![]() In Louisiana, marrying Cajuns called their broomstick wedding ‘sauter l’balai’. If one journeyed to the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky in the early 1900s, one might have heard residents talking about a marital practice called ‘jumping over the broomstick’, which they believed to be unique to their own community. Though associated with African Americans, the custom actually has historical ties to many communities, who, on the surface, seem to have little in common with each other. But the custom called ‘jumping the broom’ follows a similar process among its various practitioners – and its practitioners are various indeed. Did enslaved people take the ritual from slaveowners, as Karenga suggests? Or is it a celebratory innovation developed by enslaved Africans under extraordinary circumstances? As with the history of many rituals, how it came to be is far more complicated than it might seem.ĭifferent renditions of jumping the broom exist in both historical and contemporary accounts: the broom can be held by guests, the couple can jump backwards or jumpers can alternate their leaps, and so on. Jumping the broom, he asserted, reduced a couple’s commitment to one another because they performed the act ‘over an instrument of labour’. Afrocentric leaders such as Maulana Karenga criticised Black couples who used it, arguing that it didn’t originate in Africa, but was actually introduced by slave owners. Not everyone was thrilled about reviving a ‘slave-era’ ritual. She speculated on attachments to African cultural beliefs about brooms, providing an origin story that highlighted the ingenuity of enslaved people who retained elements of their African heritage. Cole argued that the broomstick wedding was used by enslaved couples to reclaim dignity within a system that denied them legally recognised marriage. Then, in 1993, Harriette Cole’s book Jumping the Broom: The African-American Wedding Planner was published, which spurred mass embrace. ![]() Knowledge of the tradition waned until 1977, when it was reintroduced through the Roots television miniseries, which featured a broomstick wedding performed by an enslaved couple: the protagonist Kunta Kinte and his wife Bell. Many Black couples renounced it in the post-bellum period, seeing it as a vestige of slavery. Rooted in American slavery, the ritual was often dismissed by the formerly enslaved shortly after the American Civil War. ‘The Broomstick Wedding’ (1840s) from My Life (1897) by Mary Ashton Rice Livermore. Indeed, couples who did not jump the broom prior to its widespread revival often expressed regret that they were unaware of the custom when planning their wedding. Every Black person should do it.’ For them, as for many, culture and tradition were intimately linked to group identity, and jumping the broom symbolised racial and ethnic unity among those descended from enslaved people in the United States. ‘It’s traditional,’ they said, ‘and we need to bring it back to our culture. One couple explained the ritual’s attraction. As the couple is pronounced legally wed, they turn to the crowd, clasp hands and jump over a broomstick placed on the floor. In the mid-1990s, a novel wedding tradition became popular among African Americans: ‘jumping the broom’.
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