The History Of The Black American Marriage Custom Of Jumping The Broom

@BlackDiscoveries, July 15, 2024

In this video, we look into the rich tradition of Jumping the Broom, a significant and cherished custom in Black weddings. Discover the origins and meaning behind this beautiful practice that symbolizes the sweeping away of the old and the welcoming of a new beginning. Learn how Black people, from Black women to Black men, embrace this tradition as a celebration of Black love and unity."...

https://youtube.com/shorts/rQLpp4bvTkc?si=ICRTs9Mbk4XRWVKa     @BlackDiscoveries

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Edited by Azizi Powell

This pancocojams post presents information about and a YouTube video compilation of the history of the custom of jumping the broom that is associated with weddings.

This post also includes a reprint of all of the comments from the discussion thread for the August 29, 2011 pancocojams post on this subject. That was the very first post that was published in this pancocojams blog. 

The content of this post is presented for historical and socio-cultural purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post and thanks to the publisher of this video on YouTube.

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PANCOCOJAMS EDITOR'S NOTE
As indicated above, the very first pancocojams post explored the subject of Black Americans jumping the broom as part of marriage customs. Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2011/08/is-jumping-broom-black-appropriation-of.html "Is Jumping The Broom A Black Appropriation Of A White Custom?"

As of December 15, 2025 at 7:20 AM EST that post has a total number of 4163 views (not counting my views) and 13 comments. All of the comments for that post are reprinted in this 2025 post.

I was motivated to launch this pancocojams blog in 2011 the same year that the online blog Sociological Images declined to publish the post I had written on this subject. [Sociological Images had  previously published my post entitled "Race and the Changing Shape Of Cheerleading" on July 21, 2011  https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/07/21/race-and-the-changing-shape-of-cheerleading/

I am forever grateful to that Sociological Images blog for indirectly motivating me to "do my own thing". If that blog had accepted my write-up on jumping the broom, I might not have started this pancocojams blog which -as of December 15, 2025- has 5175 posts, not including this one, and a total of  16688314 views. That number of views don't include various blogs that continue to reposts complete copies of my posts without my prior knowledge and without my permission. 

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INFORMATION ABOUT THE CUSTOM OF JUMPING THE BROOM
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_the_broom
..."African-American and Black-Canadian custom

In some African-American and Black-Canadian communities, couples end their wedding ceremony by jumping over a broomstick together or separately. The practice is documented as a marriage ceremony for enslaved people in the Southern United States during the 1840s and 1850s, who were often not permitted to marry legally. Its revival in 20th-century African-American and Black-Canadian culture is due to the novel and miniseries Roots (1976, 1977).[25] Alan Dundes (1996) notes how "a custom which slaves were forced to observe by their white masters has been revived a century later by African Americans as a treasured tradition".[26]

It has been speculated that the custom may have originated in West Africa. Although there is no direct evidence of this, Dundes cites a Ghanaian custom of waving brooms over the heads of newlyweds and their parents.[27] Among southern Africans – who were largely not a part of the Atlantic slave trade – it represented a wife's commitment (or willingness) to clean the courtyard of her new home.[27] Historian Tyler D. Parry, in Jumping the Broom: The Surprising Multicultural Origins of a Black Wedding Ritual, considers the Ghanaian connection weak; the ritual used by enslaved people has many more similarities to the custom in the British Isles. Parry writes that despite the racial animus which characterized the US South during the nineteenth century, poor white Southerners (many of whom were descendants of people who had irregular forms of matrimony in Britain) and enslaved African Americans had more cultural exchange than is commonly acknowledged.[28]

Slaveholders had a dilemma about committed relationships between enslaved people. Although family stability might be desirable to keep enslaved people tractable and pacified, legal marriage was not; marriage gave a couple rights over each other which conflicted with slaveholder claims.[29] Most marriages between enslaved black people were not legally recognized during the American slavery era;[30] marriage was a legal civil contract, and civil contracts required the consent of free persons.[31] In the absence of legal recognition, the enslaved community developed its own methods of distinguishing committed unions from casual ones.[32] The ceremonial jumping of the broom was an open declaration of settling down in a marriage relationship. Jumping the broom was done before witnesses as a public, ceremonial announcement that a couple chose to become as nearly married as was then allowed.[33] There are records of African Americans jumping the broom in slave narratives. An ex-slave from Georgia, George Eason, said how enslaved people jumped the broom to get married.[34]

Jumping the broom fell out of practice when Black people were free to marry legally.[35] The practice survived in some communities, and the phrase "jumping the broom" was synonymous with "getting married" even if the couple did not literally do so.[36] After its smaller-scale continuity in rural areas of the United States (in Black and white communities), the custom was revived among African Americans after the publication of Alex Haley's Roots.[25] Danita Rountree Green describes the African-American custom during the early 1990s in her book, Broom Jumping: A Celebration of Love (1992).[37]

In popular culture

In the 1977 TV miniseries Roots, Kunta Kinte/"Toby" (John Amos as the adult Kunta Kinte) had a marriage ceremony in which he and Belle (Madge Sinclair) jumped the broom. It also appears in episode two of the 2016 miniseries remake, when Kunta Kinte questions its African origins."...

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COMMENTS ABOUT JUMPING THE BROOM FROM PANCOCOJAMS' FIRST BLOG POST

azizi, September 4, 2011 at 8:40 AM
"Here's part of the comment I added to the viewer comment thread for the Nicky and Tim wedding video in response to a person writing "Do these people understand the origin behind jumping the broom?!"

Actually, the custom of broom stick weddings, particularly in Wales predates the custom of enslaved African Americans jumping the broom. That custom was found among the Welsh, particularly among Gypsies before the 1700s. And it's not an African tradition. African Americans have made it our tradition, but it didn't originate with us...

An African American sista
-snip-
The rest of my comment urged people to google this pancocojams post to find that video, other videos, and more information."

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azizi, September 4, 2011 at 8:45 AM
"Here's another comment from that same Nicky & Tim video that is found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fN2OFlxNpzw and is embedded above:

 "The broom itself doesn't mean anything. The jumping act itself symbolizes jumping from one life to another new life as a married person. It's an african american tradition. Slaves weren't allowed to marry officially, so they made up their own tradition of jumping the broom. All of the slaves recognized the union among themselves. To this day in the south, when people get married, the old timers still say 'such and such jumped the broom!" - PrincessChronicles; 2010

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The Ghetto Intellectual™, June 15, 2013 at 2:42 AM
"I'm an anthropologist and I teach African and African American studies in the southern USA (North Carolina) and I do research in Ghana, West Africa. "Jumping the broom" is absolutely an African-American tradition. Why? Because it was a cultural practice, adopted by enslaved Africans, passed down from generation to generation and widely documented in the antebellum south.

Was the practice carried over from western (West or Central) Africa? Probably not. I don't know any evidence for it. But I have read accounts of brooms in Indonesia, various parts of Africa, and Europe as ritual objects symbolically used to sweep away bad spirits. It is possible that the African-derived symbolic meaning of brooms was transformed on slave plantations to infuse new meaning to the Euro-derived custom of broom-jumping.

Is Candomblé or Santería any less African because these Yoruba/Ifá derived religions incorporate Catholic Saints? African Independent Churches are appropriations from Europeans. Does that make them less African? Some African purists say yes, but many devotees say no. From the perspective of the devotees (or at least many devotees), their religions are African because they are uniquely adapted to their context. I agree. In my view, jumping the broom is African because it was adopted by African people. One of many examples of creativity under horrific conditions. I, for one, believe that the practice is no less beautiful and African than anything done in Africa. kzs"

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Reply
Azizi Powell, June 15, 2013 at 10:24 AM
"Ghetto Intellectual, I appreciate your comment as I was hoping for discussion of this topic.

As I wrote in my first comment to this post, African Americans have made jumping the broom our tradition, but it didn't originate with us.

As for jumping the broom being African because it was adopted by African people, according to that way of thinking, any custom that originated among population "A" but is picked up by population "B" can be considered population "B"'s custom. And while that is true in a manner of speaking, what I meant in my post & in my comment is that that custom didn't originate with population "B". To use the example that is the focus of this post, jumping the broom, didn't originate with African Americans, but we have adopted that custom, perhaps also giving it additional meanings, and otherwise making it our own [custom].

I agree with your statement that jumping the broom "is one of many examples of [African American] creativity under horrific conditions." And in a general sense, I also agree that jumping the broom is as "African [as] anything done in Africa", but my point was that I don't believe that custom is [or was] traditional to West Africa or Central Africa or any other region of Africa - although it's possible that placing a broom horizontally on the floor could have been an adaptation of the traditional belief in the Kalunga line, "a watery boundary between the world of the living and the dead in religious traditions of the Congo region."

Also, I think that Caribbean/American religions such as Lucumi and Candomble that combine various African belief systems & Catholicism are examples of syncretism, "the merger and analogizing of several originally discrete traditions, especially in the theology and mythology of religion".

Thanks again for your comment!"

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L Lang, November 11, 2014 at 6:09 PM

"Hi I'm of English, Irish and Welsh stock. I jumped the broom at my civil wedding ceremony. My mother asked us to, as we were unable to have a family or religious wedding at the time. The knowledge of jumping the broom comes from oral tradition via my mother (the welsh side). It is now rare in the UK but is becoming more popular, especially among wiccans along with handfasting. My husbands friends and family, who were not british, kept asking questions about the tradition. When I went online and searched it, out of curiosity, I discovered that another form of jumping the broom was present in African-American culture. The meanings are, obviously, different. In truth cultures are always in a state of flux so it is never clear where the origins of anything comes from as from what I've read this is a Romani tradition more than a Welsh one. I think that brooms, or besoms, are powerful objects in many cultures, because they are so commonly used and associated with the house (and thus women). So we cannot discount the possibility that two such traditions emerged from different origin/cultures through similar associations and perhaps necessity."

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L. Lang, November 11, 2014 at 6:12 PM

"Also just to add I found your page very illuminating especially when it came to learning and understanding jumping the broom in African American culture. Thank you."

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Reply

Azizi Powell, November 12, 2014 at 12:38 PM

"L. Lang,

Thank you for your comments. I appreciate you taking the time to share your experience "jumping the broom".

My experience is that only a small percentagee of African Americans actually incorporate jumping the broom in our wedding receptions and an even smaller percentage incorporate jumping the broom in the actual wedding ceremony.

If I understand the difference between the Welsh custom and the contemporary African American custom, the Welsh did this because no clegy were available, but AA's do it [now] in tribute to the past custom during U.S. slavery but also to symbolically represent moving forward as a couple.

Btw, I fixed those videos that weren't showing since YouTube changed their code. Thanks for that too as I wasn't aware that those videos weren't showing until I read your comments."

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Reply

L. LangNovember 13, 2014 at 10:27 AM

"Hi

yes as we weren't being married by a priest she asked us to jump the broom. I grew up knowing about traditions like this from stories she told us, but if we'd been married in the church I'm not sure she would have brought it up."

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Reply

Azizi Powell, November 13, 2014 at 7:48 PM

"Thanks to your mom, folks reading this post and your comments now know that jumping the broom isn't only done by African Americans.

Best wishes to you!"

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Unknown, January 30, 2017 at 12:17 PM

"This was an enlightening article and set of comments. As I look further into this particular custom, it appears that Broom Jumping was more often a matter of coercion than a vestige of custom from the motherland that slaves were allowed to preserve. What L. Lang shared about jumping the broom being a substitute for a "proper" ceremony in Great Britain, aligns with the paternalistic attitudes of the Planters/Masters who allowed, and sometimes sponsored, slave weddings. For the majority of owners who allowed or actively sponsored slave marriages it more a matter of expediency to placate the slaves. It could reduce the propensity for attempted escape, provide for some semblance of stability, (but only on the masters' terms), and also to promote propagation, which only enriched the owner. These marriages were not seen as something legal, binding, or even to be respected, so Planters/Masters substituting or including the broom jump to recognize a less than full fledged marriage makes sense In addition, in reading the Slave Narratives produced in the 1930's from the accounts of ex-slaves, the vast majority of the mentions of jumping the broom described situations arranged by the slave masters, and not the slaves. While it's certainly up to each individual to determine how they will celebrate their union and honor their past, Jumping the Broom in my opinion is less of a celebration of the slave's quiet resistance to bondage, and more of a reminder of how they were treated as inferior to their owners."

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Reply 

Azizi Powell, January 30, 2017 at 4:05 PM

"Alexis Carlton Jones,

I appreciate your comment based on your research.

I see no documentation that jumping the broom was an African custom and it wouldn't surprise me at all if the custom of Black Americans "jumping the broom" began as "less of a celebration of the slave's quiet resistance to bondage, and more of a reminder of how they were treated as inferior to their owners".

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Anonymous, September 9, 2022 at 1:58 PM

"Jumping the broom is a Black American tradition and did not come from Africa or any other cultures. There is history behind it."

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Reply

Azizi Powell, September 9, 2022 at 2:13 PM

"Anonymous, thanks for your comment.

I stand by what I wrote in this post- that the African American tradition of jumping the broom didn't come from Africa and didn't originate with Black Americans, but was (and probably still is) a European custom."

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