Jumping the broom, an ancient custom during which a bride and groom signify their entrance into married life by literally jumping over a broom, has become a regular ritual in many modern African American weddings. Many couples include the ritual in their marriage ceremonies as a celebration of their African heritage and to honor their African culture. In these ceremonies, after repeating the wedding vows, a broom is placed on the ground and then the couple jump over it either separately or together (some jump backward), signifying their new journey together as husband and wife.
There has been much debate about the actual origins of the custom, however, with some dating it back to the days before the first Europeans set foot on African soil. Others believe the ritual has European roots. The custom is quite old and some suggest that it may have its origin in Celtic culture. Variations of the ritual were practiced by the Welsh, Celts, and Druids as well as by nomadic Romany, or gypsies. The Welsh have a centuries-old custom called priodas coes ysgub, or “broomstick wedding.” Local variations include placing the broom at an angle by the rear doorway of the church. The groom jumps first, followed by the bride.
Others maintain that the custom originated in Africa, although its original purpose and significance has been lost due to slavery. Nigerian fashion designer Thony Chukwuemenzie Anyiam, who creates African-inspired wedding attire and is author of Jumping the Broom in Style: A Collection of Styles and Information for the Entire Wedding Party, believes the jumping of brooms or sticks is an African (specifically West African) wedding ritual. In her book, Jumping the Broom: The African American Wedding Planner, Harriette Cole writes that artist Lloyd Toone unearthed an early-1900s family wedding portrait from Chase City, Virginia, featuring a couple crossing two strong sticks. She also writes that among the Samburu of Kenya, sticks were used during wedding celebrations by the groom to brand cattle that he would give his wife to finalize their vows.
The significance of the broom to African American history is thought by some to have originated in the West African country of Ghana. During the transatlantic slave trade in the eighteenth century, most of Ghana was ruled by the Asante of the Ashanti Confederacy. The Asante’s urban areas and roads were kept conspicuously clean, according to visiting British and Dutch traders, through the use of locally made brooms. These same brooms were used by wives or servants to clean the courtyards of palaces and homes. The broom in Asante and other Akan cultures also held spiritual value, and its use symbolized sweeping away past wrongs or removing evil spirits. 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. Jumping over the broom also symbolized the wife’s commitment or willingness to clean the courtyard of the new home she had joined.
While Danita Rountree Green, author of Broom Jumping: A Celebration of Love, suggests that the practice may have originated in Ghana, there’s no hard proof that the custom existed there. In the article “Jumping the Broom: On the Origins and Meaning of an African American Wedding Custom,” Alan Dundes notes that there is no evidence that the ritual is practiced anywhere in Africa, and the fact that the custom is reported in Europe strongly suggests a European origin. However, Dundes adds that this should not reduce the value of the ritual for African Americans who choose to incorporate the ritual into their marriage ceremonies, since it provides a valuable means of asserting group uniqueness. At the same time, it transforms an activity forcibly imposed by nineteenth-century slave owners into modern occasions for joy and racial pride.
Many believe that the custom originated during slavery. In North America, enslaved African Americans were denied the right to marry legally, and the practice of jumping the broom emerged as a symbolic means of entering into marriage. Cole notes that because Africans who were brought forcibly to this country were stripped of their customs, they had to be inventive, and out of their creativity came the tradition of jumping the broom. During slavery, a couple would literally jump over a broom into the seat of matrimony. With the master’s permission, a couple was allowed to stand before witnesses, pledge their devotion to each other, and finally jump over a broom, which would indicate their step into married life.
Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina, author of Mr. and Mrs. Prince: How an Extraordinary Eighteenth-Century Family Moved Out of Slavery and Into Legend in the South, suggests that because such weddings were largely outside of the law, couples and communities relied on African traditions handed down through generations or kept alive with the importation of new slaves, or they devised their own traditions, such as jumping over a broom. Jumping the broom appears not to have been a custom of slavery, but instead was a part of African culture that survived American slavery, like the voodoo religions of the Fon and Ewe ethnic groups, or the ring shout ceremony of the BaKongo and Mbundu ethnic groups. After slavery, however, when African Americans were allowed to have European-style weddings with rings that were recognized as a symbol of marriage, the broom ceremony wasn’t required. During this time, jumping the broom fell out of practice due to the stigma that it carried and because African Americans wanted nothing to do with the slave era.
While the actual origin of the African American custom of broom jumping is still debated, most agree that the ritual found its way back into many African American marriage ceremonies after a slave wedding was featured in the 1977 made-for-television mini-series Roots. In the movie, Kunta Kinte and his bride, Bell, jumped the broom to formalize their marriage. Cole notes that since the 1970s, countless African American couples have incorporated the broom-jumping tradition into their weddings with the intention of creating a bridge between them and their cultural heritage. However, the use of traditions that have been either borrowed from Africa or that were born anew span much farther than jumping the broom.
Ann Y. White
See also Juneteenth; Playing the Dozens
Further Reading
Anyiam, Thony C. 2007. Jumping the Broom in Style: A Collection of Styles and Information for the Entire Wedding Party. Bloomington, IN: Authorhouse.
Cole, Harriette. 1993. Jumping the Broom: The African-American Wedding Planner. New York: Henry Holt.
Dundes, Alan. 1996. “Jumping the Broom: On the Origin and Meaning of an African American Wedding Custom.” Journal of American Folklore 1009 (433): 324–329.
Leeds-Hurwitz, Wendy. 2002. Wedding as Text: Communicating Cultural Identities through Ritual. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Rountree Green, Danita. 1992. Broom Jumping: A Celebration of Love. Richmond, VA: Entertaining Ideas.