Just as most customs surely have roots in European tradition, Halloween does, as we touched on in past editions of this publication (see “Halloween and Black Folk,” dated October 25, 2023). To be honest, whatever culture Americans carry, regardless of ethnicity, is part and parcel of the ceremonies, rites, and rituals of our Eurocentric forebears. African influence, however, has left its mark, as surely as the people who left its shores became the driving economic force behind the Western Hemisphere.
The Working of Roots
“If science ever gets to the bottom of Voodoo in Haiti and Africa, it will be found that some important medical secrets, still unknown to medical science, give it its power, rather than the gestures of ceremony.”
-Zora Neale Hurston
Any discussion of antebellum America should address cotton’s importance in the country’s development. Indigenous people were already cultivating the crop when Christopher Columbus set foot in the Bahamas, leading the Spaniards to till the soil in Florida before the English began similar efforts to the north in Virginia. Eventually, the cotton industry became the cornerstone of the southern economy and the foundation of the United States’ wealth.
Sugar was equally important. It figured prominently in the third leg of the “triangle trade” between Europe, Africa, and the Americas, in which manufactured goods, human labor, and raw materials were exchanged.
Sugar cane and the products derived from it arguably set the stage for transatlantic slavery even before cotton made its presence felt. This “white gold” doesn’t thrive in the cool, dry conditions native to Europe. As Europe developed a craving for cakes, candy, rum, and other sweetener-dependent luxuries, it encouraged the mechanisms that facilitated their production.
Its growth is best manifested in heat and humidity, and so Europeans were prompted to move westward for their sugar fix by encouraging the placement of plantations in the Caribbean, especially in Haiti. Here, kidnapped African slaves were forced to toil under the merciless tropical sun before they found relief in an early death. The possibility of unending subjugation, or being reduced to a soulless body conscripted to endless forced labor, gave rise to the myth of the “zombie.”
The intermixing of cultures became a sort of spiritual “gumbo,” which possibly made the violent geographic transition more palpable by intertwining familiar traditions with European Catholicism. Thus, West African “Vodun” became Haitian “Vodou,” and finally Louisiana “Voodoo,” fusing a polytheistic religion with the assorted saints from the Christian faith.
The possibility of being awakened from death by a “bokor,” a sorcerer or witch, who could condemn someone to continue their backbreaking labor for eternity, was a horror surpassing anything Hollywood studios might conjure up.
These unfortunates were led to believe they might encounter alternative, benevolent spirits such as Baron Samedi at the crossroads of the living and the dead. Those who were lucky would be transported back to a heavenly afterlife in Mother Africa, away from the hellish torment of the sugar cane fields in the tropics.
Baron Samedi’s legacy continues today in pop culture, with character derivatives appearing in Blaxploitation films such as (1974’s “Sugar Hill”), the James Bond movie franchise (1973’s “Live and Let Die”), and Disney animation (“The Princess and the Frog”), often sporting his sugar cane walking stick as a nod to his past as a bridge between the old and new worlds of the African experience.
Tropes derived from this tradition have worked their way into Western literature, especially in the fear of reanimation. Notable examples include Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” infused with Gothic elements from 19th-century Europe, and, in America, H. P. Lovecraft’s work, which builds on the idea of reanimation. More recently, this received an Afrocentric twist with “Lovecraft Country,” a novel and cable television series.
As we have seen, the brutality incurred towards the pursuit of monetary profit left its mark on the psyche of the exploited, and eventually on American culture as a whole.
Moving North
The fear of the supernatural and the work-a-day realities of our everyday world are at once separate and intertwined, at least metaphysically.
The horror tradition is arguably more prominent in the American South, possibly because of the more documented history of chattel slavery, and its contribution to the story of America, before, during, and after the Civil War.
No Halloween tradition is more potent than that of Jack-o’-lanterns, humanoid features carved into the exterior of a pumpkin. As a prime example of cultural appropriation, this is not an American invention. Like many holidays and the paraphernalia that shape our collective social construct, it traces its lineage across the water to the Emerald Isle. In that venerated land, locals cultivated the legend of Stingy Jack, a drunkard and trickster so cunning he outsmarted the devil right before All Saints’ Day, which, of course, is Halloween.
Still, the myths persist. Legends say the original Jack O’Lanterns weren’t pumpkins at all, but the heads of runaway slaves who were caught. Once in custody, they were decapitated, their heads mounted on sticks, and then set afire. These grotesque effigies were placed in front of Master’s house as a warning against attempting to escape.
Aside from the ubiquitous Jack O’Lantern, nothing says Halloween more than skeletons swinging in the breeze. Long before the era of splatter movies, gore, and special effects, skeletons were the ultimate reminder of our mortality, a manifestation of the destination that awaits us all, regardless of origin: death.
The plantation system is where this most potent image of racial exploitation emerged. Lynching, the hanging of people often without the courtesy of judicial oversight, reigns supreme around the world as a symbol of American hypocrisy. In our recent history of “political correctness,” the link has been drawn between hanging corpses and the paper skeletons swinging in the breeze in late October. The scars of the past linger.
One lesser-known myth concerns the Florida fable of “gator baiting.” Artist and screenwriter Ezra Claytan Daniels encountered this folklore while living in the college town of Gainesville, and he turned it into the graphic novel “Mama Came Callin’” this past February.
“My first reaction was horror, then shock that I’d never heard of it before,” he recalls.
Research found no proof of this practice. “Because there’s no documented evidence, historians typically refute the idea as an urban legend,” he says, then offers a rebuttal.
“No doubt any evidence of such a heinous crime would’ve been buried, if not at the time, then over the years as history continuously tries to scrub any trace of white supremacist violence,” he said.
This particular tidbit of Americana returned to its traditional place this season as the cheer for University of Florida football after lying dormant following protests by progressive elements.
The African experience in the Western Hemisphere was an existence of unbroken cruelty. Those who suffered endured this agony solely for ‘others’ benefit. With the progression of time, this agony has possibly become less visceral, our collective torment buried further into the depths of our psyche. Yet still, the scars remain, as America’s shameful history plays out in the wake of our unresolved racial trauma.
