Feeling Overwhelmed? How Brooms Can Help Ground Our Spirits

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?