Jumping the broom
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Jumping the broom is an African American phrase and custom relating to wedding ceremonies.
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[edit] Origin
The significance of the broom to early African-Americans originates in the present-day West African country of Ghana. During the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, most of Ghana in the 18th century was ruled by the Asante of Ashanti. Asante urban areas and roads were kept conspicuously clean according to visiting British and Dutch traders with the use of domestically made brooms. These same brooms were used by wives or servants to clean the courtyards of palaces or homes. The broom in Asante and other Akan cultures also held spiritual value and symbolized sweeping away past wrongs or warding off evil spirits. This is where the broom comes into play regarding marriage. Brooms were waved over the heads of marrying couples to ward off spirits. The couple would often but not always jump over the broom at the end of the ceremony.
[edit] Symbolism
Jumping over the broom symbolized two things. The first was the wife's commitment or willingness to clean the courtyard of the new home she had joined. Furthermore, it expressed her overall commitment to the house. The second thing was the determination of who ran the household. Whoever jumped highest over the broom was the decision maker of the household (usually the man). The jumping of the broom does not constitute taking a "leap of faith" as the practice of jumping the broom pre-dates the phrase coined by Søren Aabye Kierkegaard by one hundred years if not more.
[edit] In America
The practice of jumping the broom was largely discarded in Ghana after the decline and eventual fall of the Ashanti Confederacy in 1897 and the imposition of British customs. The practice did however survive in the Americas, especially in the United States, among slaves brought from the Asante area. This particularly Akan practice of jumping the broom was picked up by other African ethnic groups in the Americas and used to solidify marriages during slavery among their communities. Jumping the broom therefore did not arise out of slavery as some have suggested, but is a part of African culture that survived the American slavery like the Voodun religion of the Fon and Ewe ethnic groups or the ring shout ceremony of the BaKongo and Mbundu ethnic groups.
[edit] Decline
After the end of American slavery, jumping the broom was seldom practiced. It was not necessary once African-Americans could have European-style marriages with rings and other identifiers. Jumping the broom was always done before witnesses in order for members of the slave community to know a couple was married. No form of marriage was recognized for Blacks during slavery, therefore jumping the broom solidified this ceremony within the slave community. Once Blacks could have European style weddings with rings that were recognizable by anyone as a symbol of marriage, the broom ceremony wasn't required.
[edit] Stigma
Jumping the broom also fell out of practice due to the stigma it carried, and in some cases still carries, among Black Americans wishing to forget the horrors of slavery. Once slavery had ended, many Blacks wanted nothing to do with anything associated with that era and discarded the broom jumping practice altogether. The practice did survive in some communities though, and made a resurgence after the launch of Alex Haley's "Roots".
[edit] Resurgence
Sometimes African American couples who do not actually jump a broom when they get married, may joke or recognize the phrase to be synonymous with getting married in the same way that "tying the knot" is associated with getting married.
[edit] Other Ethnic Groups
Jumping over a broom as part of a wedding ceremony was also common in pre-Christian European cultures. The custom survived the introduction of Christianity and was practiced by both blacks and whites in the American South prior to the Civil War.
Broom jumping is also practiced by non-Black groups and different religions around the world with some variation. Wiccans and Roma are among the groups who developed their own style of a broom jumping tradition. The Welsh also had a centuries-old custom called priodas coes ysgub, or "broom-stick wedding."
[edit] Sources
- Slavery And African Ethnicities In The Americas (Gwendolyn Midlo Hall)
- The Fall of the Asante Empire: The Hundred-Year War for Africa's Gold Coast (Robert B. Edgerton)
