“Jumping the Broom,” is celebrated on this date.
This is an African American phrase and custom for marriage.
The significance of the broom to African-Americans heritage and history originates in the West African country of Ghana. During the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, most of Ghana in the 18th century was ruled by the Asante of Ashanti Confederacy. The Asante’s urban areas and roads were kept conspicuously clean according to visiting British and Dutch traders with the use of locally made brooms. These same brooms were used by wives or servants to clean the courtyards of palaces or homes. The broom in Asante and other Akan cultures also held spiritual value and symbolized sweeping away past wrongs or removing evil spirits.
This is where the broom comes into play regarding marriage. Brooms were waved over the heads of marrying couples to ward off spirits. The couple would often but not always jump over the broom at the end of the ceremony. Jumping over the broom symbolized the wife’s commitment or willingness to clean the courtyard of the new home she had joined. Furthermore, it expressed her overall commitment to the house. It also represented the determination of who ran the household. Whoever jumped highest over the broom was the decision maker of the household (usually the man). The jumping of the broom does not add up to taking a “leap of faith.”
The irony is that practice of jumping the broom was largely discarded after Emancipation in America which was consistent with the eventual fall of the Ashanti Confederacy in Ghana in 1897 and the coming of British customs. Jumping the Broom did survive in the Americas, especially in the United States, among slaves brought from the Asante area. This particular Akan practice of jumping the broom was picked up by other African ethnic groups in the Americas and used to strengthen marriages during slavery among their communities.
Jumping the broom was not a custom of slavery, but is a part of African culture that survived American slavery like the Voodoo religion of the Fon and Ewe ethnic groups or the ring shout ceremony of the BaKongo and Mbundu ethnic groups. With slavery over and superficial hints of racial integration allowed, African-Americans could now have European-style marriages.
Jumping the broom had nothing to do with Whites.
Once Blacks could have weddings with rings that were recognizable by anyone as a symbol of marriage, the broom ceremony wasn’t required. During this time, jumping the broom fell out of practice from the stigma it carried, and in some cases still carries, among African Americans who wanted nothing to do with anything associated with that era. The practice survived, and made a resurgence after publication of Alex Haley’s book “Roots.”
Currently, many African and African American couples include jumping the broom at the end of their wedding ceremonies as a tribute to tradition. And even couples who do not actually jump a broom when they get married, often refer to, or at least recognize, the phrase to be synonymous with getting married in the same way most Americans associate “tying the knot” with getting married.
Broom jumping is also practiced by non-Black groups and in different religions around the world with some variation. Wiccans and Gypsies are among some of the groups who developed their own broom-jumping tradition.
Reference:
Slavery and African Ethnicities in the Americas
Gwendolyn Midlo Hall
The fall of the Asante Empire:
The Hundred-Year War for Africa’s Gold Coast
Robert B. Edgerton
In some African-American communities, marrying couples will end their ceremony by jumping over a broomstick, either together or separately. This practice is well attested for as a marriage ceremony for slaves in the Southern United States in the 1840s and 1850s who were often not permitted to wed legally. Its revival in 20th century African American culture is due to the novel and miniseries Roots (1976, 1977).[24]
Dundes (1996) notes the unusual development of how “a custom which slaves were forced to observe by their white masters has been revived a century later by African Americans as a treasured tradition”.[25]
There have been occasional speculations to the effect that the custom may have origins in West Africa, but there is no direct evidence for this, although Dundes points to a custom of Ghana where brooms were waved above the heads of newlyweds and their parents.[26] Among southern Africans, who were largely not a part of the Atlantic slave trade, it represented the wife’s commitment or willingness to clean the courtyard of the new home she had joined.[26]
Slave-owners were faced with a :dilemma" regarding committed relationships between slaves. While some family stability might be desirable as helping to keep slaves tractable and pacified, anything approaching a legal marriage was not. Marriage gave a couple rights over each other which conflicted with the slave-owners’ claims.[27] Most marriages between enslaved blacks were not legally recognized during American slavery,[28] as in law marriage was held to be a civil contract, and civil contracts required the consent of free persons.[29] In the absence of any legal recognition, the slave community developed its own methods of distinguishing between committed and casual unions.[30] The ceremonial jumping of the broom served as an open declaration of settling down in a marriage relationship. Jumping the broom was always done before witnesses as a public ceremonial announcement that a couple chose to become as close to married as was then allowed.[31]
Jumping the broom fell out of practice when blacks were free to marry legally.[32] The practice did survive in some communities, however, and made a resurgence after the publication of Alex Haley’s Roots[24] Danita Rountree Green describes the African American custom as it stood in the early 1990s in her book Broom Jumping: A Celebration of Love (1992).
Slave marriages had neither legal standing nor protection from the abuses and restrictions imposed on them by slave-owners. Slave husbands and wives, without legal recourse, could be separated or sold at their master’s will. Couples who resided on different plantations were allowed to visit only with the consent of their owners. Slaves often married without the benefit of clergy, and as historian John Blassingame states, “the marriage ceremony in most cases consisted of the slaves simply getting the master’s permission and moving into a cabin together.”
Benjamin and Sarah Manson’s marriage, however, had been graced with a formal ceremony. Benjamin, who was brought to Tennessee from Virginia as a young boy by his then-owner, Nancy Manson, later described the event in a pension application he filed as the dependent of his deceased son John: “We were married on Dr. L. W. White’s farm 5 miles from Lebanon [Tennessee]… . Rev Ben White [a black preacher] said the marriage ceremony.” The “wedding ceremony,” he continued, “took place on the porch of the owner of Sarah [Dr. White]… . It was with the knowledge and consent of my master [Mr. Joseph L. Manson, son of Nancy Manson] and Sarah’s master that we were married.” Shortly after their marriage, Sarah’s owner purchased Benjamin. “He [Dr. White] had me for a number of years,” Benjamin explained, “then Mr. Manson bought me back and owned me till I was emancipated.”
Wedding Picture from the archives of “Antebellum Illustrations”
owners would have a white minister or a black plantation preacher perform the ceremony, and a large feast and dance in the “quarters” would follow honoring the slave couple. The ceremony could include the slave marriage ritual of “jumping the broom,” which required slave couples to jump over a broomstick. The custom of jumping the broom could vary from plantation to plantation. On some farms, the slave bride and groom would place separate brooms on the floor in front of each other. The couple would then step across the brooms at the same time joining hands to signal that they were truly married. On other farms, each slave partner was required to jump backward over a broom held a foot from the ground. If either partner failed to clear the broom successfully, the other partner would be declared the one who would rule or boss the household. If both partners cleared the broom without touching it, then there would be no “bossin.”
While historians and scholars differ on the origin, exact meaning, and the frequency of the “irregular” marriage ritual, most agree that the act of “jumping the broom” was a “binding force” in the slave couple’s relationship and made them feel “more married.”