TRANSCRIPT

Season 1, Episode 5 - Rootwork and the Great Migration

STEPHANIE ROSE BIRD: I was born in Montclair, New Jersey and I lived in East Orange, New Jersey, for the first six years of my life. It was really wonderful because I was near my grandmother, my grandpa, my great-grandmother, my aunts and uncles and cousins. And then we moved to southern New Jersey, which was complicated to describe…. 

HEATHER FREEMAN: Priestess Stephanie Rose Bird is a contemporary Hoodoo practitioner. She was six years old when her family moved to Southern New Jersey, which she says felt like a completely different world from the Jersey suburbs she was used to. 

STEPHANIE: I'm gonna say it was a rude awakening because I was called the N-word regularly, and it was shocking to me because I had never heard that or seen such animosity and hatred from children before.

And yet I was plunked down in this idyllic — people call it bucolic — place where a lake was my front yard. It's a wetland, and then,forest on two sides of me and then on the other side of the lake. 

HEATHER: From an urban landscape, surrounded by extended family, Stephanie was suddenly living close to the land. And redefining home.

STEPHANIE: My mother and father had this country people inside of them. My mother started canning and making pies, and for a while we lived off of the land, we didn't even have running water. We lived in a small cabin, I think it was a two-room cabin, and there were a lot of us in there, including my grandfather. I spent a lot of time just on the water, swimming, climbing trees, doing things like that. 

 HEATHER: And the religious experiences that surrounded Stephanie's childhood were as diverse as the New Jersey landscape. 

STEPHANIE: I would say that we were a fairly religious family, we were part of the United Methodist Church. My dad didn't seem very interested in it, but my mother really had quite a strong attraction to it. Her mother was a minister, a Spiritualist minister. We would go to Sunday dinners there, and the community part was really wonderful. 

HEATHER: Spiritualism is a religion that originated in the 1800s, and is part of some United Methodist church services. Worship can include ecstatic shaking, shouting, and trance, and these services were formative for Stephanie.

STEPHANIE: My mother had this ability to get happy. ‘Getting happy’ is a really hard thing to explain, I see it in some other African diaspora practices where you're almost mounted by the spirit. And in her case, what she was identifying with was Holy Spirit, but she would get the shakes and convulsions and, shake backwards and forwards. And, you know, it was a cause of great embarrassment for my siblings and I, but gradually I started to get into it too. 

HEATHER: Stephanie was very religious as a child and sang in the church choir. She was surrounded by family members who were Muslim and an uncle who was in training to be a Santerian priest. Stephanie was also very close to her grandmother, who didn't go to church, but read tea leaves and was regarded as the family oracle. None of these practices were Stephanie's spiritual home, but they inspired her to keep exploring.

As she got older, Stephanie was drawn to metaphysics, which is a branch of philosophy interested in the fundamental nature of reality. It explores the relationships between the physical world and an invisible -- possibly even spiritual -- world, and this eventually pulled her to contemporary witchcraft. She began practicing with a coven as a teenager, but as she got older, she wanted something more. Something that felt like home.

STEPHANIE: So I'm like, well, hardly anyone looks exactly like me, you know, with the feel of witchcraft and wicca, I didn't feel all the way embraced culturally and with heritage. 

HEATHER: Wicca, by the way, is a new religious movement that defines itself as both a religion and a form of contemporary witchcraft. So in her early forties Stephanie began to learn about Hoodoo, Rootwork, and Conjure, and although she mostly learned these practices from books, she recognized herself within them.

STEPHANIE: I saw this really unique set of practices wherein the original informants were of African descent, I stood up and took notice. That's the beginning of the love story, is identification of culture, and heritage, and self. I thought, ‘Oh, okay. This is for me’. 

HEATHER: I'm Heather Freeman. And this is Magic in the United States. 

Today's episode: Rootwork and the Great Migration. We'll uncover the incredible cultural remixing of Hoodoo, Rootwork, and Conjure. And learn how enslaved African-Americans forged these practices in the American colonies and, later, we'll discover how the Great Migration of the 20th-century forced African-Americans to redefine these practices -- and home-- again.

[BREAK]

HEATHER: Welcome back to Magic in the United States, I’m Heather Freeman.

The words Hoodoo, Root Work, and Conjure are often used interchangeably, but as a whole, it encompasses a spiritual tradition, belief structure, cultural system, and healing practice first developed by enslaved African-Americans. And Hoodoo became a uniquely American folk tradition through the remixing of African, European, and Native American lore.

The origin of the word Hoodoo is unclear but it was probably a label put on the practice by outsiders. Two-hundred years ago, most practitioners wouldn't have called it Hoodoo and, to this day, it is often misrepresented in entertainment media and conflated with Vodun, which is a religion of Africa and the African diaspora. But Hoodoo is its own distinct and unique set of practices and beliefs. Likewise, Conjure was a word used in early modern English-speaking regions to describe supernatural practices and magical performances. North American colonists used the word "conjure" to describe the folk healing practices of African-Americans as well. Meanwhile, Rootwork simply refers to the materials these practitioners often used: roots, leaves, flowers, as well as animal parts, soils, and minerals. Over time, these words have been used interchangeably by both outsiders and practitioners. 

Finally, the word ‘magic’ was historically used as a pejorative against Hoodoo, Conjure, and Rootwork. While some contemporary practitioners have reclaimed the word ‘magic’ to use it to describe their practices, many others do not. But as a whole Hoodoo, Rootwork, and Conjure are a collection of practices oriented towards physical well-being and spiritual healing, as well as achieving practical goals, like winning court cases or attracting a beloved. 

Yvonne Chireau is Professor of Religion at Swarthmore College and researches Africana religions and magic.

YVONNE CHIREAU: When you look at healing traditions, one of the things that they talk about is the rootwork or the rootworker, the person who is able to work with the spirit of the root or the spirit of the leaf, so to speak. It's not just healing of ordinary illnesses or afflictions. Healing also has to do with healing of relationships. It's a broader understanding of what healing and balance can mean. It's not just physical, but it's also spiritual.

HEATHER: To treat ailments that are both physical and spiritual, rootworkers believe that each object in the world has its own spiritual 'spark'. 

YVONNE: The primary thing that defines Hoodoo, Conjure, and Rootwork is an emphasis on this idea that there is a kind of spirit or energy that pervades all things, whether it's human beings, whether it's the earth, whether it's the leaf or the animal. So it really is one of the original nature-centered traditions that we can think of in the United States.

TAYANNAH LEE MCQUILLAR: It's the belief that there is a spirit in all things. 

HEATHER: Tayannah Lee McQuillar is a contemporary Hoodoo practitioner living in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

TAYANNAH: Because you're acknowledging that there's an energy in those alligator bones, those chicken bones, or whatever other materials that you're using. All of these materials have its own energy and different locations give it a different energy. So everything has its own vibe. That's why storm water is different than spring water; different collections of earth, you know, in certain locations — the cemetery versus the bank or around the bank — so there's that fundamental belief that everything has that unique spark, their unique job to do. 

HEATHER: This spiritual understanding of the world began in Central and West Africa where diverse communities had their own rich, religious and spiritual lore, practices, and traditions. From the 16th through the 19th centuries, however, European enslavers bought and traded Africans. Many had been kidnapped, captured in war, or experienced other violence before being sold to European traders. These slave traders put millions of enslaved Africans onto ships to the Americas, and many did not survive the journey. But those that did, brought with them the healing traditions, lore, and practices of their homes in Africa. And adapting these practices to the place they were forced to live and work -- this forced home -- likely began immediately. Professor Yvonne Chareau continues.

YVONNE: At the earliest points where we can identify the practices and the practitioners, they are not only drawing upon the current environment, the American environment, but they are recalling and recollecting the African styles and ways. Usually these are ways of understanding the world that come from Africa, but what I mean by that is that even notions of time as well as place are effaced in this notion of the ancestral realm, the beings that live beyond this world. 

HEATHER: Home is where the family is, and family includes ancestors. Trapped in a strange landscape, enslaved African-Americans began adapting local plants, animals, waters, lore, and stories to their ancestral practices. And this adaptation is really a type of remixing.

YVONNE: One of the places where you see this sort of blending of these elements is that African-American people would draw from European domestic medicine. They would adapt those practices with some of the African ideas, beliefs, and traditions that there were particular leaves that had power. And then there's, of course, the indigenous element. We know that people had enormously complex, ritual systems as well as healing systems, too. So African-American slaves, might have borrowed, might have adapted some of the Native American practices for healing. They are bringing those things together into this experience and into this creation of Hoodoo-Conjure.

HEATHER: African-Americans encountered European knowledge and traditions primarily through enslavement itself. But their encounters with Native American lore is much more complex. Intermarriage, enslavement by Native Americans, or the enslavement of Native Americans by Colonists were all ways these mutually oppressed communities came into contact. (It's important to note that most Native Americans find it deeply offensive to have their traditions called ‘magic’. This is a false idea perpetuated in popular culture and will be its own future episode.)

The remixing of African, Native American, and European knowledge, lore, and spiritual practices likewise created something entirely new: Hoodoo. The practices of Hoodoo, Rootwork, and Conjure weren't simply healing traditions, however: they were resistance and survival. For enslaved African-Americans, the separation of families, loss of children, physical and sexual violence, and death were constant threats. The physical, mental, and emotional stress was incredible. And with no access to physical or legal defense, Hoodoo, Rootwork, and Conjure served to heal, protect, attack, and defend when needed.

Some plants were especially powerful defenses, and their practice in Hoodoo is rich and storied. One such plant is High John, also called High John the Conqueror. Professor Yvonne Chireau again.

YVONNE: High John the Conqueror is associated with traditions coming from the Congo. Congo religion was not just animist but really emphasized the use of human, animal, and plant deities. Many African people were sent from that region to the Americas and the presence of Congolese spirituality shows up in the Hoodoo-Conjure tradition at an early point. 

So High John is believed to be embodied with a root, but he has a mythology and he has a story. He's associated with male power, he's also associated with protection. There are different interpretations as to what the root is. Some say it's a kind of ginseng, some say it's a kind of jalap root. I believe it has local variations, but it is considered to be the king of roots. And even today, he is considered one of the most prestigious healing beings in this tradition.

HEATHER: And High John's role as a protector continues to be employed by practitioners to this day.

YVONNE: I was talking to someone who was a contemporary practitioner, and she was saying how they were using these High John roots during the uprisings a few years ago of Black Lives Matter and circulating them to people, during that period. 

HEATHER: Cultural remixing wasn't limited to plant lore, however. As slavery became institutionalized within the United States, African-Americans also adapted to a new religion: Christianity. While the church was often an institution of indoctrination and oppression, it was also a source of solace and comfort. Meanwhile, the Rootworker became an established figure of authority in enslaved communities. As multiple generations of African Americans practiced Hoodoo, Rootwork, and Conjure, these practices were passed along within families. And the lore continued to grow, and to evolve, and continues to this day. Here's practitioner Tayanna Lee McQuillar again.

TAYANNAH: Everybody wasn't meant to learn the information, not even in your own family. It was about being of service to other people. And in that regard, it's a spiritual legacy, it's an inheritance, that's passed down from one's elders or teachers. Helping other people — or becoming a practitioner, if you want to call it — that's something that was called ‘passing the blessing’.

HEATHER: Tayannah's own grandmother grew up in the South in a family of thirteen children on a large plot of land, where they grew fruits, vegetables, and had a few animals. Tayannah’s grandmother wouldn't have called what she did Hoodoo, but this knowledgebase was passed within the family. One important piece of family lore was about the temperament of a family member and what jobs that person could do.

TAYANNAH: My grandmother grew up in a very organic environment. Her mean sister was the one that was in charge of planting peppers, you know, 'cause she was mean and she was tough. And the sweeter sister would plant, you know, the sweet items, your gourde vegetables and things like that. After the right person based on their temperament had either killed the chicken, or extracted the vegetables, picked the fruit, then whoever's cooking it, you had to make sure that that person did not have a negative attitude, because that would go into the food. And if you couldn't just take a minute and calm down, then somebody else would have to do it. Now, of course, there were consequences for that because, everybody was very, very busy. But it was better than ingesting poison food. Which is why my grandmother and a lot of her sisters and older cousins, they didn't eat at restaurants, or if they did, they had to know the person that was cooking because they firmly believed in knowing the energy that was coming from the chef. 

HEATHER: And Tayannah learned about this lore and much more from her grandmother as a child.

TAYANNAH: So I think one of the most poignant memories was, you know, just being home from school — either I had a day off from school or the weather was bad — and then I would just sit there with her all day after The Price is Right and The Young and the Restless went off, and talk to her about the ‘Old South’ as she remembered it, growing up and stories from her mother and just going back to the temperament of people and plants…. She had an immense amount of knowledge of plants.

HEATHER: Hoodoo was brought to the Northern States from the South by families like Tayannah's beginning in the 1910s as part of the Great Migration, when continued violence against Black southerners, as well as social, economic, and educational inequalities, compelled millions of Black Americans to once again, leave home, and search for safer places to raise their families.

After the break: How the Great Migration exposed Hoodoo to new audiences, and caused a split in how this tradition was learned.

[BREAK]

HEATHER: This is Magic in the United States. I’m Heather Freeman. 

From the end of the Civil War through emancipation, and the failure of Reconstruction, life in the South remained dangerous and volatile for Black families. 

So from 1910-1940 millions of Black Americans left the dangerous South for better social and economic security in the North, West, and Midwest — although these regions weren’t free of racism or violence either. 

The practices of Hoodoo, Rootwork, and Conjure traveled beyond the Southern States with Black American families. Professor Yvonne Chireau explains:

YVONNE: As migrants bring their arts, their religions, their spirituality, one of the things that they bring with them to these Northern cities are these Hoodoo-Conjure traditions, which really makes for an interesting mix once they get up North.

So what you find is that these rural people from the South are bringing their healing traditions, they're bringing their arts of Hoodoo and Conjure, they're bringing their charms, their magic of Hoodoo and Conjure into an urban context in which there are different needs. So as these people are moving North, like any country person who comes into the city, they're faced with a completely different world. 

HEATHER: These newly transplanted Hoodoo practitioners are suddenly faced with a serious challenge. On a practical level, they’re without their traditional plants, animals, minerals, and waters. And this lack creates a scarcity — and where some see scarcity, others see a marketing opportunity. 

YVONNE: So one of the things that happens is you begin to see the commodification of Hoodoo and Conjure in terms of selling herbs or selling charms. And you have a network of institutions and sellers and neo-capitalists in these urban arenas who are actually selling services, as well as goods of Hoodoo and Conjure. Now, they might not have grown the herbs or the roots in their backyard; maybe they ship them up, maybe someone brings them up. But it really creates this sort of interesting dynamic where the authenticity of Hoodoo-Conjure turns on whether one can sell, whether one can market.

HEATHER: This new marketplace for Hoodoo supplies and services doesn't just pop up in brick-and-mortar stores: Print media also becomes an invaluable tool for marketers.

YVONNE: Around the turn of the century, African Americans — again in the north, mainly — have established their own institutions, and one of the main and most prestigious institutions was the Black press, the Black newspaper.

In newspapers like The Chicago Defender you'll find these advertisements for different kinds of herbs, and formulas for attraction, and so forth. So it really does become part of the Black commercial culture.

HEATHER: Meanwhile, mail-order catalogs reached national audiences, extending the scope of Hoodoo products and services well beyond urban Black communities. 

YVONNE: It's not only African-American people who are taking part in these magical traditions. You have people who have established themselves as practitioners of Hoodoo who are not just African-American. 

HEATHER: This broad scope creates a shift in Hoodoo. Previously, individuals would seek out the services of family or community rootworkers. Now, some practitioners used print media to sell their services to broad audiences, a practice that is still controversial to some practitioners today. And other marketers encouraged a do-it-yourself approach to Hoodoo in order to sell more goods.

YVONNE: It becomes more of an impersonal practice: You don't need to go to a specialist, you can go do it yourself. And so people are going to shops for various items, whether they're charms, whether they're, you know, mail order, High John the Conquer…. 

HEATHER: Over the course of just two generations, the practices of Hoodoo, Rootwork, and Conjure seem to split, one form retaining its quiet, community focus, and the other a sort of polar opposite: glossy and commercially available.

But there's a middle ground that's being lived by contemporary practitioners. 

Tayanna Lee McQuillar is surrounded by the plants, animals, and waterways that would have been familiar to her ancestors in North Carolina. But growing up in New York City, she was faced with many of the same challenges as practitioners during the Great Migration.

TAYANNAH: It's really difficult to practice, what you call old-school Hoodoo in an urban environment. 

My family migrated from New York City in the early fifties. I didn't have much space. I grew up in Manhattan, in midtown Manhattan. All I had was Central Park, so, you know, I didn't have access to a lot of the materials in New York City, we didn't have a lot of green space. Whatever herbs or plants or whatever is there are compromised with chemicals or they're just not something that I would use in the practice because we're used to working with southeastern plants for the most part. They’re not just the plants, but the other materials that are necessary — certain rocks, certain animal materials — you just don't find that in most urban landscapes, unless it's like a pigeon…. 

HEATHER: And despite the impact of the Great Migration on Hoodoo, there are still families passing on Rootworking techniques, from generation to generation. While Hoodoo is certainly practiced by both men and gender-non-conforming individuals, the knowledge is primarily passed by women. Tayanna learned these practices from the women who were a strong presence in her childhood.

TAYANNAH: My mother was agnostic. My ancestors going way back were Baptist. We did not attend church. I grew up with my maternal grandmother for the majority of my childhood, and she was also kind of a practicing Christian, but she practiced on her own, she really didn't like going to church.

My grandmother would not have considered herself a Hoodoo practitioner, although she used prayer, and fasting, and remedies. She still would not consider herself a practitioner. So she taught me Protestant values and the Protestant work ethic and things like that … and Silent Generation, their virtues. 

There's so many different things I was taught: The full moon having different names and different, foods, and different things you're supposed to do…. I was taught to curtsy at the full moon and to refrain from looking through trees when the full moon is out.

HEATHER: Tayannah read Tarot cards since she was in high school, and when her grandmother became ill, Tarot became a way for her to continue the Hoodoo remix.

Tayannah: It was terrifying to me not to have a way to, to kind of have a repository for all the information. So, I started taking care of her in the last few years of her life and I started working on The Hoodoo Tarot. That was my therapy. I just decided to combine these two passions of mine. It was a way for me to heal and deal with the fact that she was not going to physically be here much longer. 

HEATHER: Hoodoo was created by enslaved African-Americans remixing the materials and lore from the world around them to survive in America. And Hoodoo is inherently creative; it has always been an act of resistance; and it is still evolving to this day.

Tayanna: Hoodoo itself is not stagnant, it's not static. It's always been very welcoming to other methods and techniques.

That's why you have people that read playing cards and, then eventually Tarot cards or they incorporated magic squares and astrology and all the, you know, all that's fine. That's part of it. And then there are some people that just chose to work with the Bible itself. That's all they had was the Word and the Holy Spirit, and that was it. And that's how they did their Hoodoo, in conjunction with the use of natural materials. And that was that.

So again, it depends on the family, and just by retaining the power of this knowledge within one's own family, outside of the gaze of the dominant culture it becomes a resistance tradition. 

HEATHER: Hoodoo is alive and thriving among families of practitioners like Tayannah’s, even if it's not visible to outsiders. For Stephanie Rose Bird, who we met at the beginning of this episode, hoodoo is one of several practices she remixes together.

Stephanie: Okay, so I am a hoodoo and a green witch and shaman, but let's stick to the Hoodoo at this moment. 

Heather: I know so many practitioners who don't fit neatly in one box — how does your practice in Hoodoo and as a, as a green witch — how do these things relate to one another in your everyday life today?

Stephanie: Beautifully. I feel a synchronicity in them. They are not the same obviously, but Hoodoo is like this beautiful practice where you can practice it as you will. So being that I am a green witch and herbalist, an aromatherapist, I tend to look at it as almost like an herbal and healing practice. So I think that there's a beautiful marriage there.

If you were to come into my home, you would be overwhelmed by these herbal aromas and vegetables, fruits that are ripe. And, there's lots of candles around and stones, crystals that are charged, and I have my grimoire…. But you know, I've kept a pretty low profile as far as being a Hoodoo. I didn't wanna let a shingle out, you know? 

HEATHER: Today, Hoodoo is practiced and passed quietly within families that have done so for generations. But the legacy of the Great Migration has also commercialized Hoodoo, and there are practitioners of many racial and ethnic identities. We see Hoodoo all over social media, often disconnected from its complex history. But for new generations of Americans who might feel spiritually disconnected in this bustle of the digital, this visibility of Hoodoo can also be a light in the darkness. Professor Yvonne Chireau.

Yvonne: We are living in a time where people are turning to the past in order to find meaning in the present. And I find that young people are doing the same thing. They're looking to their grandmothers or their grandfathers or beyond that to their ancestors. 

HEATHER: And when they find those ancestors? It might just look like home.

Next week on Magic in the United States, we'll meet millennial Asian Americans who are finding — and sometimes creating — their own spiritual and magical practices. Shamanism is a complex and fraught word, so we'll unpack this as we consider both Korean and Mongolian shamanism. Then we'll dig into remixing sorcery, from chaos magic to demonology. These practitioners come from diverse backgrounds and practices, but they share one thing in common: They're becoming future ancestors.

Magic in the United States is written and hosted by me, Heather Freeman. The show is produced by Amber Walker and edited by Lucy Perkins Our Associate Producer is Noor Gill, and the show is mixed by Jennie Cataldo. Fact-checking by Dania Suleman. The Executive Producer for PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales. The show’s music is from APM Music and Epidemic Sound,  and our project managers are Edwin Ochoa and Morgan Church. Thanks to advisors Helen Berger, Danielle Boaz, Yvonne Chireau, Abel Gomez, and Meg Whalen. Thanks to guests Stephanie Rose Bird, Yvonne Chireau, and Tayannah Lee McQuillar. This production was funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.  

Wherever you are in the United States, the East, the West, the North, or the South: remember, that magic is everywhere. I'm Heather Freeman. And I'll see you at the crossroads.