Jumping the BroomPub Date : 2020-11-09DOI: 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660868.003.0007
T. D. Parry
{"title":"No Expression as Prevalent","authors":"T. D. Parry","doi":"10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660868.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660868.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 6 revolves around the cultural impact of African American novelist Alex Haley’s Roots: The Saga of an American Family in the late-twentieth century. It specifically examines how the novel and miniseries built upon a pre-existing interest among Black Americans seeking to reconnect with their cultural heritage, though the widescale impact of Haley’s work produced a much more robust examination of slavery’s role in US history among readers and viewers of Roots, and it introduced a method through which descendants of the enslaved might approach that era of history. Ultimately, it argues that Roots’ widespread popularity secured its position in the popular culture of Black Americans and revived a number of discarded customs, including the broomstick wedding. This marital tradition was even highlighted in a controversial plagiarism case made against Haley by the novelist Margaret Walker, whose book Jubilee had also referenced the tradition a decade before. However, alongside Roots immense popularity, popular magazines like Ebony and Jet helped institute a rise in Afrocentric marital practices by the 1980s, and “jumping the broom” started to gain many different meanings and associations as it acquired a larger number of practitioners as Americans entered the 1990s.","PeriodicalId":229634,"journal":{"name":"Jumping the Broom","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116346016","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jumping the BroomPub Date : 2020-11-09DOI: 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660868.003.0006
T. D. Parry
{"title":"Better than Nothing","authors":"T. D. Parry","doi":"10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660868.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660868.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"The use of the broomstick wedding among European-American communities is an understudied component of this ritual history, and this chapter provides the first extended treatment of the marital phenomenon among people of European descent in the United States. Marginalized communities in isolated areas, such as white people in Appalachia, Cajuns in the Louisiana bayous, and miners in the rural American west, were inclined to adopt the ritual due to geographical circumstances that made access to ministers difficult. Like most other populations, each group shows a unique approach to performing the ritual, suggesting how each of them employed elements of cultural autonomy. Additionally, the chapter argues that many white Americans, especially those linked to cultures based on oral tradition, retained an understanding of “jumping the broom” in their colloquial speech. Just as many recognize “tying the knot” as an expression for marriage, “jumping the broom” was also similarly popular in regional vernaculars of European Americans throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.","PeriodicalId":229634,"journal":{"name":"Jumping the Broom","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126090945","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jumping the BroomPub Date : 2020-11-09DOI: 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660868.003.0010
T. D. Parry
{"title":"Beyond Black or White","authors":"T. D. Parry","doi":"10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660868.003.0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660868.003.0010","url":null,"abstract":"The final chapter examines how the broomstick wedding appeals to different groups in the twenty-first century, some of which have no ancestral attachment to the custom. The chapter begins by analysing an “anarchist” marriage that uses the broomstick wedding, in which the author positions it as an anarchic symbol of matrimony since it was used by populations who were often married outside governmental regulations. It then uses this expansive historical framework to explore how jumping the broom was adopted and adapted by various cultural groups and communities in the United States and elsewhere. Viewing the ritual through a diasporic lens, it questions how it has gained some acceptance from Black people in the Caribbean and Atlantic islands who do not hold ties to North American slavery. It then analyzes how interracial couples approach the ceremony as depicted in both popular media and the wedding industry more broadly. The chapter then directs its attention toward Romani populations and Neo-pagans in the United States and Great Britain, and the circumstances under which the custom was revived and/or continued in these groups. The chapter explores the simmering debate surrounding questions of “cultural ownership” and who has the “right” to marry in this way.","PeriodicalId":229634,"journal":{"name":"Jumping the Broom","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114486628","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jumping the BroomPub Date : 2020-11-09DOI: 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660868.003.0009
T. D. Parry
{"title":"To Create Our Own Rituals","authors":"T. D. Parry","doi":"10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660868.003.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660868.003.0009","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter reviews the state of the broomstick wedding among same-sex couples, both before and after its the legalization in the United States. For many people facing systemic discrimination and marital inequality, jumping the broom symbolizes resistance to the status quo. This chapter examines how same-sex couples who used the broomstick ceremony were depicted in the mainstream media, which portrayed the LGBTQ movement as overwhelmingly white and middle-class. For Black people in this community, however, the ritual can hold a distinct meaning that is connected to their unique historical and contemporary experiences. To examine this distinction, it uses the film Noah’s Arc: Jumping the Broom (2008) as a starting point in this discussion, analyzing how the film uses (or does not use) jumping the broom to unveil the complexity of being Black and gay in the United States. It then uses an intersectional framework to examine how the broomstick wedding is used by white gay men and lesbians to promote a colorblind vision of the LGBTQ community, though for lesbian and gay African Americans it often holds a double-meaning for them as a group “twice-barred” from legal matrimony, once as enslaved people and then as those who are same-sex attracted.","PeriodicalId":229634,"journal":{"name":"Jumping the Broom","volume":"62 2","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"120895571","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jumping the BroomPub Date : 2020-11-09DOI: 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660868.003.0004
T. D. Parry
{"title":"Don’t Tell Things Like That","authors":"T. D. Parry","doi":"10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660868.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660868.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"The book’s third chapter examines the politics of marriage for formerly enslaved African Americans following the Civil War, in which they gained legal recognition for their domestic relationships. In reviewing the testimonies of formerly enslaved people, one finds a stark divide between those who claimed the custom was as authentic as any other ceremony, against those who, for reasons of self-protection, downplayed the significance or denied the existence of broomstick weddings on their own plantation. Consequently, jumping the broom largely faded from popularity in the postbellum era, but the chapter shows how its memory survived among certain sections of the descendant community. Under unique circumstances, some African Americans continued to practice it throughout the rural South, and other sources reveal that many formerly enslaved people refused to marry using legally-recognized protocols, as they considered the broomstick wedding as legitimate. In certain cases, this caused some couples to reject governmental requirements to remarry. But even for those who rejected it, the colloquial expression “jump the broom” remained in the parlance of Black southerners into the twentieth century. The colloquial expression was important for retaining memories of the ancestral past, and it would help spur its revival during the late-twentieth century.","PeriodicalId":229634,"journal":{"name":"Jumping the Broom","volume":"76 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115031126","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jumping the BroomPub Date : 2020-11-09DOI: 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660868.003.0003
T. D. Parry
{"title":"As If They Had Been Joined by a Clergyman","authors":"T. D. Parry","doi":"10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660868.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660868.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter makes an important intervention in the existing scholarship of slave marriage in the United States and the centrality of “jumping the broom” in that historiography. It analyzes the ceremony’s diverse expressions throughout the antebellum South, arguing that enslaved people in different areas, similarly to their British counterparts, reimagined it for their own community’s preferences. The chapter then draws upon various narratives to examines how gender and social status were infused into the custom, showcasing how it reflected contests of dominance and domestic equality. It also overturns assumptions that the ceremony was universal among the enslaved, as many testimonials reveal it was largely associated with “field hands,” while those enslaved in the plantation house claimed to receive elaborate weddings that included Christian ministers. The chapter dismantles several myths that are now associated with the custom by historicizing the motivations for people who used it while simultaneously explaining why others rejected it. The chapter also provides a number of graphs and charts, which display how different practitioners performed the ritual differently and used it for different purposes.","PeriodicalId":229634,"journal":{"name":"Jumping the Broom","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115570916","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jumping the BroomPub Date : 2020-11-09DOI: 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660868.003.0005
T. D. Parry
{"title":"Into the White Mind","authors":"T. D. Parry","doi":"10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660868.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660868.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter contextualizes the “broomstick wedding” in North America as a product of the social classifications that white Americans largely modelled from their British counterparts, though they simultaneously repositioned the discourse within the particular cultural framework of the antebellum United States. Specifically, it examines how slave owners understood the broomstick wedding and its relationship to slavery, determining that the elite patterns of matrimony existent in Britain were adopted by the southern aristocracy. Among American writers, social constructs of “race” and “otherness” were imbedded within elite discourses surrounding the broomstick ceremony that were once typically concentrated within class distinctions among British writers. On the other end, Northern abolitionists also opined on the broomstick wedding, framing it as a degrading custom forced upon the enslaved by those who enslaved them. Thus, the negative portrayals of those populations who “jumped the broom” came from various angles, highlighting how race and class were important components of differentiation. In the United States, then, “jumping the broom” becomes much more associated with constructs of “blackness,” as American writers and minstrel performers portrayed it as a custom connected to slavery and the traditions of enslaved people.","PeriodicalId":229634,"journal":{"name":"Jumping the Broom","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127633288","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jumping the BroomPub Date : 2020-11-09DOI: 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660868.003.0011
T. D. Parry
{"title":"Whose Heritage? Whose Culture?","authors":"T. D. Parry","doi":"10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660868.003.0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660868.003.0011","url":null,"abstract":"The conclusion is structured around a few cultural moments that resonate with current discussions of the ritual’s modern and historical relevance, including two audiovisual depictions of the ceremony found in the feature film Jumping the Broom (2011) and the remake of the miniseries Roots (2016); alongside its appearance in discussions surrounding the Royal Wedding between Prince Harry, a British Royal, and Meghan Markle, an African American actress. I explore how “jumping the broom” was imbedded in many of the cultural, social, and political discussions that commenced prior to their union in 2018, and how the discourse revealed a continued misunderstanding about the broomstick ceremony’s transatlantic, multicultural roots. Importantly, the conclusion explores a few theoretical questions that remain imbedded within the public discourse: Who has the “right” to claim the custom when it holds such a deep history in so many cultures? Can those hold no ancestral claim to the ceremony still use it, or are they guilty of cultural appropriation? And in considering the evolving attitudes toward marriage, it asks whether the broomstick wedding, in its current state, will survive subsequent generations, or if it will drift away as it did previously.","PeriodicalId":229634,"journal":{"name":"Jumping the Broom","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121748247","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jumping the BroomPub Date : 2020-11-09DOI: 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660868.003.0008
T. D. Parry
{"title":"Every Black Person Should Do It","authors":"T. D. Parry","doi":"10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660868.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660868.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter examines how the broomstick wedding’s cultural importance skyrocketed by the 1990s. Not only were African Americans actively embracing the custom, some entrepreneurs established businesses that manufactured, crafted, and designed matrimonial broomsticks for Black couples using heritage weddings. The ritual’s popularity coincided with a variety of cultural moments that helped garner more interest in ancestral traditions, including Afrocentrism, genealogy, a rising Black middle class, and a rapidly growing and financially robust wedding industry. Holding few resources about the custom’s origins, its rising popularity prompted various authors to promote mythical histories surrounding its origins. Due to its association with Black Americans and its wide documentation among enslaved people, some prominent writers claimed it originated in West Africa. Though their theory did not go uncontested, it gained significant traction among many Black couples seeking a connection with their African past, even if there was little evidence to bolster the claim.","PeriodicalId":229634,"journal":{"name":"Jumping the Broom","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114701664","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jumping the BroomPub Date : 2020-11-09DOI: 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660868.003.0001
T. D. Parry
{"title":"A Multicultural Tradition","authors":"T. D. Parry","doi":"10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660868.003.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660868.003.0001","url":null,"abstract":"The book’s introduction begins with a largely unknown vignette of two enslaved people “jumping the broom” in an elaborate ceremony, which the author specifically selected to portray the ritual’s complexity and rich symbolism. Following the analysis of this ceremony, the introduction engages a number of broader subjects explored in the book’s subsequent chapters. First, it questions why, despite its popularity among multiple groups throughout the Atlantic world, the broomstick wedding has not received adequate attention in previous literature. This requires an overview of researchers who have commented on the custom and why a more extensive history needs to be written. Second, it examines how certain traditions are lost to communities and how their descendants reimagine them to fit their contemporary needs. Essentially, the need to reinvent a ceremony crosses the various cultural groups who claim it. Finally, it provides an overview of the book’s trajectory, which is both thematic and chronological, showing how “culture” is conceptualized, reimagined, reinvented, and exchanged throughout time and space.","PeriodicalId":229634,"journal":{"name":"Jumping the Broom","volume":"116 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128016257","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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