176 Culture, Identity, and Community: From Slavery to the Presentcould see and interact with ghosts and other spirits because
of being born with a caul. From the same community, Car-
rie Hamilton revealed that she also could see ghosts as a re-
sult of the veil of skin covering her face at birth. Th ose born
with this gift believe they can see the unseeable because
of their direct connection to a spirit world defi ned by dis-
tinctly West and West-Central African parameters.
See also: Africanisms; Black Folk CultureWalter C. RuckerBibliography
Georgia Writers’ Project. Drums and Shadows: Survival Studies
among the Coastal Negroes. Athens: University of Georgia
Press, 1940.
Herskovits, Melville. Life in a Haitian Valley. New York: Alfred
Knopf, 1937.
Puckett, Newbell Nile. Folk Beliefs of the Southern Negro. Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1926.Charms
Also known as amulets, gris-gris, juju bags, jacks, and pro-
tective hands, these devices formed a unique category of
spiritual implements employed by African- and Ameri-
can-born conjurers, root doctors, and diviners through-
out North American history. Typically worn around the
neck, wrist, or ankle and utilized for a variety of purposes,
charms played an important role in the lives of enslaved
and free blacks from the 17th through the 20th centuries.
Because of specifi c African beliefs regarding causality in
which “accidents” or bad fortune were understood to be
caused by malevolent actions on the part of the living or
the dead, protective charms became a central element in
the folk culture that developed among African Americans.
Notably, the use of protective charms in slave conspiracies,
revolts, and other modes of resistance created a signifi cant
amount of concern among colonial- and antebellum-era
whites.
Perhaps the best-documented example of charms
employed in an act of slave resistance would be the 1822
Charleston, South Carolina, plot initiated and led by Den-
mark Vesey. His plan to destroy Charleston was greatly
bolstered by an African-born conjurer named Gullah Jack.
Having served as a “doctor” in Charleston for 15 years, Jack’s
renown as a mystic allowed him to sway enslaved Africansthrough the give-and-take between spiritual and physical,
oral and instrumental, prescribed and improvised, society
and individual.
See also: Africanisms; Black Churches; Ring Shout; Slave
Culture; Slave Religion; Work Songs
Kevin M. HickeyBibliography
Floyd, Samuel A., Jr. Th e Power of Black Music: Interpreting Its
History from Africa to the United States. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1995.
Wilson, Olly. “Black Music as an Art Form.” Black Music Research
Journal 3 (1983):1–22.
Caul
Th e caul, or veil, is a membrane or amniotic sac covering
the face of a child at birth. Although the caul has various
meanings in a number of cultures, according to the folk
traditions of enslaved Africans throughout the Americas, it
was typically a sign that an infant would eventually be able
to communicate with ghosts, predict future events, and
have other uncanny abilities. Th e nearly identical meaning
of the caul among Africans in the Kingdom of Dahomey,
the Gold Coast, Dutch Guyana, Jamaica, Haiti, and the
American South as a sign of otherworldly wisdom and an
innate ability to commune with spiritual forces demon-
strates that enduring African spiritual concepts permeated
communities throughout the African Diaspora. According
to noted anthropologist Melville Herskovits, there were
certain aspects of abnormal births, including the caul, that
predisposed certain children to be seen as developing the
ability to manipulate spiritual forces. Indeed, being born
with certain birthmarks, a caul, or other distinguishing
congenital features oft en made certain children likely can-
didates to be future root doctors or conjurers. Th ese no-
tions were ubiquitous features of African American culture
in the South as late as the 1930s and beyond.
Th e numerous interviews performed by the Georgia
Writers’ Project during the Great Depression illuminate the
continuing signifi cance of the caul in communities across
the American South. Martha Page of Yamacraw, Georgia—
an early 20th-century community of ex-slaves from both
coastal South Carolina and Georgia—claimed that she