I have always been acutely aware of what herbs could do for your mind and body. In recent years, bouts with fibroids and hormonal imbalance have taken over my health and I quickly realized that without the right blend of foods and herbs my health would consistently take a toll. The need for healing placed in me a curiosity that I had not yet experienced as an aging adult.
My curiosity for herbs and the power they hold started with my mother. Growing up in a food desert in the midwest left her with common chronic health issues that she has been determined to remedy through a whole diet. Growing up our home would be filled with supplements and teas that I knew nothing about. My only relationship with herbs was when we would cook with them, which carries its own health benefits. But, as I grew older and I began to ask more questions and do my own research, I learned that herbs don’t just flavor food, they fuel the mind, body, and soul.
For Black Americans herbalism has long been medicine, a spiritual tool, and form of survival. From the knowledge brought over on the ships of the transatlantic slave trade to the traditions passed down on the porches of Southern grandmothers, and the shelves of modern wellness shops, herbalism has been a thread of continuity in a history marked by rupture. To understand Black American herbalism is to see how African, Indigenous, and European traditions collided, adapted, and endured. It’s a story of resourcefulness and resistance, as much as it is one of healing.
African Origins: Medicine Carried in Memory
Herbalism has always been central to African life. Across West and Central Africa, enslaved people carried vast plant knowledge, including medicinal uses for roots, leaves, and barks. They also brought spiritual practices rooted in plants’ symbolic power; and culinary traditions where food doubled as preventive medicine.
Of course, few physical items could be carried across the Atlantic. What traveled were memories, rituals, and communal knowledge. Enslaved Africans brought familiar plants to the Americas, like okra, hibiscus (sorrel), and kola nut, while reinterpreting unfamiliar ones. They adapted African practices of rootwork and ritual medicine to a new landscape, turning to native plants they learned about from Indigenous people.
Indigenous and European Intersections
On plantations, survival often depended on a deep botanical literacy. Indigenous Americans introduced enslaved Africans to local herbs such as sassafras, yaupon holly, and goldenrod. These exchanges formed the backbone of an evolving Black pharmacopeia.
European herbal traditions also shaped this practice, though often through force and necessity. Enslaved people sometimes had access to European-style apothecaries or were tasked with preparing remedies for white households. Over time, this exposure blended with African and Indigenous knowledge, creating a distinctly Black American herbalism.
Conjure, Hoodoo, and the Spiritual Power of Plants
Herbalism was never purely physical. In many African cosmologies, the material and spiritual worlds are intertwined. This perspective survived and reshaped itself in the Americas. Hoodoo, a Black American spiritual system rooted in West African traditions, Indigenous knowledge, and adapted in the U.S. South, placed plants at the center of ritual healing.
Roots like John the Conqueror (Ipomoea jalapa), used for protection and strength, or High John root, became staples not only for physical remedies but also for spiritual empowerment. Herbs were brewed, carried in mojo bags, or scattered to protect a home. In the hostile world of slavery and segregation, this spiritual dimension of herbalism gave Black communities a sense of agency and resilience.
The Role of the Community Healer
In an era where Black bodies were valued far more than Black lives, the rudimentary medicine of the white majority was an afterthought. Slave masters and their wives often resorted to home remedies in an effort to keep the enslaved healthy enough for labor. Black women, versed in herbal medicine were consulted, as their knowledge often superseded that of their masters. It had to. One wrong diagnosis could result in the death of a patient and, as a result, the practitioner.
Doctors were only called as a last resort, when the illness was far too complicated for the Hoodoo worker’s practiced hands. Medicine men and women were not a new phenomenon in the antebellum southern. The practice of hoodoo, or rootwork had origins in African Spiritual practices, Indigenous American knowledge, and often hidden under the guise of christianity.
Rootwork was more than spiritual practices used for protection, the use of herbs and plants helped to keep slaves alive and healthy enough for their arduous labor. These herbal remedies were so effective that some were retained and developed into the synthetic medicines we use today.
Chemical analysis in the early 19th century saw scientists learning to extract and modify active ingredients from plants. Later, chemists began making their own version of plant compounds and, over time, the use of herbs as medicine declined, along with knowledge of the practice. Almost a quarter of pharmaceutical drugs are derived from plants.
Herbalism In the Present
Many traditional practices remain alive today, sometimes hidden in plain sight. Herbal teas brewed for colds; peppermint, chamomile, and ginger in particular, trace back to generations of community healing. Collard greens and dandelion greens, once used as “spring tonics,” still carry echoes of their medicinal roots. Castor oil and turpentine, once pantry staples, remain in oral histories of folk remedies.
There has been a revival of interest in Black American herbalism and hoodoo culture, as highlighted in the recent Ryan Coogler horror film, Sinners, through the main character Annie, played by actress Wunmi Mosaku. This phenomenon is especially popular among younger generations seeking to reclaim ancestral wellness and a sense of independence and control. Black herbalists and healers are archiving oral histories, cultivating traditional plants, and teaching the cultural significance of remedies once dismissed as “old-timey.” In many wellness spaces, plants like hibiscus, burdock root, and sage are gaining mainstream traction, though often without acknowledgment of the Black and Indigenous communities that preserved their use.
The Legacy Continues
The history of herbalism in Black American culture is not a relic, it’s a living system that continues to evolve. Influenced by Africa, shaped by Indigenous America, and adapted under European dominance, it remains rooted in resilience.
As interest in herbal wellness grows, the challenge is not just to celebrate herbs as trends but to honor the people who carried this knowledge across centuries of struggle. For Black Americans, herbalism is not simply alternative medicine. It is heritage, testimony, and resistance in green and root and leaf.
