Topic: Early Versions
Child rearing practices in cotton-growing Alabama exposed slaves to a variety of beliefs. Infants spent their early days with their mothers. Then women were sent back to the fields, and nursed four times a day. Ank Bishop recalled:
“All the women on Lady Liza’s place had to go the field every day, and them what had sucklin’ babies would come in about nine o’clock in the mornin and when the bell ring at twelve and sucklin them. One women tended to all of them in one house.” [1]
Eugene Genovese found that, contrary to popular notions, those women actually supervised older pre-adolescent children, who in turn took care of younger children. [2] One of his examples was a planter living in Marengo County, across the river from Sumter County. [3]
By the age of eight, children could do chores and help pick cotton. Around age twelve, they were sent to the fields. Boys, especially, then spent time with predominantly male work groups. [4] Instead of an age-group initiation that existed in Africa, they were assimilated slowly into their gender groups.
The division of control meant specific beliefs were melded into general ones shared by everyone raised on a plantation. Details, especially those related to complex cosmologies, were lost, and core values were distilled. Often those most compatible with Baptist theology survived longest.
The Kongo had been exposed to Roman Catholicism before they were captured. Michael Gomez said they thought “the recently dead were divided into the evil bankugu and the good banzambi bamungu. The former dwelled in the forest or were forced to wander about homeless. The banzambi bampungu, however, lived in the land of the good spirits, mpemba.” [5]
These beliefs were adapted to Protestantism by two individuals who talked with interviewers for the Federal Writers Project in the late 1930s. Lucindia Washington said “We’s got one good spirit an’ one bad un. One goes to heaben an’ de udder stays on earth.” [6] Bishop believed:
“This is the evil spirit what the Bible tells about when it says a person has got two spirits, a good one and a evil one. They good spirit goes to a place of happiness and rest, and you don’t see it no more, but the evil spirit ain’t got no place to go. Its dwelling place done tore down when the body died, and it’s just wanderin and waitin for Gabriel to blow his trumpet.” [7]
As mentioned in the post for 13 March 2019, the Mende believed the dead required help crossing into the land of the ancestors, where they became guardians for their descendants. In Sumter County, they only appeared as harbingers of death, and then materialized as dreams or visions. Despite their rarity, they were heeded.
Tom Moore’s son was struck by an automobile. He said “I ought to have been expectin it ’cause I dreamed about white horses, but I just said to myself, Shucks, ain’t nothin to that. But it bothered me mightily and I told Jerry that same Saturday, ‘Be careful with them mules’.” [8]
Similarly, Amy Chapman’s daughter-in-law remembered two weeks before Chapman died, she “made the long trip to town to see them. ‘She said the spirits told her to come and see us, and I was afraid then that somthin was gonna happen’.” [9]
There was general agreement among the Civil War generation in Sumter County that spirits were most active between a death and a burial, and that burials must be done quickly. Josh Horn, who became a pastor at Mount Nebo Primitive Baptist church, [10] told Ruby Pickens Tartt “I don’t exactly believe in ghosties.” [11] Then, he told her:
“I head Mr. Marshall Lee say he was ridin on home one night and a woman stepped out in the road and say, ‘Marshall, let me ride.’ He say, ‘My horse won’t tote double.’ She say, ‘Yes it will,’ and she jump up behind him. And that horse bucked and jumped nigh about from under him, but when he got home, she warn’t there. He say his sister had just died and it might have been her.” [12]
When his own wife died on a Saturday, Horn turned the mirror against the wall and stopped the clock. [13] He knew her “spirit had done gone ’cause she had a home in the gloryland waitin for here. Them is evil spirits what hangs around, or comes back, ’cause they ain’t got to resting place to go to.” Even so, he believed that if her body “stay in the house over Sunday it sure bring death in the family ’fore the year is out.” [14]
One reason Horn was sure her spirit was safe was she hadn’t suffered a bad death, like the ones of the Igbo mentioned in the post for 29 November 2020. He called a doctor, because he knew her illness “warn’t no conjure, cause Alice never had no fallin out with nobody in her life, and you got to have enemies to get conjured.” [15]
Conjuring, hoodoo, and voodoo often are treated as the same thing by whites. Melville Herskovits said the first tended to be practiced by women who used herbs, while the second was associated with men who used magic and animals. [16] The last was a sect found in New Orleans and Haiti. [17]
Carrie Dykes admitted she saw a “conjure woman” in Sumter County when “I had somethin’ in my ankle and I don’t care where I walked when I come back home I’d be lame for two day.” [18] The woman told her:
“‘somebody throwed at you. Grudge what you got.’ But she say she could uphand anything brought before her, so I asked here to work on me. She took to the house and got three things, I don’t what they was, but they was three things she put on my ankle and rubbed it. And that was just as well as the other one, and it ain’t bothered me a bit since!” [19]
Dykes worked as a midwife, and suspected the conjure woman indulged in tricks as much as she did legitimate cures. Another midwife, who was the aunt of Carrie Pollard, was summoned to Sumterville by a white woman. While there she had a dream “somthin done happened to her children and that they was in trouble.” [20] The white woman told her to see the local fortune teller, who
“cut the cards, and then she looked up and told Aunt Cynthy, ‘All you children and your husband done gone and I can’t tell you where they’s at’.” [21]
Cynthy was a free woman, as were her children. The white woman sent a messenger who discovered Cynthy’s husband’s master was taking the children to Mississippi to sell into slavery. A posse was dispatched, and the children saved [22] because Cynthy and the white woman shared a belief in spirits.
Rich Amerson and his sister, Earthy Ann Coleman, both claimed to practice hoodoo. She said “I could conjure with little animals and pick up folks’ tracks so good, and keep them wondering where to find them.” [23] Amerson intimated he did both legitimate work utilizing animals like lizards, and practiced tricks on people. [24]
Jake Green recalled the owner of the plantation next to his was so mean, his slaves continually ran away. “One nigger, Rich Parker, runned off one time an’ whilst he gone he seed a hoodoo man, so when he got back Mr. Brasefiel’ tuck sick two or three weeks.” [25]
Hilliard Johnson remembered right after “Surrender,” the sheriff still was using dogs to track Freedmen and “det sot de dogs on dat nigger and ’fo’ yer knowed hit dat nigger done lef’ dere and had dem dogs treein a nekked tree. ’Twa’n’t nobody dere. Dey calls hit hoodooin’ de dogs. And I’se seen hit more times than one.” [26]
[they set the dogs on the man and before you knowed it that man done left there and had them dogs treeing a naked tree. There was nobody there. They calls it hoodooing the dogs. And I’ve seen it more times than once.] [27]
Once individuals accepted the idea both good and bad spirits existed, they learned to differentiate between the two. Oliver Bell knew he confronted a bad one while he was passing a graveyard “one night, ridin on about midnight, and something come draggin a chain by me like a dog, and I got down off my hose and couldn’t see nothin with no chain, so I got back on the horse and there right in front of me was a jack-er-lantern, with the brightest light you ever seed, tryin to lead me off, and every time I’d get back in the road it would head me off again. You sure will get lost if you follow a jack-er-lantern.” [28]
Hattie Harris told Newbell Niles Puckett that “Jack sold himself to the devil,” but when his time was due he tricked him. When Jack died, he was condemned to wander the Earth because neither God nor Satan would let him in. [29] He became homeless like those mentioned in the post for 29 November 2020 who died Bad Deaths.
George Young justified the existence of good spirits by telling Tartt that “Christ appeared to the apostles, didn’t He, after He been dead?” [30] Then he told her:
“I’s seed folks done been dead just as natural in the day as you is now. [. . .] But I ain’t scared of ’em. I gets out the path plenty times to let ’em by, and if you can see ’em, walk around ’em. If you can’t see ’em, then they’ll walk around you. If they gets too plentiful, I just hangs a horseshoe upside down over the door, and don’t have no more trouble.” [31]
Bishop also connected ghosts with Protestantism. He said “spirits ain’t nothing but a lot of folks out of Christ. Haints ain’t nothin but somebody died out of Christ and his spirit ain’t at rest, just in a wanderin condition in the world.” [32] He added:
“I ain’t scared of them, though. I passes them and goes right on plowin, but if you wants them to get out of your way, all you gotta do is just turn your head least bit and look back. They gone just like that!” [33]
End Notes
1. Ank Bishop. “Gabriel Blow Soft! Gabriel Blow Loud!” Transcribed by Ruby Pickens Tartt for the WPA’s Slave Narratives collection from Alabama. [34] 126–128 in Virginia Pounds Brown and Laurella Owens. Toting the Lead Row. University: The University of Alabama Press, 1981. 126–127. Owens modernized Tartt’s transcriptions to make them easier to read. [35]
2. Eugene Genovese. Roll, Jordan Roll. New York: Pantheon Press, 1974. This section is based on his discussion of “Children,” 502–518.
3. Marengo Planter. “This Season’s Work.” American Cotton Planter 2:280:September 1854. Cited by Genovese. 509.
4. I started thinking about gender differences after reading Brown and Owens’ comment that Benjamin Botkin [36] thought belief in Hoodoo was stronger among men than women because they worked in the fields and thus had less contact with European beliefs. [37]
5. Michael A. Gomez. Exchanging Our Country Marks. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998. 147.
6. Lucindia Washington. Transcribed by Alice S. Barton for the WPA’s Slave Narratives from Alabama. Reprinted by Alan Brown and David Taylor as “A Slave Story.” 99–102 in Gabr’l Blow Sof’. Livingston, Alabama: Livingston Press, 1997. 101–102.
7. Bishop. 127.
8. Tom Moore. “Tom Moore and His Death Money.” Transcribed by Tart. 77–79 in Brown and Owens. 78.
9. Ruby Pickens Tartt. “Amy Chapman’s Funeral.” 79–83 in Brown and Owens. 82.
10. Brown and Taylor. 70.
11. Josh Horn. “Blow Your Horn, Josh.” Transcribed by Tartt. 105–107 in Brown and Owens. 106.
12. Horn. 106.
13. Ruby Pickens Tartt. “Alice.” Southwest Review 34:192–195:Spring 1949. 100–105 in Brown and Owens. Mirror, 101; clock, 102. These beliefs were shared with whites, who may have been the source for the practice. Puckett notes house slaves often were the ones asked to handle mirrors and clocks when someone died. [38] The association between mirrors and spirits is much older, and may go back to the ancient pan-Mediterranean culture mentioned in the post for 19 May 2019.
14. Tartt, Alice. 102. Her source was Josh Horn. A similar belief was discussed in the post for 29 November 2020.
15. Tartt, Alice. 101. Tartt said Chapman “had no use for her black neighbors and would not allow any of them to come near her house. Privately, I often thought she was afraid of being conjured. [39]
16. Melville J. Herskovits. The Myth of the Negro Past. Boston: Beacon Press, 1958 edition. It first was published in 1941. 239–240.
17. Wikipedia. “Louisiana Voodoo” and “Haitian Vodou.”
18. Ruby Pickens Tartt. “Carrie Dykes: Midwife.” 21–29 in From Hell to Breakfast. Edited by Mody C. Boatright and Donald Day. Austin: Texas Folk-Lore Society, 1944. 66–71 in Brown and Owens. 70.
19. Tartt, Dykes. 70.
20. Carrie Pollard. “A Husband Couldn’t Be Bought.” Transcribed by Tartt, WPA. 132–133 in Brown and Owens. 133.
21. Pollard. 133.
22. Pollard. 133.
23. Brown and Owens. 157.
24. Rich Amerson. “Hoodoo Doctor.” Transcribed by Tartt. 115–117 in Brown and Owens.
25. Jake Green. “A Conju’ Didn’ Wuk.” Transcribed by Tartt, WPA. 47–49 in Brown and Taylor. 48.
26. Hilliard Johnson. “Hoodooin’ de Dogs.” Transcribed by Tartt, WPA. 83–86 in Brown and Taylor. 86. This is the same use of herbs to obscure a trail that was mentioned by Coleman.
27. Brown and Taylor did not modernize Tartt’s transcriptions.
28. Oliver Bell. “That Tree Was My Nurse.” Transcribed by Tartt, WPA. 134–137 in Brown and Owens. 136. Uncle Remus told a boy “While I was crossing the branch just now, I come up with a Jacky-my-lantern, and she was burning worse than a bunch of lightning-bugs. I knew she was fixing to lead me into the quagmire down in the swamp, and I steered clear.” [40]
29. Newbell Niles Puckett. Folk Beliefs of the Southern Negro. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1926. 135–136. Hattie Harris was from Columbus, Mississippi. Most of Joel Chandler Harris’ tale was about a blacksmith who tricked the “Bad Man.” He noted: “This story is popular on the coast and among the rice-plantations, and, since the publication of some of the animal-myths in the newspapers, I have received a version of it from a planter in southwest Georgia; but it seems to me to be an intruder among the genuine myth-stories of the negroes. It is a trifle too elaborate. Nevertheless, it is told upon the plantations with great gusto, and there are several versions in circulation.” [42] Cydney Grannan said the tale of Stingy Jack had Irish origins. [43] Bell did not mention it to Tartt.
30. George Young. “Peter Had No Keys ’ceptin His.” Transcribed by Tartt, WPA. 120–122 in Brown and Owens. 122.
31. Young. 122.
32. Bishop. 127.
33. Bishop. 127.
34. For more information on Tartt and the WPA Slave Narratives project, see the post for 23 January 2019.
35. Laurella Owens. “Introduction.” 59–60 in Brown and Owens. 60.
36. B. A. Botkin. A Treasure of Southern Folklore. New York: Crown, 1949. 631–633.
37. Brown and Owens. 153.
38. Puckett. 80.
39. Tartt, funeral. 80.
40. Joel Chandler Harris. “Jacky-My-Lantern.” 160–166 in Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1921 revised edition. 160. Dialect removed. Puckett brought this to my attention. [41]
41. Puckett. 134. He was using the 1917 version.
42. Joel Chandler Harris. 160.
43. Cydney Grannan. “Why Do We Carve Pumpkins at Halloween?” Britannica website.
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