250 Culture, Identity, and Community: From Slavery to the PresentRoot Doctors
Root doctors, also known as rootworkers, were African
American practitioners of magic and herbal medicine who
appeared during the colonial and antebellum eras, partly in
response to inadequate medical care and the injustices of
slavery. Th e title “root doctor” refers to practitioners’ ten-
dency to rely heavily on roots in their treatments. Histori-
cally, there have been two types of root doctors: those who
also practiced magic and those who did not. For African
American magic workers, known as conjurers or hoodoo
doctors, treating illnesses with roots and herbs was merely
part of their repertoire. Some root doctors, however, fo-
cused on healing without engaging in other activities com-
monly practiced by hoodoo doctors, such as fortune-telling
and making luck charms.
In actual practice, the lines between the two catego-
ries of root doctors are blurry, especially before the late
19th century, when the eff orts of black educators to eradi-
cate so-called superstition from the black community suc-
ceeded in convincing many African Americans of conjure’s
supposed backwardness. For example, early root doctors
frequently saw their healing as a magical pursuit and relied
on the aid of animistic spirits that purportedly inhabited the
botanical and zoological elements that practitioners em-
ployed in their cures. Th e role of magic is best illustrated by
the ailments that root doctors were called on to treat. Some
were commonly recognized medical concerns, such as head-
aches or sore throats. Others, however, were clearly magical
illnesses. Among the most common of the latter were reptil-
ian inhabitants of the body, insanity brought on by curses,
and locked bowels, a kind of terminal constipation.
Regardless of their acceptance or rejection of magic,
root doctors possessed notable abilities to help with both
physical and mental complaints. In the days before eman-
cipation, when gaining access to medical professionals was
diffi cult for many slaves, rootwork was a viable alternative.
Among the slaves’ many herbal remedies were the use of
horehound to treat colds, dried watermelon seeds to expel
kidney stones, and mullein for swollen joints. Aft er the de-
mise of slavery, rootworkers survived as a comparatively
inexpensive substitute for doctors. Of course, although
some of the root doctors’ magic-based cures were no more
medically effi cacious than placebos, others have since been
scientifi cally proven to have benefi cial eff ects. Modern
mental health care professionals have also pointed out thatcolumn titled the “Paris Pepper Pot,” which covered race re-
lations in France and how African Americans fared in Paris
compared to America. Th e “Paris Pepper Pot” was also syn-
dicated in the New York Amsterdam News and the Chicago
Defender. In 1930, Rogers attended the coronation of Haile
Selassie of Ethiopia, yet his most rewarding overseas job
was going to Ethiopia in 1935 to cover the Italo-Ethiopian
War (1935–1936). Th rough the Pittsburgh Courier, Rogers
was the only African American to report back fi rsthand ac-
counts of war activities in Ethiopia.
Aft er leaving in Ethiopia in 1936, Rogers traveled to Ge-
neva to attend the League of Nations hearings on the Italo-
Ethiopian war and reported through the Courier what the
Leagues’ Committee of Th irteen had proposed to do about
the war. A few days later, Rogers traveled to London and
lectured before Sir Percy Vincent, Lord Mayor of London,
and other British dignitaries about the crisis confronting the
Ethiopians. Aft er settling back in New York, Rogers became
a major contributor and advisor for the Writers’ Program.
As a historian and journalist, one of Rogers’s biggest compli-
ments came from the American journalist and social critic
H. L. Mencken, who paid Rogers $500 to publish “Th e Negro
in Europe” in the American Mercury (May 1930) and who in
1945 personally praised Rogers for writing his pioneering
work about black and white miscegenation, Sex and Race.
As a self-trained historian, Rogers did pioneering ar-
chival historical research that many scholars today would
classify as African Diaspora history. Rogers’s contribution
to world history was so infl uential that, in 1954, he was pre-
sented with a gold medal at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria by
Ethiopia’s Emperor Haile Selassie (Ras Tafari) in recognition
of his contribution to the study of African history. Consid-
ering the handicaps of not having a research assistant and
traveling throughout Europe, Africa, and America at his
own expense without any philanthropic or institutional sup-
port, it is amazing that he accomplished as much as a scholar
before he passed away in New York on March 26, 1966.
See also: African Diaspora; Harlem Renaissance; Woodson,
Carter Godwin
Th abiti A. AsukileSources
Asukile, Th abiti A. “J. A. Rogers: Th e Scholarship of an Or-
ganic Intellectual.” Th e Black Scholar 36, no. 2–3
(Summer–Fall 2006):35–50.
Turner, W. Burghardt. “J. A. Rogers: Portrait of an Afro-American
Historian.” Th e Black Scholar 6, no. 5 (1975):38–55.