Mojo Workin': The Old African American Hoodoo System

Copyright

© 2013 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America 1 2 3 4 5 c p 5 4 3 2 1 ∞ This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hazzard-Donald, Katrina, 1948– Mojo workin’ : the old African American Hoodoo system / Katrina Hazzard-Donald. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-252-03729-0 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-252-07876-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-252-09446-0 (e-book) 1. Hoodoo (Cult) 2. Voodooism—United States. 3. African American magic. 4. Medicine, Magic, mystic, and spagiric— United States. 5. African Americans—Religion. 6. African Americans—Folklore. I. Title. BL2490.H39 2013 133.4308996073—dc23 2012020649 Hazzard_Text.indd 4 10/10/12 8:44 AM To my late husband, Lathan Lee Donald, tried in battle; and to my daughter, Jameka, who is on her way to becoming a skilled Hoodoo. To daddy, Stonewall Hazzard, child of freedmen, who regaled me and my childhood friends with Hoodoo tales of ghost horses, High John roots, haints, lodestone , and powerful Hoodoos from Alabama. To mamma, Susie Isaac Hazzard, who treated our “chest colds” with coal oil and white sugar, who dropped keys down our backs to stop nose bleeds, who wrapped minor cuts in cobwebs, who treated our swellings with mullein leaves, who dug the roots, healed the sick, transformed negative energies into positive using sardine oil and “greasy fat meat.” To those who treated the crack epidemic of the 1990s with Hoodoo medicine, who still scold and praise the children, who chew the root for all those unjustly incarcerated in Ronald Reagan’s attack on the African American community disguised as the “War on Drugs.” To all those born of black women who came walking in the spirit of our African ancestors. And for those African American “race men and race women” yet to be born. Hazzard_Text.indd 5 10/10/12 8:44 AM Hazzard_Text.indd 6 10/10/12 8:44 AM ...