Bulletin of the History of Medicine

summary:

Historians have recognized the importance of enslaved African American healers, including conjure practitioners who drew on herbal and ritual remedies, in providing a "dual system of health care" for enslaved people in the American South. Planters' journals and narratives by formerly enslaved people alike include accounts of antebellum conjurers as health practitioners. After Emancipation, African American conjurers remained integral, particularly in rural Black communities where people had little contact with orthodox physicians. However, because these practitioners left few written accounts, African American conjurers in the post-Emancipation South have received less scholarly attention. Focusing on the 1887 trial of Sarah Evans, a freedwoman, for practicing medicine without a license, this essay demonstrates that court records shed light on health practitioners who are less visible in other archives and provide insight into how conjurers, particularly female conjurers, performed their unique roles as healers who also presented themselves as capable of inflicting harm.