Hoodoo is a complex set of spiritual observances, traditions, and beliefs—including magical and other ritual practices—developed by enslaved African Americans in the Southern United States from various traditional African spiritualities and elements of Native American ethnobotany. Hoodoo practitioners are called rootworkers, conjure doctors, conjure men or conjure women, and root doctors. Regional synonyms for Hoodoo include roots, rootwork and conjure. As an autonomous spiritual system, it has often been syncretized with beliefs from religions such as Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, and Spiritualism.
Hoodoo, frequently associated with conjure, is a compilation of religious beliefs and practices, centered on showing gratitude to deceased family members, justice, and rootwork, a botanical practice used for healing and protection. It is mostly influenced by West African spiritual practices, incorporating Indigenous herbalism and European grimoires. While there are a few academics who believe that Hoodoo is an autonomous religion, those who practice the tradition maintain that it is a set of spiritual traditions that are practiced in conjunction with a religion or spiritual belief system, such as a traditional African spirituality and Abrahamic religion.
Many Hoodoo traditions draw from the beliefs of the Bakongo people of Central Africa. Over the first century of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, an estimated 52% of all enslaved Africans transported to the Americas came from Central African countries that existed within the boundaries of modern-day Cameroon, the Congo, Angola, Central African Republic, and Gabon.
Etymology The first documentation of Hoodoo in English appeared in 1870. Its origins are obscure. Still, some linguists believe it is an alteration of Voodoo , which originated in the Gbe languages such as the Ewe, Adja, and Fon languages of Ghana, Togo, and Benin.
Another possible etymological origin is the Ewe (); Hudu is one of its dialects.
Recent scholarly publications capitalize Hoodoo. The word has different meanings depending on spelling: some authors capitalize Hoodoo to distinguish it from commercialized hoodoo, which is spelled with a lowercase h. Other authors have different reasons why they capitalize or lowercase the first letter.
According to African American religion professor Yvonne P. Chireau, the lexicon that came to be associated with conjuring in the United States "emanated from West and Central African linguistic antecedents". For example, gris-gris is a Mande word of the Windward Coast and Senegambia, mojo bag can be traced to the Kikongo words wanga and mooyo, and juju bags are believed to have an origin amongst the Hausa people in Nigeria and Niger. The use of the Hausa word juju later became prevalent across other countries to which the ethnic group immigrated.
History
Antebellum era
Yvonne Chireau stated: "Hoodoo is an African American-based tradition that makes use of natural and supernatural elements in order to create and effect change in the human experience." Hoodoo was created by African Americans, who were among over 12 million enslaved Africans from various Central and West African ethnic groups transported to the Americas from the 16th to 19th centuries as part of the transatlantic slave trade. Between 1619 and 1860 approximately 500,000 enslaved Africans were transported to the United States, including after it was made illegal in 1808. The America's Black Holocaust Museum puts the number of slaves taken to America at 388,000, approximately 2.5% of all those taken from Africa. From Central Africa, Hoodoo has Bakongo magical influence incorporating the Kongo cosmogram, Simbi water spirits, and Nkisi and Minkisi practices. It also has West African influence, including Vodun from the Fon and Ewe people in Benin and Togo, following some elements from the Yoruba religion.
After contact with European slave traders and missionaries, some Africans converted to Christianity willingly. Simultaneously, other enslaved Africans were forced to become Christian, resulting in a syncretization of African spiritual practices and beliefs with Christianity. Enslaved and free Africans learned regional indigenous botanical knowledge after they arrived in the United States. The extent to which Hoodoo could be practiced varied by region and the temperament of enslavers. For example, the Gullahs of the coastal southeast experienced an isolation and relative freedom that allowed the retention of various traditional West African cultural practices. Among Gullahs and enslaved African Americans in the Mississippi Delta, where the concentration of enslaved people was dense, Hoodoo was practiced under an extensive cover of secrecy, due to slave codes prohibiting large gatherings of enslaved and free Black people. Enslavers experienced how slave religion ignited slave revolts among enslaved and free Black people, and some insurrection leaders were Black ministers or conjure doctors.
The Code Noir, implemented in 1724 in French colonial Louisiana, regulated the lives of enslaved and free people and prohibited enslaved Africans from practicing traditional religions; Article III states: "We forbid any public exercise of any religion other than Catholic". This and other slave laws resulted in enslaved and free African Americans conducting spiritual practices in secluded areas such as woods (hush harbors) and churches. Slaves created methods to decrease their noise when they practiced their spirituality. In a slave narrative from Arkansas, enslaved people prayed under pots to prevent nearby white people from hearing them. John Hunter, a formerly enslaved person in Arkansas, said the enslaved people went to a secret house only they knew and turned the iron pots face up so enslavers could not hear them. They would place sticks under wash pots about a foot from the ground because "[I]f they'd put it flat on the ground the ground would carry the sound".
In My Southern Home, or, The South and Its People (1880), formerly enslaved abolitionist William Wells Brown recorded a secret Voudoo ceremony at midnight in St. Louis, Missouri. Enslaved people circled a cauldron, and a Voudoo queen had a magic wand; snakes, lizards, frogs, and other animal parts were thrown into the cauldron. During the ceremony, spirit possession took place. Brown also recorded other conjure Hoodoo practices among the enslaved population. Enslaved Africans in America held on to their African culture.
Some scholars assert that Christianity had little influence on some enslaved Africans, as they continued to practice traditional spiritual practices. Hoodoo was a form of resistance against slavery whereby enslaved Africans hid their traditions using the Christian religion against enslavers. This branch of Christianity among the enslaved was concealed from enslavers in invisible churches, secret churches where enslaved African Americans combined Hoodoo with Christianity. Enslaved and free Black ministers preached resistance to slavery and the power of God through praise and worship, and that Hoodoo rituals would free enslaved people from bondage. W. E. B. Du Bois studied African American churches in the early twentieth century, and asserts that Voodooism influenced the early years of the Black church during plantation slavery. Southern Black church records from the late nineteenth to early twentieth century indicate that some church members practiced conjure and combined Christian and African spiritual concepts to harm or heal members in their community.
Known Hoodoo spells date to the era of slavery in the colonial history of the United States. The New York Slave Revolt of 1712 saw enslaved Africans—Akan people from Ghana—revolting and setting fire to downtown buildings; they were led by Peter the Doctor, a free African conjurer who made a magical powder for the enslaved people to be rubbed on the body and clothes for their protection and empowerment. Historians suggest the powder probably included some cemetery dirt to conjure the ancestors to provide spiritual militaristic support; the Bakongo of Central Aftrica, brought to colonial New York by the slave trade, incorporated cemetery dirt into minkisi conjuring bags to activate it with ancestral spirits. This and other revolts in the United States showed a blending of West and Central African spiritual practices among enslaved and free Black people. Conjure bags, also called mojo bags, were used as a resistance against slavery. In the 1830s, Black sailors from the United States utilized conjure for safe sea travel. A Black sailor received a talisman from an Obi (Obeah) woman in Jamaica. This account shows how Black Americans and Jamaicans shared their conjure culture and had similar practices. Free Blacks in northern states had white and Black clients regarding fortune-telling and conjure services.
Alabama slave narratives documented that formerly enslaved people used graveyard dirt to escape from slavery on the Underground Railroad. Freedom seekers rubbed it on the bottom of their feet or put it in their tracks to prevent slave catchers' dogs from tracking their scent. Former slave Ruby Pickens Tartt from Alabama told of a man who could fool the dogs, saying he "done lef' dere and had dem dogs treein' a nekked tree. Dey calls hit hoodooin' de dogs". An enslaved conjurer could conjure confusion in the dogs, preventing whites from catching freedom seekers. In other narratives, enslaved people made a jack ball to know if an enslaved person would be whipped or not. Enslaved people chewed and spat the juices of roots near their enslavers secretly to calm the emotions of enslavers, which prevented whippings. Enslaved people relied on conjurers to prevent whippings and being sold further South. Mary Middleton, a formerly enslaved Gullah woman from the South Carolina Sea Islands, tells of an incident where a badly beaten enslaved person went to a conjurer, and the conjurer made the enslaver weak by sunset: "As soon as the sun was down, he was down too, he down yet. De witch done dat".
In his autobiography, Bishop Jamison, born enslaved in Georgia in 1848, describes an enslaved Hoodoo man on a Georgia plantation named Uncle Charles Hall, who prescribed herbs and charms for enslaved people to protect themselves from white people. Hall instructed the enslaved people to anoint roots three times daily and chew and spit roots toward their enslavers for protection.
Another slave story talks about Old Julie, an enslaved conjurer known among the enslaved people on the plantation for conjuring death. She conjured so much death on the plantation that her enslaver sold her, sending her by steamboat to a new enslaver in the Deep South. According to post-civil war freedmen, Old Julie used her conjure powers to turn the steamboat back to where it was docked, forcing her enslaver to keep her.
Frederick Douglass, a formerly enslaved abolitionist and author, wrote in his autobiography that he sought spiritual assistance from enslaved conjurer Sandy Jenkins. Jenkins told Douglass to follow him into the woods, and to carry a root they found in his right pocket to prevent whippings from white men. Douglass obeyed and hoped the root would work when he returned to the plantation. The cruel slave-breaker, Covey, told Douglass to work, but as Covey approached him, he had the strength and courage to resist and defeated him after they fought. Covey never bothered Douglass again. Douglass believed the root prevented him from being whipped by Covey.
Conjure for African Americans is a form of resistance against white supremacy. African American conjurers were seen as a threat by white Americans because slaves went to free and enslaved conjurers to receive charms for protection and revenge against their enslavers. Enslaved Black people used Hoodoo to bring about justice on American plantations by poisoning enslavers and conjuring death onto their oppressors.