Community well-being and the criminalization of magico-religious workers in Harlem, New York, during the 1920s

International Social Science Review, Spring-Summer, 2007 by Jamie Wilson

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During the 1920s, the population of black Harlem, New York, expanded at such a high rate that by 1925 there were more than 200,000 residents. As the population grew, social and health conditions in Harlem rapidly deteriorated thus creating a need and market for magico-religious workers. (2) These individuals fused ideas relating to supernatural controls and phenomena, occult practices, and religious beliefs to provide answers and direction to their clientele in all matters important to community life including, but not limited to, money, family, and love, as well as physical and mental health.

The term magico-religious worker is necessarily broad to cover the spectrum of individual creativity, beliefs, practices, and cultural traditions from which they drew and utilized. It regards as integral an individual's willingness to consider the notion that the physicality and spirituality of the community were not mutually exclusive. It also takes into account the possibility that a segment of these practitioners may have been common opportunists peddling innocuous goods for quick monetary gain. In this way, self-described healers, clairvoyants, fortune tellers, magicians, mediums, "professors," and some Spiritualists, individuals who were concerned or feigned concern with emotional and spiritual realms of well-being and may have prescribed medicinal herbs or magical cures to heal an ailing body, were just as much a part of the health-related matrix as biomedical physicians.

The cultural heterogeneity and expanding nature of the Harlem community simultaneously allowed for the rise of magico-religious workers and placed the community under the influence of statewide and national policies and practices that addressed competing notions of health and well-being. Beginning in the early 1920s, ambitious medical professionals saw magico-religious workers as undermining the authority of the medical profession, preying on poor people's naivete, and contributing to the poor health of urban communities nationwide. Believing it was their duty to protect the citizens' health, medical physicians and legislators mounted a statewide and national movement to uproot magico-religious workers.

The campaign against Harlem's magico-religious workers demonstrates that daily local decisions and relationships related to wellness throughout the community were mediated by city, state, and national organizations and forces. Individuals and groups who failed to understand the dynamics and systems of segments of the Harlem community made decisions that impaired the ability of neighborhood residents to make rational choices concerning their health and well-being. The criminalization of magico-religious workers in Harlem ultimately failed but not without the harassment, incarceration, and elimination of many of those practitioners. Because the campaign could neither uproot the belief systems nor needs that allowed for and required the existence of magico-religious workers, it only succeeded in forcing them underground or to transform their operations. The interaction between the state and magico-religious workers thus provides a lens through which one can understand how multiple vectors of power and policy met to determine community relations and institutions vital to wellness in Harlem.

The number of self-identifying magico-religious workers in Harlem is unknown since they did not register with city agencies. An analysis of magico-religious worker's advertisements in the New York Amsterdam News from 1922 to 1926, however, provides a representative sample of and information about the presence and character of alternative medical practices in Harlem. (3) During this period, the critical years of black urbanization in Harlem, sixty-seven magico-religious workers advertised in the paper (see Table 1.1). These practitioners were diverse in terms of affiliation, gender, place of origin, and services offered. They can be divided into two main groups: independent workers and cultic workers. Independent workers operated as individuals in occult supply stores or solely in private settings. Cultic workers were usually affiliated with a religious group and practiced in public and private arenas. (4) Approximately thirty-seven practitioners, or fifty-five percent of the total number of magico-religious workers who advertised in the New York Amsterdam News from 1922 to 1926, were independent workers; thirty, or forty-five percent, were cultic workers. Four practitioners, or eleven percent of the total number of independent workers, were affiliated with remedy companies that provided herbal and occult items to assist patients in curing their illnesses. Each cultic worker advertised that they were affiliated with a religious institution. Where denominational affiliation could be determined, the majority of cultic workers were associated with Spiritualist churches. (5)