Mojo Workin': The Old African American Hoodoo System

7. Black Belt Hoodoo in the Post–World War II Cultural Environment

7 BlAckBelThoodoo inThePoST–WorldWArii cUlTUrAlenVironMenT The aftermath of World War II, particularly its benefits in the form of educational supports, jobs, pensions, and housing benefits from the GI bill to returning African American servicemen, would provide the black community with both incentives and opportunities for continuing migration northward. Increased income, though racially circumscribed in northern black communities, intensified the movement away from old black belt traditions. In some cases, the old Hoodoo continuum would experience internally generated redefinition, particularly through church-connected Hoodoo workers. But in the northern urban environment, marketeered Hoodoo would dominate in many black communities. Hoodoo’s first urban face, which appeared in the smaller cities and towns of the postemancipation black belt South, was unlike its latter-day counterpart in large northern metropolises and even some large southern cities. The style of early, urban, black-controlled Hoodoo was very much like its rural counterpart, sharing similar characteristics, and was intertwined in the same supply networks. Commercial exploitation was less developed there. This would change as marketeers moved to take over, control, and profit from the sale of Hoodoo. Post–World War II urbanized Hoodoo would present itself publicly as a conglomeration of disconnected products, gestures, and All Shut Eye Ain’t Sleep, All Goodbye Ain’t Gone —Traditional African American folk saying Hazzard_Text.indd 156 10/10/12 8:44 AM Black Belt Hoodoo in the Post–World War II Cultural Environment 157 procedures like candle burning and mojo bag making. Participation in old black belt traditions would eventually come to be viewed by some African Americans as incompatible with notions of “racial uplift.” This view was informed largely by several factors, including the aggressive diversification and proliferation of the spiritual marketplace, increasing African American cultural disengagement from old southern black belt spiritual traditions and culture, migration to and employment in the urban North, and the thrust toward “race betterment” marked by assimilation to the mainstream. Confronting these factors, post–World War II urbanized Hoodoo would become nearly unrecognizable as it presented itself publicly as a conglomeration of disconnected products, gestures, and procedures. Workers of old tradition Hoodoo would be outnumbered by and achieve lower levels of visibility than the marketeering outsiders interested in the commercial exploitation of Hoodoo. This would have potentially dangerous consequences for those seeking help with medical conditions or those preoccupied with a serious personal concern. Some of the spiritual merchants , who had so effectively financially exploited the African American Hoodoo belief system, would pass their businesses to their heirs and establish a continuing legacy of intergenerational exploitation and profiting from Hoodoo. They would further modify urban Hoodoo’s face. As old tradition black belt Hoodoo’s influence and reach were weakening , it was both outflanked by commercial exploiters and becoming more difficult to locate inside the African American community. Concurrently, the old sites for locating the vast array of authentic old tradition Hoodoo ingredients and materials were becoming increasingly scarce.1 For example, the supply line through the often elderly black man, who either assisted or became the local pharmacist, and the old-style drugstore with its compounding pharmacy selling patent medicines and ingredients used both in Hoodoo and for other purposes would, like the old swampers, become relics of the past. Both the conjurer-root workers and the clients they served would, increasingly, be forced to turn to the curio shop, the mail-order marketplace, and Hoodoo mail-order catalogs for supplies. Though the new sources could deliver only a limited and often insufficient inventory, the exploiting marketeers aggressively pushed their products in an increasingly receptive atmosphere, contributed to by black belt tradition invisibility and racism. Loudell F. Snow, in her study of “mail-order magic,” clearly documents the commercial exploitation of the old Hoodoo folk belief system by marketeers using mail-order catalogs.2 Several other factors would contribute to black belt Hoodoo’s susceptibility to outsider control and further marginalization as well as loss of black Hazzard_Text.indd 157 10/10/12 8:44 AM 158 chapter 7 control in the marketplace. The disappearance of the street-crying root and herb peddlers, the African American community’s own door-to-door Hoodoo supply salesman, would disappear. The continuing shrinkage of old root and herb harvest grounds and the disappearance of natural sites such as forested lands for obtaining other old tradition Hoodoo ingredients further contributed. The disappearance of the African American lay midwife disrupted the traditional...