Jumping the broom
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Jumping the broom is a phrase and custom relating to a wedding ceremony in which the couple jumps over a broom. It is most widespread among African Americans and Black Canadians, popularized during th
"Marrying over the Broomstick", 1822 illustration of a "broomstick-wedding" by James Catnach
A 2011 wedding in California
Slave marriages in the United States were typically illegal before the American Civil War abolished slavery in the US. Enslaved African Americans were legally considered chattel, and they were denied
Jumping the broom
…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). Alan Dundes (1996) notes…
An 1899 illustration of a broomstick wedding ceremony. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library
Husbands, Wives, and Families sold indiscriminately to different purchasers, are violently separated-probably never to meet again, 1843, New York Public Library
Illustration of Uncle Tom and his baby from Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Marriage of a colored soldier at Vicksburg by Chaplain Warren of the Freedmen's Bureau