Status Updates From The Conjuring of America: M...

The overlap between Indigenous and West African beliefs and practices is very interesting!

Cotton roots could be taken to perform an abortion. Taken early in a pregnancy cotton roots would coax the cervix to open early and push out the fetus. Using cotton to cause abortions was like a form of poetic justice. Cotton that enticed slave masters to put pressure on women’s and girl’s “reproductive labor” also gave these women a way to assert a sliver of bodily autonomy

Cotton and wool replaced indigo as the primary cash crop of plantations and slaveholders at the turn of the 19th century