HOODOO
No discussion of the African essence of the spiri-
tual life of African Americans can be complete
without an understanding of Hoodoo. Hoodoo is
part of the larger African American spiritual
tradition that includesconjure,rootwork,mojo,
tricking,fixing, and sometimesVoodoo. Indeed,
these terms are frequently used interchangeably.
These synonyms or semi-synonyms are often sub-
sumed under the larger rubricconjureorconjur-
ing. This entry traces the origins of hoodoo, looks
at its history in the United States and how that his-
tory represents an evolution of African spiritual-
ity, and briefly assesses its impact on African
American culture.
Background and DescriptionMaking a distinction between the “Latin” and
“English” cultural zones in America, some schol-
ars point to the different terms used to identify
African American spiritual traditions. Whereas
the termvoodoowas primarily used in French-
influenced New Orleans, the termhoodoo was
favored in Missouri. In southern Florida, with
the influence of Cuban immigrants and Santeria,
the same tradition was known as Nañigo.
Etymologically, however, scholars point out that
Hoodoo is a phonetic approximation of the Ewe
word Hudu, which is still used today. In West
Africa, Hudu is a well-regarded religious tradition
passed on through family priestly lines.
Hoodoo, in its most general sense, can be
defined as a system of magic, divination, and
herbalism widespread among the enslaved
Africans in America. The goal of Hoodoo is to
allow people access to supernatural forces to
improve their daily lives in areas such as gam-
bling, divination, cursing one’s enemies or remov-
ing a curse, treatment of sickness, and many of the
daily troubles of life. Some researchers, however,
have attempted to distinguish the specialists
within the broader field of conjure. They argue
that conjurers can be divided into three categories:
hoodooists, healers, and readers. According to
this classification, readers reveal a client’s future,
healers use herbal medicine to cure illness, while
hoodooists specialize in evil and its cure. The fact
is that, as it is the case in Africa and the African
culture in general, many priests and priestesses
practice all three, making such distinctions
ineffective.
How widespread was Hoodoo? Archaeologists
have uncovered remains in Virginia and
Maryland. Hoodoo caches in Black dwellings date
from as early as 1702. Furthermore, Hoodoo and
conjuring were not the domains of a single state or
region. Long present in Louisiana, Hoodoo had
spread throughout the South by 1860. During the
1850s, for example, Abbé Emmanuel Henri
Dieudonné Domenech, a Catholic missionary,
reported an encounter with Hoodoo along the
Texas and Mexico border.
Although related, and in some circles used
interchangeably, Hoodoo must be distinguished
from the African American term,Voodoo, and in
turn from the African and Haitian termVodoun.
Voodoo originated in the religion of Africans. It
has its roots in West Africa in countries such as
Benin, Togo, and Burkina Faso—just to name a
few—and is practiced among the Fon, Ewe, and
other West African ethnic groups. One of the pri-
mary sources of this religious system in the United
States came from the migration of liberated and
enslaved Africans who migrated from the island of
Saint-Domingue at the onset of the Haitian
Revolution. It is argued that African American
Voodoo initially formed an integral whole and
was an organized syncretic religion, as isVodoun
in Haiti or Santeriain Cuba, but it gradually
disintegrated while its folk beliefs persisted.Links to Africa
Hoodoo is not a formal religion as much as it is a
spiritual and folk belief with strong links to African
traditions. The center of this African American folk
tradition was New Orleans, where the worship of a
snake god, drumming, dancing, singing, and ani-
mal sacrifice was customary, as in Haiti and West
Africa. The most prominent figures of that early
tradition were the two Marie Laveau, Mother and
Daughter, who had a large following and whose
reign stretched from the 1830s to the 1880s. By the
20th century, Voodoo as an organized religious cult
had been transformed, but did not disappear.316 Hoodoo