“It rains, and every man feels it some day.”
(Gullah Geechee proverb)
Everywhere that people from the African diaspora live, there are strong traditions of healing and magic. In traditional African American philosophy, natural illnesses are those brought about by weather, cold air, and similar forces. These illnesses are cured with roots, herbs, barks and teas by an herbalist—an individual skilled in the use of natural therapeutic substances. The materials used by an herbalist are termed medicine or roots.
Illnesses that are caused by hexes or spells can only be cured by magic. Wherever there are Africans, or people of African descent, there is magic. In the Sea Islands, magical medicines use animals parts like feathers, blood, and bones, human substances like hair clippings and fingernails, and other natural materials like leaves, sand, and water to cure illnesses, put spells on people, attract money and love, etc. White slave owners feared and suppressed the use of magic; these practices were kept hidden from them.
In the magic practiced in the Sea Islands and elsewhere among black populations, the conjurer uses his or her own powers, as well as those invested in special words, materials, and objects, to produce illnesses. A person who has been crossed by a conjurer will not recover fully until the spell has been removed. A person who is both an herbalist and a conjurer is sometimes called a root doctor, and the terms roots and root medicine include magic as well as herbs.
In Jamaica and some other parts of the Caribbean magical practices are called Obeah.
In Haiti vodou, or Voodoo, has a long and powerful history.
In Nigeria magic is called Juju, referring to any object that is worshiped superstitiously and used as an amulet or fetish.
African magic is also practiced in Iran and India.
Historical Sources about Gullah and African American Medicine (full texts)
Updated!
“Hoodoo - Conjuration - Witchcraft – Rootwork” by Harry Middleton Hyatt is a rich resource. It is a 5-volume, 4766-page collection of folkloric material that he gathered in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia between 1936 and 1940. The full text is available here.
Elsie Clews Parsons was one of the first folklorists who visited the Sea Islands. Her article includes references to folk medicine (search for “roots”)—but also reflects racist thinking of the day.
During the depression, the Federal Writers’ Project conducted the “Slave Narrative Project,” which interviewed formerly enslaved people who were still alive in the late ‘30s. The Georgia Narratives, published in 1940 as “Drums and Shadows: Survival Studies among the Georgia Coastal Negroes,” can be read here and are also available on Amazon.
In Mules and Men, Zora Neale Hurston wrote about Black traditional healing, including interviews with hoodoo doctors and a list of remedies. Note: her research did not include Gullah Geechee practices.
The Myth of the Negro Past (online) is a 1941 monograph by Melville J. Herskovits that debunked the myth that African Americans had lost their African culture as a result of the experience of slavery. It includes information about healing and magic.
This is a recent doctoral thesis. From the summary: “The roots of African-American herbal medicine extend well into the past. Enslaved Africans brought with them a tradition of medicinal plants used for centuries in a complex health culture that encompassed an individual's mind, body, and soul. The same ideology carried into the New World evolved and changed to accommodate various health care needs.”
