Kentucky Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves

Book excerpt: CLARK CO.(Mayme Nunnelley)Most Kentucky superstitions are common to all classes of people because the Negroes originally obtained most of their superstitions from the white and because the superstitions of most part of Kentucky are in almost all cases not recent invention but old survivals from a time when they were generally accepted by all Germanic peoples and by all Indo-Europeans. The only class of original contributions made by the Negroes to our stock of superstitions is that of the hoodoo or voodoo signs which are brought from Africa by the ancestors of the present colored people of America. On the arrival of the negro in America, his child like mind was readily receptive to the white man's superstitions. The Black slave and servants in Kentucky. . . .