Mojo Workin': The Old African American Hoodoo System

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments All work, whether monumental or modest, is never the result of a solitary effort. I owe thanks to people too numerous to name who supported and assisted me in the production of this work. I thank the American Council of Learned Societies who supplied me with a fellowship that allowed me to take a year from teaching in order to travel to various locations to examine resources and interview informants; without the support of the ACLS fellowship program, this work might never have been undertaken. I thank Robert Farris Thompson, who agreed to read an early draft of this work. I am indebted to Marquetta Goodwine, known to the residents of St. Helena Island, South Carolina, as Queen Quet, Queen of the Gullah people. I thank my generous informants Ms. Mary; Arthur Flowers; Brother Gregory; Papa Ce; Dancingtree Moonwater; Hougan Vincent, known to some as Papa Cosmos; Phoenix Savage; and Djenra Windwalker, who fight to maintain the old tradition, to keep African American Hoodoo alive, and who serve the African American community in the names of our ancestors. I give special thanks and honor to Mama Zogbe, chief Hounon-Amengansie of West African Mami Wata Vodoun. Thank you for keeping the faith. I thank Professor James Turner of the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell University, who told me the story of his aunt’s potential arm amputation by white medical doctors and her healing encounter with Hoodoo medicine. I thank all the African Americans who told Hoodoo stories and renewed the moribund faith in us even as the tradition was facing transformation by marketeers and confronting impending death. I owe special thanks to all the reference librarians and archivists, from Mr. Willie Maryland of the Montgomery state archives in Montgomery, Alabama , to Catherine C. Khan, the archivist at the old Touro Infirmary in New Hazzard_Text.indd 9 10/10/12 8:44 AM x Acknowledgments Orleans, who allowed me to examine the original admission logbooks and records from 1855 to 1861 in search of information on Hoodoo and slave health care. I owe thanks to both Grace Cordial in special collections at the Beaufort, South Carolina, public library, who was helpful in directing me to vertical file materials on local Hoodoo, and the librarian in the Cleveland, Ohio, public library, who allowed me to examine several uncataloged boxes of Newbell Niles Puckett materials. The librarians at the Tallahassee, Florida, state archives pointed me to several boxes of interview materials from both Zora Neale Hurston and the Works Progress Administration writers. I offer a special thank-you to the library staff at the Amistad collection in pre-Katrina New Orleans, who directed me to copies of missionary records as well as public health interviews from the 1930s conducted with informants on the street about their healing practices and beliefs in “Hoodoo medicine.” And a special thank-you to the border control agent in Laredo, Texas, William Graves, who sent me a dozen High John roots. To Professor Mark Leone of the University of Maryland, College Park, who allowed me to examine and to photograph the artifacts from an antebellum slave conjurer’s cache, circa the 1820s, uncovered in an archaeological dig in southern Virginia: Thank you for the afternoon. Last but not least, I thank my family and my dear late husband, Lathan Donald, who supported me when I became ill and had to stop working on the manuscript. He nursed me, fed me in bed, and encouraged me to return to work whenever I became discouraged. Above all, I thank God, known to me as Olodumare, but who is called by many names. I thank my ancestors , who always “had my back,” and my personal orisha father, Ogun, and mother, Oshun, for the will to keep fighting and for the wisdom to know when to change tack in the battle. Finally, I thank all those African American believers and practitioners of the Old Black Belt Hoodoo tradition for holding on until we could arrive. Hazzard_Text.indd 10 10/10/12 8:44 AM African traditional religion chart. African Traditional Religions The Old Hoodoo Religion Conjure/Hoodoo/Root Work water immersion Ring Shout The Black Church Holy Dance/Shouting Theatrical Dance Secular Dance Forms Social/Folk/Vernacular Form African· Religion· Complex spirit possession the stroll Hemsley Wingfield The Sanctified Church principle of sacrifice snake hips Pearl Primus A. M. E. Church belief in spiritual cause of...