Feeling Overwhelmed? How Brooms Can Help Ground Our Spirits
Do you sometimes sweep or clean to feel better? There may be a spiritual reason. The next time you pick up a broom to sweep your space, remember that our ancestors likely did the same. During enslavement, brooms were a major symbol of home, love, and agency - and not just for weddings.
Many of us know about the Black tradition of jumping the broom to get married - and its roots in enslavement. But there was more to our spiritual connection to brooms than weddings.
Though many enslaved people cleaned the domestic spaces of enslavers, the time and tools used to attend to their own personal quarters differed. They fashioned brooms from sage, grass, and loose straw, sweeping their cabins’ dirt floors and front yards.
Despite no legal property ownership, this was as close to a home as they had. Handmaking brooms and keeping their quarters clean was a way to assert control over their space and commit to their households - even amidst violence and chaos.
Brooms were innocent enough to symbolize love, home, and agency. Compared to more blatant symbols of resistance, like books, enslavers didn’t see brooms as a threat.
And when it came to independent marriages, jumping the broom represented crossing into a shared domestic space, with hopes to embody all that the seemingly ordinary cleaning tool symbolized.
Today, while many may not engage in the wedding tradition or personally value brooms in our homes the same, Black people across the diaspora have found additional objects and practices to fulfill a similar purpose.
From family scrapbooks and quilts to sacred furniture and gardens, what represents home to you?
We have a quick favor to ask...
We hope you're enjoying PushBlack Spirit! Spreading the truth about Black spiritual practices and history is just as important to you as it is to us.
And as a small non-profit, we need your support to keep spreading these important stories.
With as little as $5 a month, you will support our tech and writing costs, so we can reach even more people like you. It only takes a minue, so will you please donate now?