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Conjure and Christianity in the Nineteenth Century: Religious Elements in African American Magic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2018

Yvonne Chireau
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Extract

Shortly before the turn of the nineteenth Century, an amateur collector of Negro Spirituals and folklore recounted a conversation that she had had with an unidentified African American clergyman. According to the collector, the clergyman, “one of the most scholarly and noted ministers of the colored race,” admitted that, even as a professed Christian, he found himself “under the influences of voodooism” and other African occult practices. He explained that, as a young pastor, he had grown “completely discouraged” after numerous unsuccessful attempts to attract new worshipers into his congregation until one day an unexpected visitor happened his way:

I was in my study praying when the door opened and a little Conjure man came in and said softly: “You don't understand de people. You must get you a hand as a friend to draw 'em. Ef you will let me fix you a luck charm, you'll git 'em.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Religion and American Culture , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , Summer 1997 , pp. 225 - 246
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture 1997

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References

Notes

1. Murphy, Jeanette Robinson, “The Survival of African Music in America,” Appletons Popular Science Monthly 55 (May-October 1899): 663.Google Scholar The hand, in African American magic traditions, is believed to be spiritually efficacious and powerful for its owner. Such objects were featured elements in the magical repertoire of black occult specialists. For descriptions and ingredients of African American hands and other charms, see Haskins, James, Voodoo and Hoodoo: Their Tradition and Craft as Revealed by Actual Practitioners (New York: Stein and Day, 1978), 155-70Google Scholar; and Puckett, Newbell Niles, Folk Beliefs of the Southern Negro (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1926), 231-41.Google Scholar

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39. Oral narrative, Rev. P. L. Harvey, Lynchburg, Virginia, University of Virginia Special Collections, n.d., folder 2, heading 279, 1-4.

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