Stories of Rootworkers & Hoodoo in the Mid-South

INTRODUCTION

10:00 p.m., October 22, 1934 Jackson, Mississippi

The light from Police Chief Simmons’s flashlight cut through the darkness like a knife. The yellow-tinted beam of light was filled with dancing dust as it pierced the darkened dirt path into the woods. Lush green plants and spiraling kudzu covered the path, creating a tunnel effect into the property. Two officers followed Simmons as they crushed fallen branches and snapping twigs on the ground under their black leather boots. The Mississippi heat beat down on the men, sending trails of salty sweat down their foreheads. The trail seemed to go on forever, until the chief spotted tiny starlike flames through the darkness.

The humidity seemed to push the officers’ uniforms against their flesh as their hearts began to race. The two men seemed lost as they followed the chief into the darkness. It was only a few hours ago that he had told them of this special operation. The chief remained silent regarding the reason for this raid. He knew that if he mentioned the word voodoo it might affect the operation. Voodoo was a mystical phenomenon that was practiced in the back fields of farms among the impoverished black families, Simmons assumed. The curious chief had recently been alerted by a local informant that there was some sort of voodoo operation going on in an abandoned farm near the river.

The sparkling lights that danced in the darkness appeared to be getting clearer as the hushed sound of voices could be heard in the thicket ahead. The men could make out the shape of an old house made of rotting wood. Simmons turned to his men and raised his finger to his lips as an eerie voice cried out from within the structure: And the Holy Ghost is gonna take that spirit. Ohhhhh Lord, that spirit has no place in this man. Take it out! The booming voice drowned out the sound of insects chirping in the night sky. Simmons’s hand slid down and rested on the leather snap that held his revolver in the holster. Pop!, the leather snap sounded as he removed the only thing holding back his weapon from being drawn. The sound of echoing pops from his officers soon followed.

As the men drew nearer, a scent of burning herbs that reminded the chief of his wife’s cooking spices caused his nostrils to flare. The flames of candles could be seen illuminating through a chamois covering the window of the old wood house. The light from the candles grew as it cast a shadow on the walls, lighting shifting shapes of human figures. Chief Simmons could hear his officers’ breathing grow ever more intense.

Simmons turned and whispered to the men, There is no telling what we are about to see. Just follow my lead and make sure we round everyone up that’s in this building. The men nodded as they wondered to themselves if this was going to be yet another bootlegging or prostitution operation.

As the men slowly walked out of the woods into the open yard before them, the light of the summer moon shined brightly, destroying any possibility of remaining hidden. The chief turned and raised his finger. Let’s go. The three officers rushed toward the wooden door as the chief reached down and twisted the doorknob. Boom! The door slammed against the wall of the house as Simmons’s boot crashed into the door. Everybody freeze! he yelled. Police!

Clouds of flowing white smoke filled the room as silhouettes of men and women fell to the floor. Simmons’s eyes began to run along the walls of the room decorated with crosses and pictures of Jesus and saints. A table filled with various burning colored candles lit the room. Bowls of dried plants and glass bottles filled with multicolored oils adorned a wooden table in the corner.

As one of the younger officers began to walk toward a door on the east side of the room, he noticed the threshold of the room changing colors. Swinging his sidearm into the door, the officer’s eyes widened as a revolving colored lamp sat in the corner. An elderly man was in the corner, staring at the floor under a dark colored statue that held a burning bowl of incense. A young girl lay on a crude operating table against the far wall of the room. As frightened as she appeared to the officers, she would later go on to attest to the healing powers of the owner of this operation.

Courtesy of New York Public Library.

Doctor Claude Jones was arrested by Mississippi authorities for running a hoodoo hospital in the cradle of the Delta on Sunday October 21, 1934, in Jackson, Mississippi. As a spiritual doctor and rootworker specializing in African American healing practices, Jones created a clandestine spiritual sanctuary for local black men and women who struggled with sickness as well as spiritual curses. The local press described the activities of the hospital and Dr. Jones in tales of crystal balls, witchcraft and mystic potions. As usual, what actually went on in that facility was very different from what was reported in the outside press.

This would be one of the many discoveries of evidence of hoodoo and conjure in the Mid-South. There are several more, and these are their stories.…

1

THE SECRET INSTITUTION

I must go with him to another part of the woods where there was a certain root, which if I would take some of it with me, carrying it always on my right side, would render it impossible for Mr. Covey or any other white man to whip me.

—Frederick Douglass

The practices of rootwork and conjure were born out of the healing and spiritual traditions of Africa. These rich traditions were kept alive in secret amid the abuse and violence of slavery. As slaves were brought into the Delta and families expanded through the Mid-South, the practices that aided in their survival began to pour over into the public’s eye. What was once hidden in plain sight was being observed by outsiders, who, in most cases, ridiculed and shunned the practices, while a segment of nonpractitioners feared, respected and sometimes even used these traditions.

The culture of hoodoo was so prolific throughout African American communities throughout the United States that its practices even garnered the attention of the president of the United States. In 1919, Woodrow Wilson stood before Congress, and as he was reaching into his pocket, he accidentally dropped a piece of red cloth. The president explained to the members of Congress and the press that he had dropped his conjure bag and that he kept it to help his rheumatism and other problems. Wilson chuckled, as did the members of Congress. While the concept of the conjure bag was being laughed at, it also became apparent that hoodoo had made quite an impact on the consciousness of the country. The once-secret institution of healing and magic was no longer a secret.

As the practices of Africa and African Americans began to be revealed in southern society, they also continued to be feared and demeaned. Reactions found in Mid-South newspapers from Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee and carried in other papers nationwide starting in the early 1920s were quite alarming:

Hoodoos or African Witches are operating in Boyle County with frightful results. Seven colored citizens have already been driven to the mad house by the alleged satanic influences of the hoodoos. [Kentucky Advocate (Danville, KY), May 7, 1925]

Devil Worship still exists. Voodoo Practices Originating in Africa, Have Not Lost Their Hold Among Negroes in America. The witch doctor business thrives among the Negroes of the South and to some extent to the North. It is a kind of magical art called Voodoo and came originally from Africa. For a moderate price you can buy a hoohoo packet from a voodoo woman that is guaranteed if fastened to his front gate inconspicuously to cause your enemy to sicken and die. It contains such articles as bits of bone, a tooth or two feathers. [Cuba (KS) Daylight, March 21, 1918]

Rumblings of African mumbo-jumbo were heard in the juvenile court as a delegation of Negroes came here from Athens Tennessee to protest holding of a negro girl named Susie. The delegation told Judge L.D. Miller that Susie paroled from the state training school recently was doing well and that charges against her were conjured up by dat ol’ hoodoo. [Corpus Christi (TX) Caller-Times, August 27, 1937]

The practice of traditional healing and conjure was frequently looked on as foolish superstition by those outside of the African American community in the Mid-South. Traditional practices that had been performed for years were often mocked in the public eye. Newspapers sharing reports of African American folk practices would typically describe them in a condescending and racist manner. A 1906 news story in the Natchez Democrat out of Natchez, Mississippi, shared the sentiments of many white southerners at the time. The article, Forty Years of Freedom: Negroes Retain the Foolish Idea as to the Power of the Conjure Bag, said:

Mr. Austin Smith, owner of Saragrossa plantation, this county, drove into the city wearing a most amused smile on his always beaming face and when questioned as to the whenceness and whereof for the smile, he said Forty years of freedom have not been enough to eradicate the idea from the negro’s mind that the conjure bag is the only thing that will keep the witches off, or break a hoodoo. Saying this he extracted from his pocket a conjure bag that one of the negroes on his place had dropped. It was a red flannel concern, wrapped with seven pieces of string and contained a piece of silver, a bit of graveyard dust, a piece of lodestone and some hair from a graveyard rabbit’s leg. The string was wrapped around the bag so that it left a long loop over the wrist, and the owner of the bag would hold the bag in the hand while shaking hands with the person they wish to conjure. In case of driving witches away from the house the negroes wave the bag above the head [and] indulge in some kind of monologue that is beyond understanding.

News of the pagan practices of African folk healing and culture became a popular topic among members of the wealthy upper class. Traditions were viewed as devilish and at the same time exotic to those outside of the culture. Newspapers in northern states ran articles about the Southern Negro who participated in wild African rituals. Following a high-profile incident in Montgomery, Alabama, involving a member of an African healing culture, the Montgomery Advertiser spoke of how a shabby, smelly room on Montgomery’s Monroe Street could just have easily been a thatched hut in the jungles of Haiti and the ‘witch woman’ who practiced her voodoo rites over a smelly brew could have readily been a sorceress of that Island of Black Magic.

In 1915, a group of politicians gathered in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York to listen to an animated Tennessee judge named Benjamin Franklin Adams as he discussed southern culture. The conversation drifted into the topic of hoodoo and conjure bags in the South:

What I have noticed hereabout don’t even know what I mean when I speak about a conjure-bag. A conjure-bag is like one of those things like potlicker and crackling-bread which can only be made by an expert. It is considered extremely efficacious among the colored population of our section of the country, and not a few of the poor whites pin their faith in it. If you put it where your enemy has to step over it, it will deprive him of the use of himself and you can bring upon him any kind of evil fortune. In the preparation of a conjure bag as well as its use. The strictest secrecy must always be observed. Should the intended victim discover it, he can convert it to his own uses by simply putting it into running water. The owner of the bag will then go crazy.

The judge went on to talk about the work of a rootworker in Brownsville, Tennessee, known as Aunt Phoebe Thompson. Aunt Phoebe was well known for making powerful mojo bags. The judge described to an interested audience the ingredients of local mojo bags in West Tennessee: I should explain gentlemen that some of the ingredients that go toward the making of every real conjure bag besides those requisites I have mentioned a crow’s foot, a snake bone, some yarn and string with has been dyed with some copperas, some game rooster blood and various other components of less importance, but still necessary.

While Hoodoo and African American folk practices were frequently mocked as foolishness by those outside of the black community, these practices were often perceived as posing a threat to communities.

The prevalence of hoodoo throughout North America caught the attention of a U.S. president. Woodrow Wilson joked with Congress that he carried a conjure bag for his rheumatism. Courtesy of Washington Times.

For example, in 1908, a courtroom in