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History and Development of Hoodoo
Those who developed the processes of Hoodoo did not call what they did “magical,” “supernatural,” or even “Hoodoo.” The exact origin of the word Hoodoo is a matter of heated debate. A primary talking point within that discussion is the lack of written evidence of the word Hoodoo in America until 1875, when we begin to find it used as both a noun and an adjective.
Hoodoo: (n) 1) The practice of Rootworking or Conjure 2) A spell—“She put a Hoodoo on you.”
Hoodoo: (adj) “That is a Hoodoo man.”
Some say the word is Scotch-Irish and comes from the phrase Uath Dubh, which is pronounced “hooh dooh.” If this is so, it was not intended as a compliment, as Uath Dubh means “a dark entity” and might have been used in the same context that people of today would use the phrase “black magic,” implying a fear and maligning of African spiritual and healing practices. There is no more concrete evidence of the word Uath Dubh used in Ireland or in America pertaining to the traditional African American folk magic systems than there is of “Hoodoo” itself as an identifying label. Those who adhere to the belief that Hoodoo derives purely from Scotch-Irish extraction appear to do so based more on what they have been told rather than on any form of solid and reputable evidence.
Others say the word comes from Hudu, which is a language spoken by the Ewe tribe in Togo and Ghana.
Some historians posit that the lack of written evidence of the word Hoodoo prior to 1875 is because African slaves were not allowed to read or write. Again, there is no strong documentation of this, only speculation. What is known is that those who developed the foundations of Hoodoo in the United States did not call their practices Hoodoo during its formative stages. Whether the term arose from within the culture or outside of it at some later point is ultimately unknown and unprovable.
Acclaimed African American author and Hoodoo initiate Zora Neale Hurston refers to it as “Hoodoo or ‘Voodoo’ as it is pronounced by the whites” in her book Tell My Horse. This statement is a nod to the theory that Caucasians created the word “Voodoo” as a derogatory reference to Hoodoo.
Many historians, as well as contemporary rootworkers, insist that they hold claim to the authentic extraction of the words Voodoo and Hoodoo, and engage in heated debate over their fiercely defended truths. When asked to produce legitimate documentation or evidence to support their beliefs, the answer is generally a guarded insistence that what they present is simply how it is.
More likely, the word’s genesis is lost to the muddy waters of the cultures of the Scotch-Irish in the Appalachian and Ozark mountains and the African slaves of the American South, and neither employed the English language in its written form except on rare occasions. Most written accounts of life in the Antebellum South come from two categories of sources: journals, diaries, and household records kept by slave owners; and a gargantuan and problematic collection of charms and spells called Hoodoo—Conjuration—Witchcraft—Rootwork written by Harry Middleton Hyatt. Only recently have dedicated researchers explored beyond those sources to expand the authentic known history of African American healing and folk magic practices in the Antebellum and post-Emancipation years.
When a person explores the world of contemporary Hoodoo, what they find bears little resemblance to the healing and spiritual practices of the earliest slaves on American soil. The most reliable historical sources, however, suggest that the first practices of Hoodoo originated from the pre-capture memories of forcefully displaced people from different regions of Western and Central Africa.
What we do know is that although their beliefs differed in some ways, sufficient common ground existed for the captive slaves to create compatible spiritual and healing practices within the slave plantations of America. Over time, influences from the Scotch-Irish, the Pow-wows, the Native Americans, and the Louisiana French and Creole integrated into the healing tradition, as well as the syncretizing of Hoodoo onto the Protestant and Catholic Christian religions that came later.
Pennsylvania Dutch Pow-wow is a form of conjure practiced mostly in the Northern United States that derives from German origins. Although one might imagine it originates in Holland due to the identification as “Dutch,” this is actually a culturally accepted misspelling of “Deutsch,” meaning “German.”
The post-World War emergence of a commercialized version of Rootworking finalized the amalgamation, creating a practice that is almost unrecognizable from its origins, and yet comprises what presents as Hoodoo/Rootworking today.
One of the primary attractions of Hoodoo in modern society is its effectiveness and its forgiving nature in terms of products used. Hoodoo recipes often do not include specific measurements or even a structured list of ingredients, relying instead on what the user has available in their cupboard. Hoodoo is, above all, versatile, which is part of the appeal.
The myriad arguments levied against modern Hoodoo are less about its efficacy and more focused on assertions of appropriation, observations on the deterioration of Hoodoo products available after the post-Emancipation African American migration north, and arguments over the finer points of practice and history. Few who have used Hoodoo techniques doubt its ability to get the job done.
Stages of Hoodoo Development
We can divide the development of Hoodoo into four trackable evolutionary phases largely instigated by the forced adaptation and cultural migration of the African Americans: Black Belt Hoodoo, Reconstruction era Hoodoo, post-Reconstruction era Hoodoo, and Marketeered Hoodoo.
Black Belt Hoodoo
“Black Belt Hoodoo” is a term coined by Katrina Hazzard-Donald that refers to the earliest form of Hoodoo practiced in the United States. Black Belt Hoodoo is the purest translation of the methods used in Central and Eastern Africa, established largely by those who experienced the spiritual and healing modalities of Central and Eastern Africa firsthand, and their next generation.
Black Belt Hoodoo distinguishes the folk magic practices developed on slave plantation from the New Orleans variety of Voodoo and Hoodoo. Although their origins are the same, the influence of Haitian Voodoo practitioners, Creole rootworkers, and Voodoo queens significantly changed the local presentation of Hoodoo in New Orleans from the practical methods used on the plantations, ultimately making it a unique practice. Another notable difference between the two is that because the New Orleans area is predominantly French, their Hoodoo syncretized onto Catholicism, while the Hoodoo in other southern regions of the United States became Protestant-based.
As the displaced Africans adapted their spiritual and healing work to the herbs, roots, and barks available in the American South, they also had to restructure their social classes and avocations within the oppressive environment they faced in slavery. Slave traders and slave owners ruthlessly dismantled families, villages, and hierarchies, necessitating that the spiritual and healing practices brought with them from Africa evolve to accommodate this vicious enforced cultural change.
Africans had to remember, sometimes over many years or through the eyes of previous generations, how they practiced in Africa and adapt those methods to their current conditions. Some primary components of their spirituality endured, while others dissolved in the face of slavery. In Africa, for instance, there was a strong emphasis on ancestral veneration. The breaking apart of families as slaves were bought, sold, and re-sold profoundly disrupted the ability to even know one’s ancestors, much less honor them.
The conjure doctor, who was the revered priest of the village, now worked in the field with the other slaves, effectively shifting the dynamics of healing and spiritual practice between the patient and the healer. Continued oppression, born out of the fears of white slave owners, forbade or curtailed healing and religious gathering in some areas, forcing those practices underground.
While the Africans in America adjusted their spiritual practices to their new lives, subsequent waves of slaves arrived from Africa and brought with them perspectives closer to the authentic practices of their places of origin. This constant shifting and developing of the Hoodoo craft created a boiling pot of change and adaptation, responsive to the turnover of new arrivals.
The fluidity or stability of the slave population in a community influenced the degree of change in Hoodoo practices once they developed. How many slaves started out on a plantation, blending their remnant memories of practices from the homeland? How mixed was the community? Did the slaves on a specific plantation come from the same regions or vastly different areas of Africa, increasing the degree of cultural variances? How oppressive and restrictive were the slave owners? Did the slave owners allow or forbid spiritual expression and traditional healing practices? How large was the slave community and how fluid was the turnover?
Crops such as tobacco in Virginia required a small number of slaves to work the fields, but South Carolina’s indigo and rice crops were more labor intensive, necessitating a larger community of workers. To what degree were the local Native Americans involved? Each of these components held greater or lesser influence on the development of spiritual and healing practices in a specific slave community.
Reconstruction-Era Hoodoo
Reconstruction era Hoodoo (1863–1877) once again shifted the Rootworking landscape through displacement of its practitioners and forced cultural and societal adaptation. Although the Emancipation ended slavery, it did little to improve the plight of African Americans, and in fact, increased racial tensions in the South. Southern states, angry over the legal restrictions against slavery, instituted “Black Codes” that limited the rights of African Americans. It is important to remember that few slave owners considered slaves to be people and thought of them instead as property. Legislation forcing them to relinquish their purchased property created what they viewed as an unfair and unnecessary financial and practical hardship from both a business and a personal perspective.
The constitutional concept of “all men are created equal” did not apply to the freed slaves because most Americans did not consider them to be men, but instead, animals or property. Although technically freed, the emancipated African American could not vote, could not rent housing, could not have public social gatherings, and could not learn to read or write. In spite of those restrictions, they were required to have and—if questioned—prove employment of some type.
Prospects were limited, so many freed slaves remained at their current plantations or moved to nearby farms to work as sharecroppers. The increased persecution forced many African Americans to take a chance on migrating to the North where they could find factory jobs or journeying to the open frontiers of the West. Some went into Appalachia where there was little concept of slavery and land was easily available. As they once again moved away from familiar areas, many rootworkers lost access to the roots, herbs, and barks they were accustomed to using for healing and Conjure work. Not all slaves knew Conjure techniques, and some relied on the healers within the slave community. The displacement and culture shock when moving to the northern states cannot be overstated.
At the same time, some of the true Black Belt rootworkers in the South set up shop offering their conjuring skills and services to African Americans who sought out authentic healing and spiritual assistance. Like their ancestors in Africa before them, they adopted eccentric styles of dress, acting as medicine men and women, and sustaining themselves independently through barter and the selling of their talents.
Although their daily lives shifted, the spiritual and healing needs of African Americans did not change significantly after Emancipation. Emphasis remained on the healing of injury and illness, the treatment of emotional maladies, establishing strong protection, bringing good fortune, and controlling wildlife and weather. For those freed slaves who migrated north, protection took on a different form and the concept of daily necessities expanded to the need for housing, jobs, and security.
Post-Reconstruction Hoodoo
The seventy years between the end of the Reconstruction era in 1887 and the end of World War II ushered in significant changes to the Hoodoo/Conjure landscape. The Great Migration resulted in Hoodoo practices from the deep South moving throughout different areas of the United States, blending with one another as rootworkers from different areas shared techniques.
In French-influenced Louisiana, Hoodoo syncretized with Catholicism through the use of the Blessed Mother and the saints as a pantheon of divine influences. Throughout other areas of the Southern United States, Hoodoo melded with the Protestant religions, and biblical figures such as Moses became primary influences. Both areas used the reading and application of psalms and other scriptures in their Conjure and healing practices. Although the syncretization of Hoodoo and Christianity began well before the Civil War, it was during the post-Reconstruction era that this union was cemented, ensuring the survival of Hoodoo.
The continued northward migration set the stage for the next developmental phase of Hoodoo, the Marketeered Era. Although this time would prove to be the most influential in creating the image of Hoodoo as it’s presented in our modern times, there was still one unofficial battle that would create a significant change in the fundamental practice of Hoodoo.
The Relationship Between Hoodoo and Healing
The medical care of slaves was an economic dilemma for the slave owner. On one hand, a strong, healthy slave could do far more work than a sickly one, but on the other hand, white doctors were an expensive proposition, causing reluctance in slave owners to provide conventional medical care to the slave population. This issue led to the early establishment of African American healers as root doctors, conjure doctors, and two-headed doctors within the slave community, actively and openly treating the sick and injured.
Western medicine prior to the early 1900s was practiced from a dangerously ill-informed perspective and included the use of such substances as mercury, cocaine and opioid derivatives, arsenic, and chlorine. Although conventional medicine of the time was risky for the privileged white society, it was often deadly to the slave community.
To prove that the African American was a different species from the white slave owners, physicians performed barbaric experiments on slaves that they would never think to perform on white patients. In an article titled “SOUTHERN DISCOMFORT: Medical Exploitation on the Plantation,” New York Times journalist Harriet A. Washington calls these facilities and practices “Medical Apartheid.” The danger and resulting fear were sufficient enough that slaves often hid ailments from their owners, and instead sought healing from the community rootworkers to avoid a trip to the “slave hospital” and treatment by the white physicians.
As they began to see efficiency of the techniques used by the Black Belt healers, most slave owners quickly began to rely on the root doctors and conjure doctors to keep the slave population healthy. Although not considered a medical issue, Hoodoo healers managed not only injury and illness on the plantation, but also the care of pregnant and laboring women. With maternity care firmly in the hands of the African American midwives, root doctors and conjure doctors had easy access to materials such as cauls, umbilical cords, and placentas, which were used in some of their treatments.
The acumen and effectiveness of slave medical treatment led many wealthy white slave owners to seek out the advice and skills of African American healers for themselves and their families rather than incur the expense and inconvenience of sending for a white physician. Midwives and root doctors in the slave community sometimes treated an entire community of slaves as well as outsiders. This dealt a significant blow to the businesses of white physicians in the American South. It was no challenge at all for them to strike back and required only that they play on the natural fears of the white slave owners.
Although many slave owners trusted the African rootworkers with the medical care of their own families, the underlying fact was that within this dynamic, one party was the owner and the other party was owned, considered to be property rather than a human being. A few legitimate incidences of slaves poisoning their owners quickly tainted the trust slave owners had in African American healers and generated a wave of panic through white plantation owners. Slave owners faced the sudden awareness that any slave who held the balance of life and death, health and sickness, injury and recovery within their grasp had the power to inflict one just as easily as the other. The medical field was quick to capitalize on this fear and began pushing for restrictions on African healing practices.
Aggressive legislative action against slave healers solidified in 1748 when a Virginian law was passed forbidding any African American from preparing or administering medication of any kind. The law stated:
Whereas many negroes, under the pretence of practising physic, have prepared and exhibited poisonous medicines, by which many persons have been murdered, and others have languished under long and tedious indispositions, and it will be difficult to detect such pernicious and dangerous practices, if they should be permitted to exhibit any sort of medicine. Be it therefore enacted, by the authority aforesaid, that if any negroe, or other slave, shall prepare, exhibit, or administer any medicine whatsoever, he, or she do offending, shall be adjudged guilty of felony, and suffer death without the benefit of clergy.
Over the next hundred years, this law and many created in its image throughout other states forced Hoodoo healing far underground. In some instances, slaves could practice medicine “under the direction of their owner or master” and the punishment was reduced to lashings rather than death, so the slave owner did not lose their investment. Between 1748 and 1884, a total of 153 African Americans stood trial for using medicine illegally.
In absence of legal right to treat the sick and injured, Hoodoo rootworkers again adapted their practices to the existing paradigm. Root doctors who healed with herbs, roots, and other plant parts now hid their medicine in foods or treated their patients in secret to avoid discovery and prosecution. Greater reliance on conjure doctors (who healed with chants, charms, scripture, and breath) rather than root doctors (who administered herbal treatments more associated with medicine) developed out of this transition.
After the Emancipation and the subsequent realignment of African American social structures, many conjure doctors transitioned their Conjure practices into the worship services of black Protestant churches. This enabled them to work under the veil of religion, without interference from the legislation against medical practice.
One technique successfully integrated into church services was “ring shout,” which was a form of traditional African Conjure involving percussion, dance, and an interactive shout and response dialogue between a leader and an assembled group. Linear pew arrangement within the church interrupted the classic circular formation of the ceremony, but again, conjure doctors and their followers adapted. The ring shout evolved into “shoutin’,” a call and response praise technique that remains a mainstay of southern Protestant worship services even today.
Shoutin’ is only one influence from the integration of conjure doctors into Christian worship services that continues into modern times. This is true not only in African American churches, but also in many Pentecostal and Baptist churches with predominately white congregations.
The unusual cadence of evangelical preaching in the South, practiced by ministers of color and Caucasian pastors alike, is quite distinctive and hearkens back to the affected “sacred voice” intonations of African Traditional Religions carried over into early Hoodoo practices. Full body immersion baptisms, snake handling, the laying on of hands for healing, and divine possession are also Hoodoo spiritual components that found their way into Protestant praise and worship, which is why you see these practices primarily in the South rather than throughout the country.
Although conjure doctors found their place within the ministry, the root doctors were not so fortunate. The fierce attack against African American healing practices instigated by the white medical field effectively ended lay midwifery and inflicted tremendous damage to the reputation, legitimacy, and efficacy of Hoodoo medical treatments. By the late 1800s, most root doctors slipped quietly back into underground practice, treating African Americans that sought them out for care.
The legislating and prosecution of medical services performed by African Americans resulted in most root doctors working on the down-low in such a way that only those who knew who to seek out for treatment were aware that authentic Hoodoo practices continued at all. Swampers still dug for roots and healers still harvested medicinal herbs, but combining those ingredients into healing tonics, tinctures, poultices, and other treatments constituted criminal activity. To avoid prosecution, root doctors became accessible only if you knew somebody who knew somebody.
Marketeered Hoodoo
Following World War I, the era of Marketeered Hoodoo began when Caucasian businesspeople stepped in and began mass marketing classic Hoodoo supplies, targeting this new demographic. Katrina Hazzard-Donald coined the phrase “Marketeered Hoodoo” to identify this developmental phase when Hoodoo left the hands of the swampers and rootworkers and entered the realm of commerce. Businesspeople, primarily Caucasian, moved into the field, and with little knowledge of the sacred processes behind the practice, exploited Hoodoo with the objective of profit rather than healing and protection.
In the late 1800s, traveling Wild West shows were a popular form of entertainment, featuring legendary performers such as Wild Bill Hickock, Calamity Jane, Annie Oakley, and Buffalo Bill. Presented as portable, pop-up vaudeville shows, some of these businesses traveled worldwide, performing even for European royalty.
An offshoot of this type of performance troupe production was what we now call the “snake oil salesman” or huckster, selling their own forms of Hoodoo and Hoodoo-type cures. These traveling vendors, usually Caucasian or worse, Caucasians in blackface, offered up amulets, mojo bags, tinctures, and other “tricks” without possessing the experience, background, or authenticity to back up what they sold.
Because they manufactured their wares with no knowledge of how they worked or the correct way to make them, quite frankly, their products did not work. For the huckster, the goal was not to provide an effective and viable medical treatment, but to whip the assembled crowd of customers into a buying frenzy, take their money, and then get out of town before the gullible buyer realized they had purchased fraudulent merchandise.
After the devastating effect of the white medical field’s attack on rootworkers and the legislated racism inherent in the Black Codes, this association of Hoodoo products with charlatans, con men, and quacks was the final nail in the coffin for this vibrant and effective form of healing, greatly diminishing the level of respect and legitimacy it once possessed.
Throughout the Reconstruction era and the post-
Reconstruction era, many freed slaves found life in the hostile South untenable and eventually moved north or west. Without the networked community ties to connect them with underground suppliers, they lacked the ingredients necessary to continue their healing and Conjure practices.
The first evidence of this appeared in drug stores in the northern states that began to openly carry manufactured Hoodoo products. Later, print media advertising appealed to the displaced African American community using fictive kin names and certain buzzwords to call attention to their product. Common phrasing looked like, “Brother, are you outside of your nature?” or “Sister, can you keep your man?”
Eager for familiar replications of products usually handmade in the plantation communities of the South, African Americans in the North helped these new businesses to flourish. The compromise in the quality of marketed products was significant. Without the personalized service of the trained and experienced root doctors, the user was left to self-diagnose and work from memory to guess proper application and usage of the products. There was no longer any ritual associated with the creation of the product, nor any kind of ancestral or historical attachment. While they carried the same name as the authentic product, they did not use fresh or even “real” ingredients, so they were a weak imitation of their original form.
Often, the “recipes” for these products came from actual rootworkers who intentionally invented ingredients, omitted vital components, or deliberately misrepresented the instructions for preparation. To some degree, this was to undermine the efforts of those producing goods that were less than authentic, but also a natural reluctance to disclose Rootworking practices in the face of possible legal prosecution.
After World War II, candle shops came on the scene and quickly eclipsed drug stores as the most common source for Hoodoo products. Candles with classic Hoodoo verbiage such as “Bend Over,” “Come to Me,” and “Jinx Removing” grew in popularity, even though candles were not an authentic component of Black Belt Hoodoo. Candles were, in fact, rarely used in slave communities because they were quite expensive and not available anywhere except in the plantation manor. In addition to the sale of “fixed” candles, candle shops expanded their inventory to carry commercialized Hoodoo powders, oils, dirts, and dusts. After a brief surge of popularity, candle shops began to die out in the 1960s–1970s.
This final transition of Marketeered Hoodoo, along with the parallel development of a different kind of Hoodoo practice in Lousiana with French, Creole, and Haitian influences, created the version of Hoodoo that appears to us now.
Henry Middleton Hyatt
By the time Henry Middleton Hyatt collected material for his exhaustive five-volume, 4,766–page set, titled Hoodoo—Conjuration—Witchcraft—Rootwork in 1936–1948, the era of Marketeered Hoodoo was already well underway. His work is widely considered the most extensive collection of Hoodoo information ever published. Hyatt, an Anglican minister and amateur folklorist from Illinois, traveled through Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia interviewing self-identified rootworkers and Hoodoo practitioners.
Like nearly all historical documentation, his vast collection of information is a treasure to be sure, but it also reflects strong observational biases. Hyatt’s previous work, Folklore From Adams County Illinois, received harsh criticism for its heavy-handed editing of the dialect of African Americans he interviewed.
Subsequently, in Hoodoo—Conjuration—Witchcraft—Rootwork, he transcribed his interviews phonetically, attempting to relay accurately and precisely what he was told. Of the 1,600 rootworkers interviewed, only one was white, despite evidence presented within his own text demonstrating his awareness that there were many white Hoodoo workers at the time. The fact that he was himself a white man interviewing African American Hoodoo workers caused many to speculate that the cultural divide between Hyatt and his subjects compromised the integrity of the interview process.
Racial tensions and legalized persecution were still fully in effect throughout the time of his interviews, and as a result, any legitimate rootworkers he quoted may not have been completely forthcoming with a Caucasian interviewer. Likewise, without the contextual experience to understand what he was hearing, we can reasonably speculate that plenty of opportunities existed for misinterpretation on his part.
The timing of his interviews is also problematic, as they occurred after Marketeered Hoodoo solidified as the dominant practice over Black Belt Hoodoo. This distanced many of his subjects from authentic Black Belt Hoodoo practices, which were now greatly diminished in favor of the commercialized processes and mostly lost to time and memory.
Equally concerning is Hyatt’s lack of discrimination in his choice of interview subjects, such as his inclusion of those who told fanatical tales of “Hoodoo initiations” (which did not exist in the form he describes) and obviously fabricated ceremonies and spells. He presents these with equal legitimacy as the revelations that, to an experienced ear, are authentic and credible. This dissonance in the reliability of his subjects reflects poorly on the overall work and only adds to the growing impression at the time of Hoodoo as the repository for superstitious quacks.
For the reasons mentioned above, most rootworkers I know do not view Hyatt’s work as a teaching guide or reputable resource for information, but more of a colloquial documentation of the time, conducted by a person outside of the community. The general consensus is that the observational bias, obvious cultural divide, and communication barriers created by dialectical differences sufficiently detract from the book’s usability in any practical sense, although it is valued as a significant piece of history and an ambitious project.