic book creators portrayed Hoodoo and Voodoo in their comics as tools against white supremacy. Black creators had story scenes in their comics of black superheroes using their Hoodoo conjure powers to save their people and defeat white supremacists. In 1973, Marvel Comics created a character called Brother Voodoo that stands and fights for justice using his conjure powers.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Toni Morrison makes references to African American spirituality in her literature. Morrison's novel, "Song of Solomon" published in 1977, tells the story of the character Milkman an African American in search of his African ancestors. Milkman lived in the North but returned to the South in search of his ancestry. By the end of the book Milkman learns he comes from a family of African medicine people and gained his ancestral powers and his soul flew back to Africa after he died. Morrison's idea of Milkman flying back to Africa was inspired by a historical event in Georgia that has become a part of African American folklore of flying Africans. In 1803, a slave ship landed on the coast of Georgia in St. Simons Island with captive Africans from Nigeria with a cargo of Igbo people. Some of the Igbo people chose suicide than a life time of slavery by walking into the swamp and drowning. This location became known as Igbo landing in Georgia. According to African American folklore, the Igbos that committed suicide their souls flew back to Africa.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: An African-American pre-med student at James Madison University wrote a teen novel published in 2021 titled, "Me(Moth)" is about an African-American youth named Moth whose grandmother is a Hoodoo practitioner. In the book, Moth is in search of her cultural roots after several deaths in her family.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Coined by Ismael Reed in 1970, it celebrates the practices of rituals, folklore, and spirituality in the Americas beyond Christianity and religion. "Neo-Hoodoo believes that every man is an artist a priest. You can bring your own creative ideas to Neo-Hoodoo" Neo-Hoodoo celebrates Hoodoo in a way that is fully expressed by Black practitioners. It is often toned as "...terms that respect the syncretism of Voudon-based religion systems" It can be seen in many ways as a way of doing things it provides.."the Black Artist with vechile to merge art with politics without compromising either." Neo Hoodoo is a behavior of that gives "'...non-Western voices which express life and creativity ' intrude on or break the 'controlling patterns' of the 'dominant culture'". This is a radical form of Black writing which inspires resistance in the literary world.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: The portrait "A Portrait of the Artist as a Shadow of His Former Self" by Kerry James Marshall is compared to Ishmael Reed's Neo-Hoodoo concept of balancing invisibility as visual. As the painter describes his work ethic for the painting to.."bring that figure close to being a stereotypical representation without collapsing completely into stereotype." The postcolonial theory of Hoodoo and the fact that Hoodoo is neo-African there is still assumption that it is uncivilized. Reed's Hoodoo aesthetic celebrates syncretism as a religious cultural practice countering Western Civilization desire to universalize itself through Christianity.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: In the 1930s, the Federal Writers' Project part of the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression, provided jobs for unemployed writers to write and collect the experiences of former slaves. Writers, black and white, documented the experiences of the last generation of African Americans born into slavery. Former African American slaves told writers about their slave experience which provided readers a glimpse into the lives of the enslaved. Slave narratives revealed the culture of African Americans during slavery. African American former slaves talked about conjure, rootwork, and Hoodoo. Former slaves talked about healing with herbs, removing curses using Hoodoo, talking to spirits, using graveyard dirt to curse people, divination with cards and a walking boy, Hoodoo in Black churches, hiding conjure practices from their enslavers, cursing their slaveholders using Hoodoo, animal sacrifice, and other conjure practices. Some of the African American former slaves told writers what region of Africa their family is from. These regions were the Kongo or regions in West Africa. Former slaves talked about their families culture came from a family member from Africa. Slave narratives are good sources to know how slavery impacted the lives of African Americans, and how Hoodoo was used by the enslaved to free themselves. The Library of Congress has 2,300 first-person accounts from former slaves in their digital archive.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: In slave narratives, African Americans revealed some of them were kidnapped directly from Africa and brought to America. These slave narratives coincide with the illegal slave trade. In 1807, the 9th United States Congress passed an act that prohibited the importation of slaves from Africa. However, this act did not stop illegal smuggling of enslaved Africans to the United States. The illegal slave trade continued into the 1860s, and sometimes resulted in a re-Africanization of African American culture with the importation of new Africans to the United States. Some of these illegal slave trades were documented in American history. For example, the slave ship the Wanderer landed in Jekyll Island, Georgia in 1858 with a cargo of 409 Africans. The Wanderer departed near the Congo River in Central Africa. In the 1930s, a local chapter of the Federal Writers' Project in Savannah, Georgia called the Georgia Writers' Project interviewed former slaves and descendants of former slaves who either came directly from Africa on the slave ship the Wanderer or a family member came from Africa on the Wanderer and published their findings in a book called, "Drums and Shadows Survival Studies Among the Georgia Coastal Negroes." The Georgia Writers' Project documented Hoodoo and conjure practices among African Americans in Georgia and traced the practices to West Africa and the Kongo region as some African Americans know what region in Africa a family member is from. One woman interviewed in St. Simons, Georgia said her father came from Africa on the slave ship the Wanderer. She thinks her father was Igbo and he talked about his life in Africa and the culture there and how it survived in her family. Other African Americans interviewed talked about the origins of their conjure practices came from the Ewe and Kongo people. For example, in West Africa graveyard dirt is placed inside conjure bags for protection against Juju. The West African practice of using graveyard dirt continues in the United States in black communities today in the African American tradition of Hoodoo.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Africatown located north of Mobile, Alabama is another example of the illegal slave trade and African culture in the United States. In 2012, Africatown was placed on the National Register of Historic Places for its significance in African American history. On July 8, 1860, the slave ship Clotilda was the last slave ship to transport Africans to the United States. The Clotilda entered the Mississippi Sound in Alabama with 110 Africans. The Africans imported to Alabama illegally came from West Africa, and the ethnic groups coming from the region were Atakora, Ewe, Fon, and Yoruba . Each group brought their religions and languages. Some in the group practiced West African Vodun, Islam, and the Yoruba religion. Mobile, Alabama became the home for these diverse Africans where their religious and spiritual practices blended with Christianity. After the Civil War, a group of 32 Africans founded their own community calling it Africatown. In their community, they practiced African burial practices of their dead. African names were given to their children so they will know what region in Africa their ancestry is from. Zora Neale Hurston wrote a book about Africatown called, "." Hurston interviewed Cudjoe Lewis one of the founders of Africatown and one of few who survived the last Middle Passage to the United States.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Scholars estimate about 250,000 enslaved Africans were brought to the United States illegally between 1808 and 1859. This resulted in the further Africanization of African American spirituality in the coastal regions of the Southeast, because many of the North American slave ships landed in the coastal areas in the South.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Several African American blues singers and musicians composed songs about the culture of Hoodoo, including W.C. Handy, Bessie Smith, Robert Johnson, Big Lucky Carter, and Al Williams. African American blues performers were influenced by the culture of Hoodoo and wrote songs about mojo bags, love workings, and spirits. Their songs brought awareness of Hoodoo practices to the American mainstream population.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Several blues songs describe love charms or other folk magic. 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…." 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. Several other Bessie Smith songs also mention Hoodoo. 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 is able to resist the power of the singer's Hoodoo amulets.


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Hoodoo practitioner Aunt Caroline Dye was born enslaved in Spartanburg, South Carolina and sold to Arkansas as a child, where she became known for psychic readings and divination with playing cards. She is mentioned by name in the Memphis Jug Band's "Aunt Caroline Dye Blues" (1930) and in Johnny Temple's song "Hoodoo Woman" (1937).


title: Hoodoo (spirituality)

text: Blues singer Robert Johnson is known for his song about going "down to the crossroads" to sell his soul to the devil to become a better musician. Some authors suggest that the song invokes a Hoodoo belief in crossroads spirits, a belief that originated in Central Africa among the Kongo people. 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; not Hoodoo.