Mojo Workin': The Old African American Hoodoo System

6. Healin’ da Sick, Raisin da Daid: Hoodoo as Health Care, Root Doctors, Midwives, Treaters

6 heAlin’dASick, rAiSin’dAdAid hoodooashealthcare, rootdoctors,Midwives,Treaters The full dimensions of Hoodoo have been overlooked. Even recent scholarship on Hoodoo has not included a discussion of the medicinal aspect of the tradition. In addition, that scholarship has totally overlooked a discussion of traditional Hoodoo healers: treaters, midwives, and root doctors. Even African Americans who know anything of contemporary Hoodoo will usually not immediately associate it with medicinal herbalism. Hoodoo marketeers were neither interested in nor had access to this aspect of Hoodoo. While much of the magical aspect of Hoodoo would be discarded under the strict dictates of Christianity, science, and commercialism, much of Hoodoo’s medicinal herbalism would be kept alive under another label. Home remedies were passed down in extended families from an earlier time, thus assuring that the postemancipation African American community would inherit a well-developed and long-standing folk medicine tradition rich in regional variation. That community, like African communities elsewhere, would also inherit the deep belief that physical illness could have a supernatural cause. This belief would persist among African Americans into the twenty-first century. Hoodoo was believed to be able to cause all types of Grandma’s hands Soothed a local unwed mother Grandma’s hands Used to ache sometimes and swell Grandma’s hands Used to lift her face and tell her, “Baby, Grandma understands That you really love that man Put yourself in Jesus hands” Grandma’s hands —Bill Withers, “Grandma” Hazzard_Text.indd 135 10/10/12 8:44 AM 136 chapter 6 illness as well as unusual physical and mental symptoms. Even in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Hoodoo is believed to be capable of causing the following: 1. Paralysis 2. Weight loss 3. Hair loss 4. Loss of willpower 5. Miscarriage 6. Falling obsessively in love 7. Breathing problems 8. Bodily infestations of lizards, snakes, salamanders, worms, spiders 9. Hating one’s own family 10. Prolonged constipation/locked bowels 11. Acting like a dog or cat 12. Eliminating feces through nose or mouth 13. Unexplained bodily pain 14. Fits 15. Insanity 16. Impotence/loss of nature 17. Financial trouble 18. Ugliness 19. Swelling of limbs 20. Blindness 21. Arthritis 22. Death 23. Disfiguration 24. Insomnia 25. Paranoia/intense fear1 In a majority of poor and working-class black neighborhoods, there was someone at least minimally skilled in administering herbal-based treatments, some of which are used today in African American communities as well as throughout the African diaspora.2 The slave “doctor” was a common feature on most plantations of substantial size, and on smaller plantations there was someone at least minimally skilled in naturopathic treatments for physical, mental, and spiritual malady. Herbal healing recipes were but one chapter in Hoodoo’s oral textbook. Herbal healers and practitioners such as midwives, treaters, and root doctors mastered treatments and developed their regional pharmacopoeia. In addition , there was an existing body of common knowledge and information grounded in well-known treatment traditions that some individuals applied Hazzard_Text.indd 136 10/10/12 8:44 AM Healin’ da Sick, Raisin’ da Daid 137 to themselves. We see an example of this in the slave who wore a buckeye on a string around his neck as a protective medicine.3 In addition to bringing healing traditions from Africa with them and acquiring medicinal skill on their own, some slaves were owned by white physicians and were trained by them.4 One such slave named Primus assisted his master, a white doctor , at surgery and began his own practice when his master died.5 Another slave doctor, who practiced in New Orleans, bought his own freedom after having assisted and apprenticed under three doctors, all of whom owned him at one time or another.6 Other slaves were owned by pharmacists and assisted in the filling of prescriptions and the making of medicines.7 And at least one bondsman, Willie Elfe, published his own prescription book.8 Still others acted as nurses both accompanying their owners and practicing independently applying their knowledge of herbal healing.9 Midwives were among those who also had herbal medicinal knowledge. Like their plantation predecessors, most post-Reconstruction midwives harvested their own herbs rather than purchase them. A well-stocked midwife ’s cabinet would contain “digitalis, golden seal, belladonna, lobelia, sage, henna, rhubarb, May apple, blood root, wild cherry, and numerous others,” many that she cultivated herself.10 Like the old...