AFRICAN AMERICANS GETTING INTO THE...

AFRICAN AMERICANS:GETTING

INTO THE SPIRIT

George Brandon

Portraits TOC

When I look back over the years and ask myself why Ihave done the things I have done and whether or notthey were right, I see a path studded with ambiguities.

It is no different now as I look over these field notes and reportsfrom over a decade ago. My handwriting no longer looks likemine, and while the photocopied type is only now beginning tofade, I scarcely recognize who that graduate student was, somuch the same yet so different am I now from him. It is a truismin anthropology that fieldwork is the rite of passage into theprofession, and often the first fieldwork marks anthropologistsfor life, having untold ramifications for their perspective towardthe profession, the world, and themselves. In this essay I wouldlike to relate some of the experiences of my own rite of passageinto anthropology, provide a profile of the people and issuesinvolved, as well as some incidents, both illustrative and pecu-liar, that dot the road between who I am and who I was then.Anthropologists should write about these things more often.

THE INNER-CITY

SUPPORT SYSTEMS PROJECT

The Inner-City Support Systems Project (ICSS) had been inprogress for three years when I was brought on board in 1980.Funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and headedby Dr. Vivian Garrison, ICSS was an experimental program inmedical anthropology and community psychiatry based at theCollege of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Newark.1

The project had several phases to it, but I was involved primari-ly in ethnographic fieldwork. A black clinical psychologist, anHispanic psychiatrist, and Dr. Garrison herself, who has spentseveral years working in psychiatric settings, brought up theclinical phase of the project. Besides them there were psychiatricsocial workers, nurses, and students employed at various timesto carry out library and field research. I was a graduate studentmyself and, at the time, working on my dissertation. Dr.Garrison and I both shared an interest in Afro-Cuban Santeria,the subject of my dissertation, and it was because of her interestand knowledge of Santeria that I was first put in contact withher by a friend.2

The goals of ICSS were to investigate and document the

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range of folk healers practicing in the city of Newark, NewJersey, to determine who they were, what they did, the way theythought about disease and therapy, what kinds of problemsclients brought to the healers, and what the clients expectedfrom them. The degree to which it was either desirable or feasi-ble to try and bring about a collaboration between the folk prac-titioners and medical doctors was another issue we investigated.We also hoped to accumulate the basic knowledge that wouldallow us to discriminate between deviant and orthodox practi-tioners from the various folk traditions, assess the mental healthof the practitioners, and show how the healers’ styles of deliver-ing care reflected the culture of the community to which theybelonged.

In the years 1979–1982 Newark, a port city and one of theoldest cities in the United States, had a population of 329,250people densely packed into an area of 24 square miles. The city’spopulation had been declining since the 1920s as residentsmoved to the surrounding metropolitan area because there waslittle land in Newark available for residential development. Themost prosperous segments of Newark’s population had movedto the suburbs while keeping their jobs in the city. (After the fiveo’clock traffic jams, Newark had virtually no middle class.)Nearly half of Newark’s residents receive some form of publicfinancial assistance, and unemployment is consistently higherthan the national average. Per capita income in 1980 was $8,680in 1979 dollars. All in all it was not a pretty picture. It wasbecoming even uglier as Newark’s decaying housing stock suc-cumbed increasingly to neglect, arson, and accident, while AIDSand crack cocaine addiction slowly crept over the horizon of theearly 1980s.

About fifty percent of Newark’s striving and ethnicallydiverse population at that time was comprised of people ofAfrican descent: native Black Americans, West Indians,Africans, Central American Blacks. The remainder were from arange of European groups, (Italians, Poles, Greeks, Portuguese,Gypsies, Jews, etc.), Asians (Chinese, Japanese, Indians, andFilipinos), and an explosively expanding Hispanic population,most of whom traced their ancestry to the island of Puerto Rico,other Caribbean islands, or Central America. I was born andraised in Newark and never left it until I was eighteen. So, notonly did I conduct fieldwork with my own Black American eth-

4 PORTRAITS OF CULTURE

nic group but the community in which I conducted the researchwas also my own. I was born there, I grew up there, I lived andworked there.

The fieldwork was parceled out between three teams—White, Hispanic, and Black—each staffed with fieldworkers ofthe appropriate ethnicity. For two years I directed the Blackteam, which never consisted of more than four people and formost of the time of three. Besides myself there was a nurse andDr. W, the clinical psychologist. Ms. B, the nurse, and I did thefieldwork and interviews, with Dr. W coming in on occasion todo some interviewing and psychological assessments. It was myjob to push the effort forward, and provide ICSS with its sampleof fifteen Black healers. The project kept a sort of ethnographicscoreboard, a large green board with brightly colored pushpinsin the columns representing each of the teams and the minimalinformation to be gotten from every healer in the sample. TheBlack team’s section of the scoreboard looked vacuous and spot-ty when I started work with the project. My job was to fill it up.

BLACK FOLK MEDICINE

Black folk medicine developed within the crucible of Americanslavery. As involuntary immigrants living in poor conditions,enslaved Africans were subject to a variety of health problems,some of which were new to them, being linked either to the con-ditions of enslavement or to the ecology of the areas in whichthey lived.3 On large southern plantations the changes of seasonwreaked havoc in crowded, unventilated slave cabins: tubercu-losis and pneumonia in the cold months; dysentery, typhoidfever, and tapeworms in the warm; rats, lice, and ringworm allyear round. The resources for help were limited and includedthe slave master, a professional medical doctor the master mightcall in, and the slave healer.

The master depended on the popular medicine of his day,which amounted to whatever folk knowledge he had, whateverwas in manuals concerning the care and maintenance of slaves,and ultimately whatever was in his medicine cabinet. Manywere the cases of serious illness where the master’s medicinecabinet was exhausted without saving a single life. Calling in amedical doctor did not always work either, for in the seven-

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teenth and eighteenth centuries medical science was not welldeveloped and doctors did not know the causes of many of thediseases they were treating.

Meanwhile, in their own cabins and barracks, enslavedAfricans had a separate health care system of their own,unknown to or avoided by whites.4 This system of slave folkmedicine used empirical and magicoreligious techniques basedmostly on African precedents that slaves adapted to local cir-cumstances, along with some borrowings from European andNative American sources as well.

The figure from which the slave healers descended was theAfrican priest or priestess who was also a diviner and medicalpractitioner. Slave healers worked on both the mind and bodyusing herbs, plants, and animal substances, as well as charms,prayers, and rituals. Enslaved in the American South, they werepriests without a priesthood, who became ever more marginalas the new religion of Christianity spread through the African-American population in the eighteenth and nineteenth cen-turies, eroding whatever remnants of African traditional reli-gions had persisted up to that point. The true ending of slaveryin 1865 when the Civil War ended, followed by the failure of theReconstruction Movement, and the beginnings of legalizedracial segregation in the South, occurred before the developmentof a scientific understanding of infectious disease. After that,White and Black medicine, inhabiting largely separate worlds,developed along very different paths. The gap between the the-ories and practices of African-American folk medicine andWestern-style professional medicine is even wider today than itwas during the slavery era.

Only in the past forty years or so have social scientistsbegun to give Black folk medicine any serious attention. Most ofthat attention has been focused on rural communities in thesouthern states, thus bypassing most southern cities as well asthe urban areas of the North, Southwest, and Midwest to whichBlacks have been migrating for the past one hundred years.5

While it is true that the rural South was the matrix of African-American folk medicine, if we want to understand the relevanceof this tradition to the lives of contemporary African Americanswe will need to do a lot more research in urban areas, and espe-cially those outside the South.6 Given the continuing abysmal


state of race relations in the United States and the secrecy thatAfrican-American folk healers frequently use to veil their prac-tices from Whites, one could also argue that much of this workmight best be done by African-American anthropologists whoknow the local urban communities well.7

BLACK URBAN FOLK HEALERS

The first thing we had to do was find some healers. Popularnotions about Black folk healers were discouraging: Black folkhealers were all in the rural south; most people could get to adoctor some way, so they didn’t need Black folk healers any-more; and because people didn’t need the healers anymore, theyhad ceased to exist. Extremely secretive, Black folk healers werespooky little men with red eyes, charlatans who got rich off themisery of gullible people. Black folk healers were uneducated,ignorant, and backward just like the people that went to them.Nonetheless, there were some healers out there; it was easier tofind them than we had thought, and they were not like we hadbeen led to believe.

Our sample of African-American urban folk healers came toconsist of fifteen people. What made them healers was that, on aregular basis and in structured series of encounters, they pro-vided counseling, advice, and other services aimed at relievingthe symptoms or improving the functioning of people the pro-fessional medical system would define as having medical,social, or mental health problems. What made them folk healerswas that their identity as healers was based on criteria indepen-dent of the biomedical health care system. Instead their legiti-macy derived from innate “gifts” from God; from their trainingin churches, occult schools or other religious organizations;from their own abilities; or solely from the beliefs of theirclients. Over a two-year period I interviewed them, observedtheir church services and other rituals, and documented theirinteractions with clients in the field.

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Religious Store Owners

Of the fifteen healers we classified seven as “religious storeowners.” These were all men, mostly fifty years of age or older,whose healing work was restricted to their store hours. Theywere surprisingly secular in orientation and were either unaffili-ated with or antipathetic toward religious organizations. Theybelonged to neither church nor cult. Their training came fromobservation and self-instruction. It was among this group thatwe actually did find rootworkers8 and sorcerers. Three of thereligious store owners claimed to know malign magic and werewilling to make up magical works for the person who wanted togain power over others. One religious store owner conducted amail-order business in “voodoo works.” Even if they would notactually perform the rootwork, they would teach customers howto do it if they bought the appropriate items at the store andwere willing to pay a fee. Requests like this, however, made uponly a small part of their daily work.

The main concerns of their customers can be summed up inthree words: health, wealth, and love. To deal with these con-cerns the religious store is well-stocked with herbs, candles, oils,occult literature, books of practical magic, and a shrewd, perspi-cacious owner who observes and assists hundreds of clients ayear.

Spiritual Healers and Their Clients

The remaining eight people we designated “spiritual healers.”These healers all hold to a spiritualist doctrine asserting theexistence of invisible spiritual beings that communicate readilywith humans. For the spiritual healer the dividing line betweenthe living and the dead, the spirit and the body, is very thinindeed. Dead people appeared to them and they often soughtthe help of named spirits other than God, Jesus, or Satan. Thesespirits might penetrate their bodies, serving as sources of wis-dom and help, or, depending on their personal history and levelof spiritual development, cause illness and other troubles. The


spiritual healer studies this other world and cultivates relation-ships with its unseen inhabitants for the benefit of him/herselfand others. All but one of the spiritual healers were mediumsable to communicate with spirits.

The sample of spiritual healers comprised two males and sixfemales, ranging from thirty-one to seventy-eight years old.Four of them had been born in the northeastern region of theUnited States, and three in the southern states. For one therewas no information. The parents of six of the healers weremigrants from the South and two of them claimed ethnicallymixed ancestry (Black American and Haitian in one case, BlackAmerican and Native American in the other.) High school wasthe upper limit of formal education for most of the healers butthere was a broad range overall. At one end was Peter Niles, theoldest healer, who had no formal education and could barelyread or write; at the other end was the youngest healer, YansanaAdu, a thirty-one-year-old woman with a master’s degree intheater.9 While the younger healers tended to be much moreeducated than their elders, they also seem to have entered thehealing work at a later age, turning to it after completing theiracademic studies.

Two healers practiced mediumship and spiritual healing outof their homes. One of them, Yansana Adu, was a member of anall-Black offshoot of Santeria called the Yoruba ReligiousAcademy. Adu had apprenticed herself to a senior priestess inthe Academy but had not yet been initiated into the priesthood.She also worked as a medium in Puerto Rican spiritist sessionsfrom time to time. The sample also included four ordained min-isters from spiritual churches and an apprentice minister.10

Three of the ordained ministers and the apprentice came fromthe same spiritual church organization, the Ethiopian Church ofOvercoming Power. Rev. Peter Niles, whom we will meet later,was a member of this organization. The remaining minister’schurch was affiliated with a different spiritual church associa-tion and was called the Real Temple of Applied Truth.

Literature and folklore often contain descriptions of unusualsigns or events surrounding the birth or early life of African-American healers that serve as charters for their later roles.Typical signs are being born with a veil or caul covering thehead, being born the seventh child or the first child after twins,being a child who was saved from death by means of ritual, orbeing born with spirits.11 Such variations of remarkable birth

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themes were not typical of the Newark spiritual healers. Whilethey recognized these signs and their meanings, only twoclaimed any of them for themselves. (One had been born with aveil, while another claimed to have been saved from early deathby ritually prepared amulets and rings her father attached to herbody immediately after birth.)

The healers all grew up in family environments where atleast some spiritual healing practices were accepted ways ofdealing with personal problems. Typical childhood experiencesinterpreted as signs of a future role as a healer included visionsof seeing or talking with a spirit that, in some cases, guidedthem to medicinal plants; being removed from bed or takenaway from home by a spirit; and speaking in tongues.Adolescence was either unremarkable or was when the futurehealers had their first serious exhibition of spiritual gifts, usual-ly in the form of a clairvoyant experience or a visitation from thespirit of a close relative who was about to die. For adults, signif-icant events and signs often took the form of conversion experi-ences. For example, one healer who had been a rootwork victimresolved to take up the healing work after being cured by a spir-itual healer. Another underwent an episode of spirit possessionbefore shocked co-workers at her job. While in this state she imi-tated the spirits and spiritual healers of the cult group intowhich she was later initiated. Still another, at a low point in hislife, felt suddenly swept by the desire to change and become anew person, and committed himself to training as a preacher,medium, and healer in a spiritual church as the way to do it.

In only one instance was a healer trained by a parent orother family member. The others gained their training throughoccult schools, apprenticeships, and self-training. The most com-mon method was training in formal classes. Five of the healersserved some kind of apprenticeship under a senior healer of thegroup or church to which they belonged, while one healerapprenticed herself to a religious store owner and anotherclaimed to have worked with a medical doctor as a child, assist-ing him with patients by the laying on of hands and by givingthem spiritual “readings.” Self-training involved experimentingwith different herbs, oils, and candles for minor problems oftheir own; voraciously devouring metaphysical, spiritualist,Biblical, and occult literature; wandering the woods collectingherbs and plants; and buying the do-it-yourself books sold in


religious goods stores. Unlike the religious store owners, the Black spiritual healers

generally belonged to organizations and groups that sharedtheir beliefs and practices, be it a spiritual church association, awidespread but clandestine cult organization, or a metaphysicalschool that provided reading and teaching materials. Thesegroups tended to borrow liberally from a variety of religioussources, most notably Catholicism. The spiritual healers’ use ofnovenas, candles, and incense in religious services; the sacristan;and offerings and prayers to representations of Catholic saintscontrast with the practices of the mainstream denominationsand evangelical sects in Black communities, which are over-whelmingly Protestant.

The cultural traditions on which the religious store ownersand the spiritual healers draw are basically the same: the NewWorld African-American religious traditions of Voodoo,Santeria, rootwork, and hoodoo; American Protestantism;Roman Catholicism; occult lore and the esoteric sciences ofastrology, the Hebrew Kabbala, European magic, anddemonology; Spiritualism; popular psychology; and the popu-larized forms of ideas from the professional medical system(both recent and obsolete). It is the degree of emphasis on thevarious components of this cultural mosaic that differs signifi-cantly between religious store owners and spiritual healers. Theemphasis among the spiritual healers is more on spiritualism,Roman Catholicism, Theosophy, popular psychology, and apantheon (however sparse or mixed) of African, Hebrew, andEuropean spirits. Most of the spiritual healers are either skepti-cal or ambivalent concerning the reality and efficacy of malignmagic, even though they regularly see its victims as clients.

For the most part, the spiritual healers responded to theirsituation as Blacks within a racist society by accepting the val-ues of the dominant social order. Where they differed was con-cerning the means of obtaining the things that most peopledesire. For them the way to obtain the good things in life wasthrough obtaining esoteric knowledge of the spirit world, com-munication with spirits, and performing rituals, means thatmost Americans, religious or not, would regard as either illegiti-mate, inefficient, or impractical. Their clients, however, do notshare this opinion.

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Based on waiting-room observations and estimates from thehealers themselves, the majority of spiritual healers’ clients arewomen. The relative number of females can go from a fifty/fiftybreakdown, to where women predominate in the upper age lev-els, to the case of one healer, ninety percent of whose clients arefemales. The age groups using spiritual healers the most are easi-ly people between the ages of twenty and fifty years, with thegreatest number of clients being young adults twenty to twenty-nine years old and adults below the age of forty. While northern-and southern-born Blacks make up most of the clientele ofalmost all the healers—one has a clientele that is predominatelyWhite—the array of other ethnic groups they serve is striking.Five of the healers have had White clients regularly, although,with the exception of the healer previously mentioned, Whitesare a very small fraction of their clientele. Hispanics, particularlyPuerto Ricans but to a lesser degree Cubans along with a trickleof South American clients, come to these healers, too. WestIndians come to two of the healers; one healer has had an Asianclient from India; and another, some African immigrants.

The bulk of the clientele of the spiritual healers consists oflower- and middle-class Blacks who belong to Spiritual churchcongregations or are somewhat estranged from the mainstreamBlack churches. They often describe themselves as “spiritual” asopposed to religious, and span an educational range encompass-ing illiteracy on one end and graduation from college on theother. Overwhelmingly they shuttle between systems, usingboth the spiritual healer in the folk system and the physicianwithin the system of professional biomedicine. In many casesthe client has the medical doctor work on biological or physicalaspects of the problem, while the aspects that are seen to requiresome psychological counseling, magical ritual, or spiritual inter-vention are seen as the province of the spiritual healer. Theclients do not view the spiritual healer and the physician asexclusive alternatives. It is more often a question of who is bestfor what kind of problem. Very often the spiritual healer is notthe first practitioner the client has sought out. For many medicalproblems the client can make use of both the physician and thespiritual healer; for others, such as sorcery, the physician usual-ly has nothing to offer and is often uncomprehending or depre-catory; in these cases, the spiritual healer becomes a prime


resource. People hear about the spiritual healers largely by word of

mouth: a satisfied client tells someone else who has a problemor misfortune. Four of the spiritual healers advertised in oneway or another. For example, one has her name and addressadvertised in a well-known astrology text; another has an adrunning continuously in the local telephone book; and two havehad local radio programs. Spiritual teas, informal gatherings atwhich the healers “give messages,” serve as a means of attract-ing clients for more extensive consultations; so do lectures at theschools or churches of other healers.

The clientele of the spiritual healer has the same concerns asthat of the religious store owner. The advice that the spiritualhealers offer their clients, however, is that means of obtaininghealth, prosperity, and love is power—power over oneself,power over others and power over the environment in whichone finds oneself—and that the most inexhaustible source ofthat power resides in the world of the spirits.

EXPERIENCE IN THE FIELD

Doing research in this milieu was at times frustrating, inspiring,confusing, depressing, enlightening, scary, difficult, and fun.Two incidents described below stand out in my mind. Bothdescribe aspects of participant observation, the main strategy ofthe anthropological fieldworker. The first is an account of onenaive student’s trip around and through the domain of urbansorcery. Typically the fieldworker shifts back and forth betweentwo roles, that of a participant and that of an observer. Amongother things, the second account describes a series of eventsrecounting an experience of the shift from participant to observ-er, more specifically, from the role of client to that of investiga-tor, a different experience of participant observation.

Anthropologist as Investigator:


Mojo Navigation

Madame Marie Barraque was an astrologer who supplementedher practice of astrology with the use of herbal teas, dreaminterpretation, clairaudience, laying on of hands, talismans,prayers, confession, and candle burning. Her clientele consistedlargely of post-menopausal women—women like herself—whom she treated with great sensitivity and insight. She wasextremely guarded about her private life and described herselfas leading a monkish and hermetic existence. There were timeswhen she seemed out of touch with reality, living in a world offantasy totally separate from that of her spirits. In many ways amarginal, eccentric, and isolated woman, Madame MarieBarraque scrupulously repressed any feelings of anger oraggression; even the mention of such things frightened her. Ourrelationship was friendly but distant. Throughout she retainedan oddly charming sense of humor which served her well whenshe would try to wheedle money out of me but most often it wasdirected at herself and at Black people in general who she sawas “just making it, you know. Just making from one day to thenext.”

Over the period I knew her, Madame Marie’s fortunes weresteadily declining. When earlier fieldworkers had first contactedher she had a religious store and adjoining church. By the time Igot to know her she had lost them both and was back workingas a temporary secretary. When she had enough clients andenough mail order horoscope business to get by, she droppedthe secretarial work. She seemed always in transition and, asbefits a transient, preferred to be interviewed in my office. Theoffice set the boundaries of our “official” relationship butbeyond that lay an area of “unofficial“ relationship based in parton my fondness for her and her own isolation and desire forpeaceful company. Madame Marie considered me to be a seekerlike herself and, so, was willing to share information with meway beyond what the ICSS Project itself required.

Following a period of fundraising—during which she putthe touch on the entire ICSS staff—things began looking up forMadame Marie. She was moving to a better apartment and plan-ning to try the religious store business again. If the store hadany degree of success she would be able to get a decent space in


which to reassemble her church and its dispersed congregation.It was then that she temporarily put aside her plans and went tothe aid of an old friend, Rev. Robert Williams. Rev. Williamsowned one of the older religious stores in Newark and alsoknew “Prof.” Freeman, the religious store owner to whomMadame Marie had apprenticed herself while learning astrologyand the occult sciences. Williams suspected Prof. Freeman ofbeing a rootworker—Madame Marie and I both knew that hewas a rootworker—and Williams suspected that whateverFreeman knew Marie knew as well and whatever Freemancould do she, too, was capable of.

Every so often I received a telephone call from MadameMarie keeping me abreast of her plans and informing me ofother folk practitioners I should investigate. When she foundherself in Rev. William’s store helping run the place whileWilliams was in the hospital, I took advantage of the opportuni-ty to get a better look at the store and at Williams. Rev. Williamswas in our sample of religious store owners but he hadn’t beencontacted for some time. He was one of those who had dried upearly and so still presented some unanswered questions.

Rev. Williams was aging and his health fragile. He talkedindecisively of selling the store and retiring but seemed onlyable to do just the opposite. Central Avenue had changed allaround him but his store remained the same. Against his will heseemed fated just to go on and on selling oils, candles, herbs,and advice until human beings had ceased to exist. A bout ofvery painful arthritis sent him into the hospital and he broughtMadame Marie into the store to assist while he was gone. Whatneither Marie, Rev. Williams, nor I thought of was the way thiswould affect Delores.

Delores’s relationship to Rev. Williams was never clear tome. It was evident that she had some place in Williams’s affec-tion and that she ferried him around and looked after him tosome extent. She was a good ten years younger than Williams,and while he vacillated over the fate of the store she was active-ly trying to get him to sell it to a friend of hers. Delores andMadame Marie did not get along at all. They were like twobeings covered with thorns. They could be relatively civil acrossa distance but they could not rub against each other withoutdrawing blood. At first I didn’t realize this. Delores had troublesizing me up initially because all I did was talk with Marie


about the goods in the store and how they were used but I neverbought anything or asked for a reading.

Then one afternoon Madame Marie telephoned me, asking,“Now George, I mean really, what are you supposed to think ofsomebody that throws Jinxing Power and Confusion Oil onyou?”

I went over to the store. Delores was at the counter as self-assured as a captain at the helm of a ship. By the time I got therehostilities between the two women had escalated. Delores hadgraduated from Jinxing Powder and Confusion Oil to throwingmustard oil as well. It was getting dangerous. Madame Marieemerged from the back and took me up to the apartment shewas using temporarily, one attached to the store, and subjectedme to an hour of railing against Delores.

“Delores is an evil woman,” she said. “She wants BobWilliams to sell the store for chicken feed so she can take it over.As far as she’s concerned, the store is hers already. I just can’tget along with that woman. There is going to be real trouble.She’s so negative.”

“Where is it going to stop?” Marie panted breathlessly,“Lord knows what she is doing at home! I can’t wait until Bobgets back. Then I can leave. I’m only here to help him out andearn a little money. I don’t need this mess or such negativevibrations.”

We moved on to more pleasant topics of conversation and Itold her of my desire to bring a volunteer client to Rev. Williamsso that ICSS could document how he worked just as we haddone with her. Madame Marie said she would talk with Rev.Williams about it and was sure he would cooperate. Like a pos-sessive and protecting mother, Madame Marie accompanied meto the door. As we passed out through the main store area, I hada few words with Delores about how slow business seemed tobe lately and, contrary to my usual habit, I bought something.

Rev. Williams came back from his hospital stay considerablyweaker than he went in. He walked with a cane now, and hisvoice was weak and at times almost inaudible, seeming toemerge without breath from some remote and unfathomableplace within his body. His return did not calm the tension at thestore; it made things worse. Not only did Marie fear Deloresbut, now that Rev. Williams could see what was going on, hebegan to fear both women. Madame Marie was right—Williams


told me—Delores did want to take over the store and the moneyDelores’s friend offered was simply not enough; but Mariewanted the store, too, and she didn’t have any money at all. Thespectre of Prof. Freeman, rootworker and sorcerer, hung in theback of his mind and Williams was beginning to suspect thatmaybe Marie was working against him, that lacking money shewould resort to occult means to take over, not just the store buthim. It was difficult for him to sort out whether the womenwere competing over him, the store, or both. Whatever theywere doing, it was undermining his health, and business wasawful. He felt worse now than he did before. Someone wasworking roots against him and, regardless of who it was, he wasgoing to do something about it. I assured him that as much as Ihad questioned Madame Marie and from what I knew aboutProf. Freeman, who was also in our sample of religious storeowners, Freeman had not transmitted what he knew about theBlack arts to Marie. In any case, I told him, Madame Marienever dealt with that aspect of “the work” because it did notagree with her spirit. I don’t think I convinced him and I felt itbest not to discuss Williams’s suspicions with Marie. Rev.Williams and I discussed the possibility of a client visit and heagreed to it. He was to charge the client whatever his usual ratewas. He did not want to know anything about the case inadvance. He would see her at his desk just behind the main areaof the store, I would set up a tape recorder and leave it with himand the client while I sat in the adjoining room talking withMadame Marie. Delores would run the counter at the front ofthe store. Everyone involved would know about the visit andthis set-up would ensure the client privacy, allow me to get myrecording and documentation, and keep the two women out ofthe session and out of each other’s hair.

In the Black folk lexicon, mojo is a condensed form of magicalpower often taking the form of an amulet or a packet worn onthe body. The mojo may be for drawing luck and good fortune tothe wearer or it may be malevolent and used for controllingother people and causing them harm. By planning my encounterin the way I did I hoped to navigate all the mojo being thrownaround in Rev. Williams’ religious store and come out with someethnography. I was not to be successful in doing this.

Occasionally ICSS would get calls from people seeking heal-ers or from people with problems they thought stemmed fromsorcery. Some of these people could be recruited into the service


of the ICSS Project, provided they would let us document theirtreatment by a specific healer and sign the informed consentprovisions. Ruth Ulmer, a pediatrician, volunteered to be aclient because she wanted to keep her man. She was in love witha West Indian and feared some other woman was tryingthrough seduction or magical means to take him away from her.She was a very light-skinned Black woman who could be, andprobably was, taken for a Euroamerican much of the time. Herprevious marriage had ended in divorce and it was clear to methat a lot of her ego was on the line in this new relationship. Herbizarre mixture of worldliness and naiveté amazed me. Just theopposite of most of the other volunteer clients we used, sheseemed rather spacy. But she was ready, willing, and able. Shewas a believer in the occult and wanted help.

It all seemed to go well. Rev. Williams dealt with Ulmerwhile I chatted with Madame Marie in the back, and Delores upfront served the few customers that managed to come in and outof the summer heat. Ruth was satisfied with Rev. Williams’streatment of her. She said, “He was a nice man. He gave mesome powders and some candles and a psalm to read.” Mostly,according to her, they had talked about her and what she reallywanted out of life, how she felt. After talking with him, she said,she felt a little better about herself. She wanted to see him againsometime. He had charged her “whatever she wanted to pay”and she left him ten dollars. I pocketed the tape recorder andboth Rev. Williams and Madame Marie accompanied us to thedoor, past Delores who was smugly seated behind the counterlistening to music on the radio.

About a week passed before I got a chance to listen to thattape. It was chaotic. Ruth Ulmer’s voice was fairly clear butWilliams’ was inaudible. The single most prominent thing onthat tape was Delores’s radio, which had not even been on whenI had tested and adjusted the tape recorder. On the tape RuthUlmer’s voice swam in a sea of funk and disco while Rev.Williams’ voice had drowned entirely. In the back with MadameMarie, I had been unable to hear the radio. To this day I still donot know if this was a deliberate act on Delores’s part. Had sheidentified me with Madame Marie and struck out at her throughmessing up me and my recording? Did she view my time spentwith Marie discussing and learning about the religious store’sgoods as inventory instead of ethnography? Did she see me,


Marie, and this “White” woman Ulmer as exploiting Rev.Williams, a tired and sickly old man? Was this just anotherphase of Delores’s effort to take over the store? In any case, thetape was useless. There remained only two alternatives. Onewas to get Ruth Ulmer to try and reconstruct in detail frommemory what transpired. The other was to arrange anotherclient visit with either Ulmer or someone else as the client. Theformer alternative was possible but not the best; the latterwould have to wait until Madame Marie was gone fromWilliams’s store and the situation had cleared up some. I cer-tainly couldn’t accomplish anything by going into that environ-ment and slinging accusations at Delores. Besides, there wasother work to do.

Not long afterward I received a telephone call from MadameMarie. She wanted me to come to visit her new establishment.She was no longer at Williams’s religious store; she was rightnext door. I paid her a visit the next day. The place was a sham-bles, junk strewn everywhere: fans, old clothes, boxes, newspa-pers, broken chairs, and an old top-loading freezer unit. Far backin the darkness, beneath a faded calendar picture of Christ theShepherd, sat Madame Marie. Some of this junk was hers, sheexplained, but most of it had been left in the storefront by theprevious occupants. Cleaning this place out was going to be a lotof work for a little old lady so she was hiring some neighbor-hood men to help her out. In the meantime she lived upstairsand did a little excavation in the store front each day. It wouldnot be long before she could order the stocks of religious goodsthat would be her weaponry in the all-out warfare that wasgoing to start between Bob Williams and her when she estab-lished her own religious store next door to his. Given the choicebetween Marie and Delores, Williams had decided to keepDelores. He had thrown Marie out as soon as he began to feelbetter. Madame Marie’s stay was supposed to be temporary any-way, as she was in transit to a new place. What Rev. Williamshadn’t expected was that she would set up shop in the vacantstore next to his own. This chilled their relationship immediately.Williams never came next door and he always referred to her as“that woman over there,” never by name. On her part Marie stillhad some feeling of friendship for Williams; this only made thesituation worse. Madame Marie blamed her ejection from thestore on Delores. She wanted me to look in on Rev. Williams tosee how he was and to see if he really believed she had worked


some witchcraft against him. So I went next door, forcing afriendly hello to Delores and asking to see Rev. Williams. Ispoke to Rev. Williams in the back and we talked, frankly, andout of earshot of the two women.

Rev. Williams wasn’t sure whether Marie was rooting himor not, but she had to go because of the hostility between herand Delores. Delores he could handle: he simply refused to sellthe store. Marie he wasn’t so sure of, and her past connectionwith the rootworker, Prof. Freeman, preyed on him. Her settingup a store next to his he regarded as foolish for economic rea-sons. There was not enough business for both of them and hehad the edge on her since he was there first. She wouldn’t makeenough money to keep afloat. But he wasn’t really all that sureof Delores. Momentarily she was satisfied with her victory overMarie but she had already started bothering him about the storeagain. Yes, he believed one or both of them were workingagainst him, throwing rootwork—poison—against him, but hedid not seem particularly upset about it. He considered himselfwell defended now. And he felt ever so much better since hehad fumigated the store with fortune-building incense andsprinkled the entire floor with Black pepper to satiate the spirits.When he swept up the pepper it gave him a new lease on lifeand combated the negative vibrations still lurking in the storefrom recent weeks. “Pour the bad vibes in the garbage can andstart all over again,” he said. He had even said a prayer or two.“A little prayer never hurt anyone,” he said, and soon businesswould improve. Ruth Ulmer had been back to see him withoutletting ICSS know. She, too, was feeling better, especially abouther ability to keep her man, and she was carrying out Rev.Williams’s instructions religiously. Apparently she had gottenwhat she wanted, so Williams did not expect to see her againanytime soon. I asked him if he had anything for me to tellMadame Marie because I was going back next door. He hadnothing to say to her.

None of this information gave much consolation to Marie.She felt rejected by someone who had been a good friend, some-one she tried to help, and she resented it. If Rev. Williamsthought she would stoop to sorcery then let him think what heliked. She was glad that he was feeling better and wanted to callme so I could come by when she was ready to have the grandopening of her new religious store. That was the last time I


either saw or heard from her. The next time I was in the neighborhood Madame Marie’s

storefront was locked up and vacant again. I was on a bus andfrom my passing seat I could see Rev. Williams’ store openedout to the summer heat, lit up by hot unshaded bulbs radiatinga glaring light yellowed by his unwashed window panes.Williams sat in a chair alone on the sidewalk in front of thestore. Behind him the store seemed huge and hollow and empty,for no one, not even Delores, was inside. Pedestrians walkedaround him as if he wasn’t there, and the incandescent glarestreaming through the open screen door and the dirty windowsthrew his slight drawn figure out into the street as a broad shad-ow to be consumed by night.

In anthropology, as in the rest of life, nothing is obtainedwithout a price. That price, however, differs according to the sit-uation you are in and the role you are playing in it. It is certain-ly different when one is on the observing end of the participant-observer continuum than when one is on the participating endof it, as the next incident illustrates.

Anthropologist as Client: What the Spirit Told Me

Though not without its pitfalls—some which can be inferredfrom my experience with Ruth Ulmer, Madame Marie and Rev.Williams described above—the client visit proved a valuableresearch strategy and a flexible one. In one variant the ethnogra-pher comes to the healer as a client. This was most useful in theearly stages of fieldwork before I had clearly established my roleas investigator. The role of ethnographer was not one the spiri-tual healers were used to and I found that, in the case of theolder informants, once the investigator role was established itwas expected to detect the client’s problem and/or a problem-solving session in which the healer deals with a problem theclient has already formulated. Whether or not the healer usessome sort of divination tool varies from healer to healer, andeven from client to client in the same healer’s practice, but allthe healers recognize an underlying mental state different from


normal waking consciousness as the state in which they givespiritual readings. The process of seeking or generating thisstate they call “getting into spirit.” They described the stateitself in various ways, such as “a half trance,” “concentration,”“inspiration,” as “a sensation of lightness” through which thesenses are renewed, or as “a feeling of openness like the sunpouring in.” Some healers experience these sensations evenwhen using external divination devices like cowrie shells, tarotcards, coins, or horoscopes. Those who eschew any external div-ination tools may sit and close their eyes, swaying back andforth in their seats, while conveying ”messages” in an extendedmonologue. Passage out of this state is smooth, frequentlymarked by no physical signs other than ceasing to rock andopening the eyes.

One healer stated that the crux of her ability to read lay inher ability to respond to things inside herself that related to theperson she was seeing. The key to this process was being able totell which sensations originated inside the healer and whichones came from the presence of the client. The latter sensationsare called “impressions” and the source of impressions isalways projected outside the healer. Impressions come from theclient but the healers’ interpretations of the clients and theirproblems are based on what the spirit “gives” them. What thespirit gives, it gives in the form of thoughts as opposed to thesensations of which impressions are composed. (For some of thespiritual church, mediums’ spirits and thoughts are the same.)

Just as the medium must discern within the stream of con-sciousness which sensations originate within and which fromthe presence of the client, spiritual readers must also distinguishthose thoughts which originate within them from those that donot. Regardless of where or how they initially experience them,thoughts they recognize as not being their own are assigned to asource in the world of the spirits. In this way the spirit worldserves the same legitimizing role for the healer as for the believ-ing client. After discerning the problem, unveiling it for theclient, and recommending a specific course of action, the healermust conclude the reading in a way that compels the client todecide to do whatever needs to be done.

One of our ground rules for the ethnographer’s client visitwas that problems presented to the healer had to be real ones.


They could not be either hypothetical or imaginary. We werenot out to test the psychic or telepathic claims of the spiritualhealers and were willing to avoid the entire question of thoseabilities. If they possessed such abilities false problems might bedetected and contaminate the experiment; and if they did notpossess such abilities it wouldn’t make any difference whetherthe problem was a true one or not; so for the sake of objectivitythe real problem was preferable. Ethical considerations militatedagainst using imaginary problems, which could be viewed aslying to the healer or as taking up, under false pretenses, timethat the spiritual healer could be using to treat people with realproblems. Finally, most of the folk healers occasionally get peo-ple coming to them who are testing and/or contesting their rep-utations. These people came to test and then put down the heal-er. The spiritual healers resent such people misusing them andregard them as either nuisances, skeptics, or time-wasters. Beingput in any of these categories is not much good for establishingrapport.

The first time I ever used this research technique was withRev. Peter Niles, an elder medium and minister in the EthiopianChurch of Overcoming Power, a spiritual church. Rev. Niles isan eighty-one-year-old man who pastors a spiritual church anddoes reading and advising out of the basement of the two-fami-ly house in which he lives. The house turned out to be just acouple of blocks from the neighborhood where I spent the firstsixteen years of my life. I had passed it many times. A sign onthe side of the house directs you to his office and there is a door-bell at the side entrance, then a short flight of stairs leading tothe basement and the warm but spare waiting room. He isreputed to be a powerful medium, is both well known and wellrespected within the Ethiopian Church of Overcoming Powerand has a wide knowledge of herbs, which he employs in hiswork. He was reluctant to get involved at first, was unsurewhether he required authorization from further up in the churchhierarchy or not and was therefore reluctant to sign any formsincluding the informed consent form required for all partici-pants in the ICSS Project. The informed consent form stated thathe understood the nature of the study, what it intended to do,and the rules under which it functioned, including a promise ofstrict confidentiality concerning his identity. After a phone con-


versation he consented verbally to participate in the researchbut was still reluctant to sign anything. In this interim period Iarranged to see him as a client, to see him about some personalproblems while still trying to get his signature on the informedconsent form. Without his signature on the informed consentform I could not use any of the information I got from him asstudy results.

First Visit

I waited over an hour and fifteen minutes before I finally got tosee Rev. Niles. He did not have a watch or clock in the consulta-tion room or the waiting room—so I had to ask one of his otherclients about the time. Niles ushered me into the office and saidthat he was sorry I had to wait so long, that he tried to get peo-ple to come in early so they could get in and out on time butthat sometimes it took longer than scheduled and things backedup. He then asked me what the problem was. I told him I hadthree things that I wanted to talk with him about. I brought hima personal problem concerning a cousin I wanted to influence,who was hard-headed and selfish and was hurting a lot of peo-ple as well as himself. This cousin was currently out of the coun-try and I wanted to influence him to leave his self-destructivepath when he returned. Niles closed his eyes when I began todescribe the situation and asked very few questions. What hedid ask was just to ensure that he was following the story cor-rectly. What he did was close his eyes, and, while sitting behindhis desk, with hands clasped above his head, elbows on thedesktop, slowly swivel from side to side in his chair.Occasionally he would unclasp his hands and form a broken cir-cle with his arms at chest level and parallel to the desktop, thenmove his trunk in a sort of half circle, all the time with eyesclosed. During this he would speak. He said that it was difficultfor me to reach my cousin’s mind because he was far away. Itwas his mind I had to reach. Niles could see that “his mind wasnot strong in righteousness but was rather strong in wrongful-ness” and that if I wanted to influence him I would have to


bring Niles a picture of him to work with, a recent picture notless than a year old. I would also have to a carry out certain actsat specific times. He said that if I provided him with thesethings and did what he said, I would be able to influence mycousin when he came back and he would take my advice. This iswhat the spirit told him. He then opened his eyes and askedwhat else was bothering me.

The second problem he treated in the same way—going intoa mediumistic trance and conveying what he was told by thespirit or what he saw while in this state. The second problemwas really a problem of conscience involving someone in prisonI had been communicating with and who I had been convincedwas wrongfully convicted. I had since found out that he did infact commit the crime and since then I had been unable toresume communicating with him. I felt bad about this because,guilty or not, he still needed the solace and support of hisfriends, but the crime was a horrible one and I resented havingbeen lied to all this time. Rev. Niles, while in concentration ortrance, told me that even while I was conflicted about this wholething I was actually trying to do the impossible: I was trying toget my friend forgiveness for his crime. There was nothing Icould do about this; it was between my friend and God. I had toforgive my friend myself. I should continue to write him or gosee him. What I was doing was only tangling myself up and thatwas hurting me and not helping him at all. It was good that Ifelt like that about my friend but I couldn’t take any responsibil-ity for his crimes or ultimately for forgiving them. It would bebest if I just communicated with him, leaving the rest betweenhim and God. He then opened his eyes, relaxed, and asked ifthere were anything else. He reminded me when I was about toleave that he required a donation, whatever I could give. “Thisis my living,” he said. I thanked him, left a donation, and said Iwould call to make another appointment.

My reaction to all this surprised me. I was very deeplymoved by this experience and experienced a shock of catharsis. Iwas not far from tears and I suddenly felt very tired and almostdizzy. It had been very difficult for me to go on, and bring upthe informed consent form and parry with him over the signa-ture I needed because it meant short circuiting the catharsis Iwas experiencing, trying to dam it up long enough to complete


the task. I was not in the most clear-headed state of mind when Igot to this issue; I had lost my cool and was unable to fully stepback into the professional role, that of negotiating for the signa-ture required. I tried but the emotional undercurrent of thisnearly but uncompleted catharsis continued and it showed.Afterward I went to a nearby park where I could sit and let myfeelings go where they might. I was much further from tearsnow and felt a sense of peace and release and gratitude. I feltthankful for the reading and the advice. I decided to followNiles’ directions and resolved to persist until I got his signature.

Second Visit

On my second visit I found the place empty and silent save forthe voices of Rev. Niles and a client well muffled behind theclosed door of Niles’s consultation room. He was dressed thesame as before but this time I noticed the stains on his faded yel-low sweater, stains at the elbow where the cloth had been dark-ened by the desk blotter on which he rested his elbows while inthe state of concentration. I had been unable to come up with apicture of my cousin; Niles told me that the lack of it wouldmake the process more difficult and much longer—five to ninedays. He had “gone into this,” had been unable to reach mycousin, and did not believe he was in Paris. What he had to dorequired my help—I would have to do as much as he would—eventually he would give me candles to burn so that he couldreach my cousin through me. Occasionally his head dropped asif he were falling asleep, almost to the level of the desk but bob-bing up before touching it.

When I asked him what I had to do, he came out of concen-tration and told me that he needed my cousin’s birth date inorder to find out about my cousin astrologically before begin-ning work on him. This meant that he had to do some “home-work.” I didn’t know the birth date but I filled in the index cardhe gave me with my name, my cousin’s name and where Ithought my cousin was, Paris, France. Rev. Niles said he wouldtry again that night but couldn’t promise anything. The picture


would have been better. Niles’ response to my queries aboutcollaboration with ICSS was to mumble “Hmm…” and go backinto concentration again.

“I don’t know about that,” he said. “I’m not coming up withanything, I’m going into it but I’m not coming up with anything.I can’t do anything about that yet.”

I left a donation of five dollars and promised to return thefollowing Tuesday with my cousin’s birth information. When Iarrived at my father’s house I found out my cousin had been inNewark for a few days the week before; from Paris he hadcalled one of his friends before coming, had come in for a fewdays, and then left again for France.

Third Visit

This time there was a chaos of activity in the basement. Besidesthe clients there was also a team of electricians working onwires and circuit breakers.

“I went into this case some last night,” said Rev. Niles, “butI don’t think your cousin is in Paris at all. I went across waterand water and water last night but I never reached him. Maybe Iwent too far, went across too much water, but he’s not inNewark now and I don’t think he’s in Paris neither. I’ll have togo into it some more, but after I close up, so I won’t get pulledaway by phone calls or other clients. Now that I have this birthdate it’ll probably take at least five days because I’ll have towork on your cousin to reach him over and over again each day.Get back to me next Monday and I will tell you what you haveto do. You know this is an excellent time to start this work; thefull moon is coming up tomorrow night.”

Fourth Visit

When I arrived at 9:20 A.M. Monday morning I was welcomed by


a baby’s cry. Rev. Niles was seeing a young couple who I laterfound out were from Massachusetts and heading back thereafter seeing him. Niles put the mother and infant out into thewaiting room and when the baby continued to cry he sent theman out to the car to get something to pacify the bawling child.After the couple left he saw me.

Rev. Niles asked if I had any news of my cousin. I had none.He told me that my cousin was not in Paris the last time I con-sulted him either but was nearer now than he was then. Rev.Niles wouldn’t discount the possibility that my cousin had actu-ally gone to Paris but ever since I had been coming to him aboutit he had never been able to find him there and now my cousinwas certainly in Canada.

He referred to the issue of ICSS as “this job thing” andasked me to explain the goals of the project to him again.Although he wouldn’t come to the hospital and give demonstra-tions of the techniques he used there, he would help me in anyway he could. He said that he was doing this to benefit me andthat, otherwise, he wouldn’t do it. If he didn’t think it wouldhelp me in my career and in my spiritual development, he said,he wouldn’t get involved in such a thing. He was doing itbecause of what he saw in me as a person and predicted that Iwould enter into a calling like his later in life.

At this point my role changed, not only in my eyes but inhis. I was now an investigator and could ask different sorts ofquestions and be more active in our relationship. On his part heresponded by dropping my cousin’s case. Over the next yearand a half of our contact, my cousin was never mentioned again.

MOTIVATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS

In his 1962 essay “Failure of the Negro Intellectual,” the Blacksociologist E. Franklin Frazier delivered a barrage of criticismwhich, if it were read often enough, would keep all Black intel-lectuals honest.12 The essay includes a challenge that I havecome to regard as a personal one: the challenge to provide anexplicit philosophy (or at least the basis for one) derived fromthe African-American experience preserved in folklore. Amongother things, Frazier wrote in this essay that:


The philosophy implicit in the Negro’s folklore is infinitelysuperior to the opportunistic philosophy of Negro intellec-tuals who want to save their jobs and enjoy material com-fort…. The philosophy implicit in the folklore of the Negrofolk is infinitely superior in wisdom and intellectual candorto the repetition of platitudes concerning brotherly loveand human dignity of Negro intellectuals who are tyrantswithin the Negro world and never had a thought in theirlives.13

Among the healers I found both brotherly love and humandignity in action daily, free of the platitudes that Frazier speaksof. I also found a mixture of candor, skepticism, distrust, curios-ity, and human weakness, sophistication, and naiveté that revealsome of the central paradoxes of life. Yet the philosophy that thefolk healers collectively embodied and that forms the founda-tion for their practices remains implicit, vague, and hidden. Icertainly did not unearth it, and it may be becoming vaguer andmore hidden because while it remains implicit the folk healersthemselves are changing and dying. Perhaps it does not evenexist. Or does not exist anymore. Frazier’s challenge remains,though: to make the philosophy implicit in Negro folkloreexplicit and on this explicit philosophy to stand and developreflections on the fundamental problems confronting all humanknowledge and existence.

The true meaning of what Frazier had written became clear-er but more difficult. The task was not only to chronicle orexplain Black culture but also to create it consciously. Fieldresearchers create a version of culture in concert with theirinformants every time they do an ethnography. But the Blacknative anthropologist performs this act triply naked: nakedbefore the ancestors, naked before the community of scholars,and naked before the Black community. As we chronicle andexplain the culture we also create it for others during our livesand for future generations. Hopefully, in the course of time, ourwork may come to serve as a clean mirror in which people cansee themselves and once again recreate their culture. In thisway, eventually, the reflection would go back where it camefrom and come to form part of the tradition itself. How individ-ual researchers would resolve this challenge would surface intheir choices of methods and research topics as well as in how


they presented their information and who their audiences were.If it was not possible to accept the challenge and resolve it,maybe I was entering in the wrong profession.

All this was not on my mind when I joined ICSS in 1979. Itook on the work initially because I desperately needed a job;that it was anthropology was wonderful indeed because Iwould have taken almost anything at the time. Anyway, I’vebeen amply rewarded and suffer no pangs of conscience foropportunism. I did the work the best I could. It was only dur-ing and after carrying out the fieldwork that I began to under-stand this challenge, take it seriously, and begin to experiencemy unique place within the scheme of African-American cul-ture.

I believe it was the jazz saxophonist Sidney Bechet who oncesaid, “You got to go out in the sun to feel the sun.” Nativeanthropologists have a special advantage in that they do nothave to go far to see the sun. Well, I went out and I felt it. It gaveme a different sense of what I am a part of; it made me aware ofthe profound ambiguity of the human condition; and it mademe feel like an anthropologist. As a child I had known that thesmall world of my neighborhood was full of mysteries. As anadult and an anthropologist I had begun to penetrate some ofthem. This rite de passage gave me the same awkwardness andvertigo as did later work with groups more unlike me in cultureand language—with one difference: In the vast worldwideocean of human culture, I now knew that I could put down mybucket right where I was, find an ocean equally vast, and thenput my little foot right in. In that bucket with the ocean in it Ifound the sun, too. Now I could take up the bucket and walkwith it, contributing to it along the way what I would be able tofind and understand, perhaps making the water a little clearerwithout diminishing its vastness, perhaps also brightening thesun a little, too, so that it would not dim and burn out before itstime.

NOTES

1. Research reported in this essay was supported by U.S. PublicHealth Grant No. 5 RO1 MH29467, “Inner-City SupportSystems Project,” from the National Institute of Mental Health


to the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey,Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health Science, Dr.Vivian Garrison, principal investigator.

2. George E. Brandon, The Dead Sell Memories: An AnthropologicalStudy of Santeria in New York (Ann Arbor, MI: University Micro-films, 1983).

3. See Todd Savitt, Medicine and Slavery (Urbana, IL: University ofIllinois Press, 1978).

4. For basic descriptions of this folk medical system during theslavery era, see Savitt, Medicine and Slavery; and Bruce Jackson,“The Other Kind of Doctor: Conjure and Magic in BlackAmerican Folk Medicine,” in Wayland Hand, ed., American FolkMedicine (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1976),pp. 259–271. For general background, see Lawrence Levine,Black Culture and Black Consciousness (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1977); and Albert Raboteau, Slave Religion: TheInvisible Institution in the Antebellum South (New York: OxfordUniversity Press).

5. See Horace Stewart, “Kindling Hope in the Disadvantaged: AStudy of the Afro-American Healer,” Mental Hygiene 55 (1971):96–100; Horace Stewart, “A Pilot Study of the Afro-AmericanHealer,” Psychoenergetic Systems 1 (1976): 131–134; LoudellSnow, “Folk Medical Beliefs and the Implications for the Careof Patients,” Annals of Internal Medicine 88 (July 1974): 82–96;and Norman Whitten, “Contemporary Patterns of MalignOccultism among Negroes of North Carolina,” Journal ofAmerican Folklore 75 (1962): 311–325.

6. For studies of southern urban communities, see Arthur Halland Peter Bourne, “Indigenous Therapists in a Black UrbanCommunity in the South,” Archives of General Psychiatry 28(1973): 137–142; and Wilbert C. Jordan, “Voodoo Medicine” inRichard Williams, ed., Textbook of Black Related Diseases (NewYork: McGraw-Hill, 1975), pp. 716–738. Important studies doneoutside of the southern states include Harry Middleton Hyatt,Folklore from Adams County (Hannibal, MO: Western Publishing,1935); Harry Middleton Hyatt, Hoodoo, Conjuration, Witchcraft,Rootwork, 4 vols. (Hannibal, MO: Western Publishing,1970–1974); Elon Ali Kuli, “A Look at Hoodoo in Three UrbanAreas of Indiana: Folklore and Change” (Ph.D. diss., IndianaUniversity, 1982); Loudell Snow, “Popular Medicine in a BlackNeighborhood,’’ in Edward Spicer, ed., Ethnic Medicine in the


Southwest (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona); and Michael E.Bell, “Pattern, Structure, and Performance in Afro-AmericanHoodoo Performance” (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1980).For a significant statement of how this folk medical system haschanged with migration, see Ralph Kuna, “Hoodoo: TheIndigenous Medicine and Psychiatry of the Black American,”Mankind Quarterly 18 (1978): 137–151.

7. Important publications by African-American researchersinclude the classic study by Zora Neale Hurston, “Hoodoo inAmerica,” Journal of American Folklore 44 (1931): 317–417;Wilbert C. Jordan, “Voodoo Medicine”; Faith Mitchell, HoodooMedicine: Sea Island Herbal Remedies; and Wilbur Watson, ed.,Black Folk Medicine: The Therapeutic Significance of Faith and Trust(New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1984).

8. Rootwork, roots, mojo, fix, trick, conjure, hex, crossed, and hoodooare all terms found in the lexicon of Black folk medicine thatrefer to the condition of being a sorcery victim or the vehiclesthrough which sorcery is carried out. The core meaning of allthese terms is the use of magic to cause harm. “Rootwork” ismalign magic which enlists the aid of a spirit to cause harm to ahuman being. Hyatt describes this as the core of its synonym,hoodoo. “To catch a spirit, or protect your spirit against thecatching; this is the complete theory and practice of hoodoo.”See Hyatt, Folklore from Adams County, p. 361. There are twomain forms of rootwork, putting on and feeding. “Putting on”involves spells and manipulating ritual objects (candles, cards,paper with names on it, powders, dolls, etc.), none of whichhave to come into direct contact with the intended victim.“Feeding” consists of giving a magically prepared substance tothe victim in food or drink. Much of the literature uses theterms rootwork and hoodoo to cover Black folk medicine as awhole, lumping sorcery and therapy together but givinggreater attention to practices that try to harm as opposed tothose that try to heal.

9. The names of the following healers and organizations men-tioned in this article are all pseudonyms.

10. For a study of Black Spiritual churches of this type, see HansBaer, The Black Spiritual Church Movement in America (Nashville,TN: University of Tennessee, 1982).

11. Carroll Rich, “Born with Veil: Black Folklore in Louisiana,”Journal of American Folklore 85 (1976): 328–331; Julie YvonneWebb, “Louisiana Voodoo and Superstitions Related toHealth,” HSMHA Health Reports 87 (1971): 291–301; Newbell N.


Puckett, Folk Beliefs of the Southern Negro (New York: NegroUniversities, 1968; reprint of 1926 ed.).

12. E. Franklin Frazier, “The Failure of the Negro Intellectual,” inG. Franklin Edwards, ed., E. Franklin Frazier on Race Relations(Chicago: University of Chicago), pp. 267–279.

13. Ibid., p. 274.

SUGGESTED READINGS

Baerl, Hans. The Black Spiritual Church Movement in America.Nashville, TN: University of Tennessee, 1982. This importantstudy of Spiritual churches describes the characteristics anddevelopment of these churches and places them within thebroader framework of African-American religions in the UnitedStates.

Gray, John. Ashe, Traditional Religion and Healing in Sub-SaharanAfrica and the Diaspora: A Classified International Bibliography.New York: Greenwood Press, 1989. This extremely valuablereference work is a must for anyone doing research on Blackfolk medicine. Broad scope and deep coverage of the publishedand unpublished literature up through 1989.

Hurston, Zora Neale. “Hoodoo in America.” Journal of AmericanFolklore 44 (1931): 317–417. Classic study of Black folk medicineby a noted Black novelist who also trained in anthropology.

Snow, Loudell. “I Was Born Just Exactly with the Gift: An Interviewwith a Voodoo Practitioner.” Journal of American Folklore 86(1973): 272–281. One-of-a-kind interview with an eclecticVoodoo spiritualist.

Kirkland, James, Holly Matthews, C. W. Sullivan III, and KarenBaldwin, eds. Herbal and Magical Medicine, Traditional HealingToday. Durham, NC: Duke University, 1992. Anthology ofrecent essays on folk medicine in North Carolina. Containschapters on rootwork and also shows how similar beliefs andpractices exist among Whites. Useful general bibliography onfolk medicine.

The Black Scholar 11 (September–October 1980). This number, thefirst of two issues on Black Anthropology, contains two articlesrelevant to the subject of native anthropology in Black commu-nities: John Gwaltney, “The Propriety of Fieldwork: A Native


Assessment,” pp. 32–39; and Tony Whitehead, “Identity,Subjectivity, and Cultural Bias in Fieldwork,” pp. 40–44, 83–87.


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