Hoodoo is done in community. I think a lot about the power of what Hoodoo can do when you’re doing it together. For me, it’s a form of liberation. In community, Hoodoo is literally a way to share spaces and to get free.
— Jeanine Valrie Logan
Both in the past and today, the Hoodoo tradition involves a network of healers mending the physical and emotional wounds of Black people.
Root doctors and conjurers are some of the titles given to those who were experts in plant medicine and rituals. But Black midwives, known as “granny midwives,” also played a vital role in Hoodoo, a spiritual practice founded by enslaved, southern Black people who kept African traditions alive through ancestral reverence and honoring the Earth. Prior to the days of modern science, midwives attended the majority of births in the country. Their herbal remedies and folk practices nurtured and guarded the health and well-being of Black families, especially in the rural South. The criminalization of Black midwives by white male gynecologists caused the workforce to dwindle. In 2020, midwives accounted for 12 percent of births. Only 7 percent of today’s midwives are Black compared to 86 percent white.
Certified nurse midwife and lactation specialist Jeanine Valrie Logan wants to increase that number in Chicago, where Black women are six times more likely than white women to die during pregnancy or a year after birth. That’s double the national Black maternal mortality rate, which is itself 2.6 times greater than the rate for non-Hispanic white women. Logan has spent the past few years changing state laws and fundraising the $7.5 million in capital needed to open Chicago South Side Birth Center, Illinois’ first Black-owned birthing facility, by 2026. A rootworking mother of three, she learned traditional birthing practices from the elders who have welcomed new life into the world for years. Logan believes the centuries-old spiritual wisdom granny midwives possess can improve deteriorating Black maternal health outcomes.
“There’s a legacy of midwifery in the United States that’s led by Black, indigenous midwives, but specifically the Black granny midwives, and I really think it’s part of Hoodoo that can be left out,” Logan said. “A lot of people put emphasis on conjuring or spell making, but a lot of times people looked to midwives to show folks and the community how to protect themselves or how to care for families. A lot of time midwives were caring for the sick, the dying or the dead.”
Black midwifery was born out of necessity, author and scholar Dr. Katrina Hazzard-Donald wrote in her book “Mojo Workin’: The Old African American Hoodoo System.” A lack of access to medical and hospital care meant both Black and white families relied on granny midwives for their health. Before the existence of epidural or other pain numbing pharmaceuticals, sharp items such as scissors or an ax were placed under the birthing person’s bed to cut the pain. Brand new nails were hammered into the threshold of a home to ward off negative spirits during labor.
Mothers were instructed to perform postpartum practices known as “taking up the mother” and “calling the baby’s spirit.” These rituals would take place a couple of days after birth to celebrate and protect the newborn. The midwife would help a mother to her feet and slowly walk counterclockwise around her home before giving the mother a thimble of water to drink. The midwife would take the baby in their arms and walk the same direction around the home while speaking to the child and saying their name. If a child’s death were to occur after birth or during infancy, midwives would engage in their own practices to break the cycle of infant death in the family. Some midwives were conjurers who made love charms and rituals that aided contraception.
With their quiet confidence and a medical bag of traditional practices, Black midwives became a sacred and essential part of the community, Hazzard-Donald explained.
“African American midwifery was a place where Hoodoo ritual related to birth and sometimes death was fully functioning, inadvertently preserving and safeguarding what would otherwise soon become a moribund tradition,” Hazzard-Donald wrote. “The midwife, even more so than the conjurer, root doctor, or treater, stood in the doorway separating life and death, natural and supernatural, spiritual and physical worlds. Her methods were frequently part conjure ritual, part herbal tradition, and part folk medicine.”
Hoodoo gave Black parents a way to handle different ailments by connecting the physical self to the spiritual self. If a woman comes to Logan concerned about recurring yeast infections, she may ask the woman how she is connecting to her partner on a spiritual level and how that can affect her health.
“That’s something that I get from my own connection to Hoodoo – everything happens for a reason and we’re trying to figure out what that is, and then mitigate that through prayer, rituals or herbs,” Logan said.
Nature added to the wealth of Black midwives knowledge. Most of them grew and cultivated their own herbs and filled their cabinets with a meadow of medicine. Goldenseal dried up umbilical cord stumps on newborns. Shepherd’s Purse reduced bleeding and prevented hemorrhaging after childbirth. Midwives timed births using the Rose of Jericho, which is also called the resurrection plant due to the way it slowly unfurls in water.
Logan said midwives helped the enslaved reclaim their reproductive care during a time when they were in bondage. Black women were forced to have children to grow the ranks of the enslaved. Their enslavers demanded they stop breastfeeding their own babies to become “wet nurses” to white children. Many Black women endured sexual violence and were impregnated by white slaveowners.
But the land helped the enslaved preserve power. Logan said sage was used to dry up breast milk supply and multiple herbs induced bleeding during unwanted pregnancies.
“We didn’t have autonomy over our bodies,” Logan said “So if we did not want to have babies from the slaveowner’s lineage or when we didn’t want to have children not of our own choosing, we had herbs like pennyroyal or blue cohosh.”
According to Hazzard-Donald, Black midwives were revered community leaders who were called into the birthing space through visions or dreams. Logan’s calling wasn’t something that happened immediately. It was more like a whisper that became louder as she became older. She didn’t grow up practicing Hoodoo, per se. But superstitions ran deep in her bloodline. Family members would get mad if she accidentally swept their feet – which is believed to bring bad luck. Their house had to be clean and in order before New Year’s Day. When she left home to complete her undergrad at Fisk University in Tennessee, her mother made sure she packed her altar so her ancestors would be close by.
I do believe that babies are ancestors returning, and so to be that person at the gate welcoming them back here is so special to me.
— Jeanine Valrie Logan
After studying public health, Logan went to South Africa in 2001 to do some reproductive work. There she met midwives who picked out different types of roots and herbs at “witch doctor” markets. Logan was inspired by their knowledge, but didn’t want to deal with the hassle of going back to school. When she returned to Chicago, she decided to help mothers as a doula instead.
Seeing the healthcare gaps in her city is what pushed her to become a midwife. After 12 years of serving her community as a doula, Logan became pregnant with her first daughter. Birth centers were non-existent in Illinois back then, she said. And she couldn’t find a Black midwife to join her during her entrance into motherhood. She became the solution she wanted to see in her area by completing a nurse midwifery program at Frontier Nursing University in the fall of 2018. She said Black elders took her in and taught her the magic of birthing.
“I do believe that babies are ancestors returning, and so to be that person at the gate welcoming them back here is so special to me,” Logan said. “I always feel a deep sense of connection to my ancestors while I’m in the birth space. It’s like I’m entering into a different state of consciousness where I’m speaking to my higher power while I’m trying to make sure that the road for this baby is safe, its family is safe and the birthing person is safe.”
A well of cultural knowledge was maintained through apprenticeship and oral history. Older, more experienced midwives took younger midwives under their wing and passed on their rituals to the next generation.
Even today I feel like the war on Black midwifery is a real thing. Some of us are fighting to practice in our highest scope of care, and some of us are fighting just to be recognized in our state so we can practice. I think the same thing happened with Hoodoo healers, the conjurers or the treaters.
— Jeanine Valrie Logan
While this practice kept Black mothers, babies and their families thriving, it was often shunned by white male physicians who started to assert their dominance in the birthing space. By the early 1900s, states started requiring midwives to register with state health boards. White doctors instituted a campaign to discredit the wisdom of Black birth workers by labeling midwives as unskilled and unsanitary. In the 1920s book “The Development of Midwifery in Mississippi,” director of the Bureau of Child Hygiene for Mississippi Dr. Felix J. Underwood, wrote, “What could be a more pitiable picture than that of a prospective mother housed in an unsanitary home and attended in this most critical period by an accoucheur, filthy and ignorant, and not far removed from the jungles of Africa, laden with its atmosphere of weird superstition and voodooism.”
Stereotypes about midwives continued to blaze through the gynecology field despite reports validating the safety of the practice. Between 1914-1916, Thanks to midwives, Newark, N.J. was able to maintain a lower maternal mortality rate, than in Boston, where midwives were banned. The infant mortality rate was almost five times higher in Boston. A 1930s study in Alabama discovered that Black women with midwives experienced lower infant and maternal mortality rates than white women who went to a physician.
By the 1960s and 70s, a combination of rising hospitalization for births and midwife bans in southern states nearly wiped Black birthing workers out of the healthcare field. Today, Black women are nearly three times as likely to die during childbirth in the U.S. The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention reported that 80 percent of pregnancy-related deaths are preventable. Reproductive justice workers believe medical racism, the dismissal of Black people’s pain and lack of access to high-quality care contributed to the high maternal death rate for Black women.
Logan is trying to create an oasis in an area known as a “birthing desert,” where multiple hospitals have closed within the past three years. She said Black birthing people and the birth workers who care for them often carry the burden of deteriorating healthcare outcomes when reproductive care options continue to dwindle. While the rate of home births have been increasing, Logan said Black midwives are still fighting to be seen and recognized for their work.
“Even today I feel like the war on Black midwifery is a real thing. Some of us are fighting to practice in our highest scope of care, and some of us are fighting just to be recognized in our state so we can practice.” Logan said. “I think the same thing happened with Hoodoo healers, the conjurers or the treaters.”
Last fall, Black midwives and doctors successfully sued the Alabama Department of Public Health for preventing the operation of birthing centers, making it harder to provide care to low-risk patients. In 2021, Logan herself wrote and was influential in the passage of the Alternative Health Care Delivery Act, which expanded the number of birthing centers in Illinois from 12 to 17. She was also a strong supporter of the Birth Equity Act, which now requires Illinois-based health insurance to cover pregnancy and postpartum services provided by doulas, lactation experts and midwives.
By broadening the landscape of reproductive care, Logan believes Black midwives heal what racism has harmed by bringing the focus back to communal care. Black people just have to tap into their ancestral knowledge.
“We literally have all the technology, knowledge and skills that we need to mitigate these outcomes today because we were doing it back then when people couldn’t read or write,” Logan said. “Our people just literally relied on the land, prayers and the spirit to make a way. And so I really believe that we do have that capability, and we could use that in addition to all the technology that we have today such as ultrasounds, electronic fetal monitoring and medications.”
When parents enter the Chicago South Side Birth Center, Logan wants them to be enveloped in love and care. Their most vulnerable moments will be guided by birth workers who look like them. Logan said her space will contrast the sterile experience of a hospital environment where parents are welcomed with a table full of cold, metal tools, a bed covered with a thin plastic sheet and a bright, spaceship-looking light shining on their private parts.
Logan said comfortable, cozy, warm spaces lead to happier and healthier outcomes for both baby and the birthing parent.
“If you think about the nervous system of a baby and the nervous system of the birthing person, the same thing that got that person pregnant is the same thing that’s needed for when we’re in the labor space,” Logan said. “So that’s dim light. That’s quietness. That’s the sounds and smells that stimulate the safety of being in this space where you feel held.”
Being surrounded by friends and family adds another level of comfort to the birthing space. While she doesn’t expect a large number of loved ones in a labor room, Logan thinks it’s a shame hospitals isolate parents during such a treasured experience.
“Birth is literally the only moment when someone transitions from being themselves to being an actual portal of life for somebody else. A body is coming through another body, and it’s like birth is the only rite of passage in our whole lives where someone else says, ‘Everyone stay away, because we are in charge of this and we know what’s best for this space.’ And that’s really not true,” Logan said. “We need more people accountable to the birthing person and accountable to the baby making sure they stay alive. When you take people out of that birthing space and they don’t feel any connection or responsibility to the health and well -being of that family, then that’s why we have these poor maternal health outcomes.”
The community-building environment Logan wants to emulate at Chicago South Side Birth Center mirrors the traditional, collective practices of granny midwives, who stayed with mothers postpartum to help cook, clean, conduct housework and take care of their newborn. Bringing that accountability to each other to present-day birthing spaces and homes can embolden the spiritual encounter of welcoming new life into the world.
“Hoodoo is done in community,” she said. “I think a lot about the power of what Hoodoo can do when you’re doing it together. For me, it’s a form of liberation. In community, Hoodoo is literally a way to share spaces and to get free.”
