A West Tennessee Rootworker
When I first had the idea of writing about the utterly fascinating and historically significant hoodoo and rootwork culture in Memphis and West Tennessee, I knew the roots of the culture ran deep in our region.
My first visual memory of hoodoo culture came through seeing the multi-colored candles in the glass and shimmering spiritual oils on the shelves of a shop on Beale street in Memphis. I had no idea what I was seeing as a child but years later I would encounter rootwork in my own backyard.
After leaving Memphis my family lived in a small West Tennessee town in a rather rural area of the city. About four miles down the road was a small grocery store where my grandfather would take me as a child to get Sundrop soda and small packets of pellets for my pellet gun. ‘Roland’s Grocery’ was a small locally owned store that serviced a region that was composed mainly of farmers. Farmers could drive their tractors to the store and pick up bread, milk and rag bologna sandwiches. At lunch the grocery became a virtual ‘town hall’ with all the locals and politicians eating lunch at the grocery counter.
In 1993 a friend of mine from a local sheriff's department shared a story with me that peaked my curiosity. He was eating lunch at Roland’s Grocery when a little elderly African-American woman walked in and walked around the perimeter of the grocery shaking her keys. She turned and looked at a group of customers and said ‘Ain’t no more voodoo in there now!’ After a number of encounters with the woman including witnessing her give a local judge a jar of herbal ointment she had put together to help his aching knee, he suggested I go talk to her. He knew of my interest in magico-religious cultures and thought I might gleam something from talking to the woman.
I discovered that not only was she the grandmother of a guy I had gone to school with but that she lived right down the road from me. One afternoon I decided to go visit the woman known as ‘Miss Jessie’.
After knocking on her front door I was greeted by a short black elderly woman wearing an Easter egg blue dress and a crocheted cap that covered her head. She invited me for what would be many visits to come. After getting to know me she allowed me to record a series of interviews with her focusing on her life and practice as a rootworker. The following are excerpts from our interviews with dialect kept as observed.
As a spiritual doctor, Miss Jessie used teachings she learned from her relatives who shared a Native American ancestry. Standing about five feet tall typically in a little burlap dress, Miss Jessie would greet visitors at her door day and night. Men and women from all over West Tennessee would come to see her for one of her spiritual treatments. She would tell me “People call me all the time saying, ‘Miss Jessie, I need you to do this.’ ‘Miss Jessie, I need you to do that.’ ‘I need fixin, I need help.’ Lord these people are wearin me out!,” she would tell me.
She relayed a story about some of her latest exploits as a rootworker. “Last night I had a carload of three big white women from Humboldt came down here. They talkin about, ‘Miss Jessie we constipated!’ I said, ‘I got something for you!’ So I went into my kitchen and mixed up a little polk root, a lil turpentine, a snuff and some stuff and I said, ‘Now you dip yo finger in this and dip into yo bootyhole.’ I meant for ’em to do this when they got home. Lord, they were goin all over my house! ” Miss Jessie would laugh with the most infectious laugh that would warm your heart but would remind you of the fact that she had truly seen it all.
Miss Jessie recalled one story in which a man knocked on her door claiming to be a treasure hunter. “I was asleep in bed and about three o’ clock in the morning I hear this banging on my door. I got my gun and went to the door. I said, ‘What you want?’ and this man said, ‘Miss Jessie, the spirits done told me there’s some treasure buried in yo front yard. Can I dig it up?’ I opened the door and there’s this man standin out there with a light. I said, ‘Yeah but you better not mess my yard up!’ He said, ‘Alright,’ and he start to dig. He dug up a box with some money in it sayin, ‘Miss Jessie, I found it! Here lemme give you some of it.’ I said, ‘No, the spirits told you, they want you to have it.’ And he went on.” I asked her, “How did the spirits tell him?” She went on to describe a pendulum and said, “There’s this thing, like a piece of wood, and it swings on a string. He let that swing back and forth, an’ the spirits tell you what to do.”
She told stories about ‘crosssings’ and frightful ‘haints’. “When these men trying to come buy my property, somebody brought some voodoo on my land. So I took some baking soda, salt and soap and mixed it up together and put em in a bag. I took some scissors and cut that bag and let that stuff drip all around my yard up to the road. They don’t know it’s there but I do. It’ll keep that voodoo away!”
Family members have shared stories of how Miss Jessie would perform prayers and actions against those who would try to seek her services for evil. Her grandson shared with me the story of how as a young boy he watched as the door to her home shook violently as his grandmother watched. “Don’t open it,” she told her grandson. “It’s a haint. If you don’t let it in, it can’t come in!” she warned. She became known for her ability to discern spirits.
Miss Jessie was one of the last rootworkers from a generation gone by. Her family shared that much of her herbal knowledge came from relatives who were Native American. She taught her children and grandchildren how to locate specific plants and trees and to cut off the bark of the trees, boil them and use them as medicines. She was known to create an herbal cure known among her clients as “the juice.”
Miss Jessie was known for performing her spiritual work as a gift to others. She did not charge for her services, although many families would bring her eggs, vegetables and prepared meals. Miss Jessie would combine elements like sulfur, polk root and a variety of other materials with prayer to bring about healing. She became known for her remedies — such as a mustard wrap (also known as mustard plaster) made from dry mustard, flour and water, used to combat colds and congestion.
I would get to spend many days visiting with Miss Jessie before her untimely death. Her work is a legacy that demonstrates the tradition and preservation of folk practices that utilized the availability of local materials combined with the power of spiritual wisdom. It is said that when an elder dies, a library is lost. May we always preserve the history and wisdom of these living libraries.
