From Farce to Folk Hero, or a Twentieth-Century Revival of the Conjure Woman

Abstract

By the opening of the eighteenth century, the negative stigma looming over spiritual and occult practices had permanently etched its way into the minds of Americans. The Eurocentric disdain toward spirit work was easily transferred to syncretic African practices once they began to visibly take hold in North America. Most noted for their use in slave resistance, African-based spiritual practices were unable to salvage their reputation as the North American colonies grew toward nationhood. In 1712, reports of a free African conjurer named Peter the Doctor, who “provided magical powder to a group of slave rebels in New York,” were recorded, which, for the ruling class, solidified their attitudes and actions against such practices (Long, Spiritual 75).¹ Rumors and fears of revolt in the British Caribbean highlighted slaves’ propensity to use their indigenous practices against the planter class.² A conjurer by the name of Dr. Henry was implicated in a 1741 conspiracy in New York and the state of South Carolina had become abreeding groundfor conjure-inspired rebellions.³ In addition to Caribbean Lucumí, and obeah, Vodou was at the heart of slave resistance in the French, English, and Dutch colonies. François Makandal proved exactly how effective such covert actions could be when more than six thousand people died from his “composition and distribution of poisons” in Haiti, and it is believed that the Haitian Revolution would not have been successful without supplication to the loa (Dayan Haiti 253).⁴

Some say she was born with a veil on her face So she could look through unnatchal space

—Margaret Walker, “Molly Means”