jomo bag 1925, before OED's mojo & mojo hand

[Wilson Gray]

Any connection with the first name of the late _Jomo_ "Burning-Spear" Kenyatta?

Cf. also

"Small squares of flannel, the sort that Negro conjure doctors use for
their 'tricken [trick(ing)?] bags' or '_hands_'."

-Fritz Leiber[, Jr.] Conjure Wife. Orb Books. New York, (1943) 2009.

This is the only instance that I've ever come across - not that I've
ever looked for any others - of simple _hand_ used for _mojo hand_, as
opposed to simple _mojo_ used therefor, as in the blues line,

"Got a black cat['s] bone, got me a _mojo_, too"

I once tried scoping out OEDII for this meaning of "hand," to see
whether it was independent of "mojo hand," that is, whether _hand_ as
"charm" was earlier than - hence, separate temporally from - _*mojo*
hand_ as "charm." But there were just too many uses cited for the
word. I gave up, since I was motivated by mere idle curiosity and
nothing more.

BTW, Fritz is the father of Jonathan Leiber, the philosopher of
language. He did a bit at M.I.T., back in the day.

-Wilson


On Sun, Jul 11, 2010 at 9:59 AM, Stephen Goranson <goranson at duke.edu> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Stephen Goranson <goranson at DUKE.EDU>
> Subject:      jomo bag 1925, before OED's mojo & mojo hand
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> OED and HDAS have "mojo" from 1926.  Neither OED nor HDAS include the apparently-related "jomo."
>
> July 4, 1925 Saturday, The Afro-American [Baltimore] page 1[?], col. 5
>  [Google News and ProQuest Black Newspapers]
> "Jomo" Bags Fail
> Birmingham, Ala. (A. N. P.)-- Will Hollins is to spend six months in jail as a result of his failure to work any spell with his famous "jomo" bags on the judge of the police court here. It is claimed that Hollins had been taking money from his customers for ills which he said were curable with his bags.
> The "jomo" bag happened to be, when examined, a plain cloth bag, filled with ordinary steel filings, picked up in a blacksmith's shop. Hollins carried wa steel bar magnet with him and when making a sale, is supposed to have impressed the sick and the halt by passing the bar over the bag so as to attract the latter. He almost invariably made a good impression. Many of his dupes appeared in court to attest his success with them.
>
> http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=YzYmAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Rf4FAAAAIBAJ&pg=3723,3464952&dq=the-jomo&hl=en
>
> Related texts:
>
> Conjure in African American society - Page 28
> Jeffrey E. Anderson - 2005 - 230 pages
> ... or gregory bags, to harm others. Mande-speaking members of the Bambara tribe introduced the term zinzin, ... Mojo and its variant JoeMoe were Kongo-derived terms found in both cultural zones that described magic and charms usually ...
>
> A century of sculpture in Texas, 1889-1989
>        Patricia D. Hendricks, Becky Duval Reese ... - 1989 - 185 pages
> 23 The movie Juke Girl and the idea of jomo magic followed McManaway throughout childhood to college and finally ... Through the artist's hand the objects were transformed; without the alterations the objects were devoid of their magic.
>
> Hoodoo--conjuration--witchcraft--rootwork: beliefs accepted by ...
>        Harry Middleton Hyatt - 1978
> ...much better than buryin' jomoo. [ Latter word usually pronounced jomo (johmoh) backwards.]  the two syllables of mo jo (mohjoh) backwards.] Well, look heah - see, yo' kin go to a person house, where yo' kin take an' put down
>
> The Greenwood encyclopedia of African American folklore
> Anand Prahlad - 2006 - 1557 pages
> ... and "Joe Moe." Mojos were the chief goods produced by conjure men and women. Their function was to manipulate ... Mojos designed for good most commonly took the form of red flannel bags containing a variety of lucky materials
>
> Morton Rubin - 1951 - 235 pages
> One white informant tells of a Negro acquaintance who bragged that his good luck at gambling was caused by a New Orleans jomo bag he kept at home (New Orleans is the center for hoodoo specialists). One day he began to lose heavily and
>
> Stephen Goranson
> http://www.duke.edu/~goranson
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"––a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
–Mark Twain

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