Hoodoo in America

There's Something in The Water

“…David Todd Lawrence uses Teaching and Practice to share a deeply personal meditation on what it means to do folkloric work as a Black scholar in Black communities. Following Zora Neale Hurston (1931), Lawrence ultimately forwards a hoodoo ethnography, which "has the willingness to see, to recognize the value of black places, black community, black history, black traditions, and black ancestors-and to imagine the possibilities of a black future" that "allows us as ethnographers to surrender power and submit to the traditions and histories that lie within ourselves and our collaborators-and in the souls of our ancestors." While emerging from discretely academic pursuits, hoodoo ethnography is a richly personal and ancestral practice and it is work that Adriel Luis takes up, albeit differently, in his Perspectives column.…”

Work the Root: Black Feminism, Hoodoo Love Rituals, and Practices of Freedom

“…Not only our own futures, but the futures of those yet to be born, are determined, in part, by how we negotiate this relationship with the dead among us. As Zora Neale Hurston writes in “Hoodoo in America,” “[w]herever West African beliefs have survived in the New World, this place of the dead has been maintained” (Hurston , 319). Similarly, Hazzard‐Donald notes that a defining feature of many West African religions was a divination system whereby direct communication between the living and the dead is conducted through practices of ancestor reverence that enabled practitioners to “seize the power and memory of [their] ancestors for support, direction, and protection” (Hazzard‐Donald , 22–26).…”

Prophets and advisors in black spiritual churches: Therapy, palliative, or opiate?

“…4 Furthermore, specific congregations or associations in the Spiritual movement may add elements from other esoteric systems, such as New Thought, Islam, or Judaism, to this common assemblage of religious elements. The historical development of the Spiritual movement remains obscure, but it appears that it emerged in various large cities, particularly New Orleans, Chicago, Detroit, and Kansas City during the period after World War I (Hurston 1931;Tallant 1946). Because of its somewhat close but vague relationship to the Spiritual religion, it is important to mention another thaumaturgical/manipulationist sect, namely Vodun or Voodoo.…”

“…In addition to the studies which have been conducted by anthropologists on the traditional healing practices of American Indians, attention has been focused upon complexes such as curanderismo among Mexican Americans (Rubel 1967;Madsen 1964;Kiev 1968), espiristimo among Puerto Ricans (Harwood 1977;Garrison 1977), and santeria among Cuban Americans (Sandoval 1979). Although folklorists have gathered extensive, however often unsystematic, data on Black folk medicine and magic, particularly in rural areas, there continues to be a paucity of studies of Black ethnomedicine in urban areas, despite the fact that the majority of Black Americans have been located in them for some time now (Puckett 1926;Hurston 1931;Hyatt 1970Hyatt -1974. However, a small but growing literature has appeared in this area in recent years (Stewart 1971;Hall and Bourne 1973;Scott 1974;Weidman et.…”