Underworld Work : Black Atlantic Religion Making in Jim Crow New Orleans / Ahmad Greene-Hayes.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Greene-Hayes, Ahmad, Author.

Contributor:

Hurston, Zora Neale, Contributor.

Series:

Class 200: New Studies in Religion Series

Class 200: New Studies in Religion

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Hurston, Zora Neale.

New Orleans (La.)--History.

New Orleans (La.).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (288 p.) : 28 halftones

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2025]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

A rethinking of African American religious history that focuses on the development and evolution of Africana spiritual traditions in Jim Crow New Orleans. When Zora Neale Hurston traveled to New Orleans, she encountered a religious underworld, a beautiful anarchy of spiritual life. In Underworld Work, Ahmad Greene-Hayes follows Hurston on a journey through the rich tapestry of Black religious expression from emancipation through Jim Crow. He looks within and beyond the church to recover the diverse leadership of migrants, healers, dissidents, and queer people who transformed their marginalized homes, bars, and street corners into sacred space. Greene-Hayes shows how, while enclosed within an anti-black world, these outcasts embraced Africana esotericisms—ancestral veneration, faith healing, spiritualized sex work, and more—to conjure a connection to freer worlds past and yet to come. In recovering these spiritual innovations, Underworld Work celebrates the resilience and creativity of Africana religions.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

ABBREVIATIONS

INTRODUCTION

VISITATION 1 ZORA ON "VOODOO"

1 "MIDNIGHT ORGIES " Voudou and the Problem of Possessed Black Flesh from Haiti to Louisiana

VISITATION 2 ZORA ON LYNCHING

2 "SMOKE OUT THE NEGRO DEVILS" Black Cosmopolitan Eclecticism in the New Century and the Terror of Lynching

VISITATION 3 ZORA EATS THE SALT

3 "MAKING A PLACE FOR NEGRO UNTOUCHABLES " Black Sexual Victorianism and Its Counterconducts

VISITATION 4 ZORA TALKS "HOODOO IN AMERICA" AND ELSEWHERE

4 "DANGEROUS AND SUSPICIOUS" Hoodoo, Faith Healing, and Sex Work in the Black Slum

VISITATION 5 ZORA'S UNPUBLISHED SATIRE ON MARCUS GARVEY "The Emperor Effaces Himself"

5 "THE RIGHT IDEA OF GOD" Sinners and Saints in the New Orleans Division of the Universal Negro Improvement Association

VISITATION 6 ZORA WORSHIPS WITH THE SANCTIFIED

6 "WE AIN'T SPIRITUALISTS, WE'S THE SANCTIFIED CHURCH Black Pentecostals and the Politics of Distinction

CODA Black New Orleans on the Move

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

NOTES

INDEX

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 20. Mar 2025)

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9780226838854

0226838854

OCLC:

1517396778