The Congo

When Vachel Lindsay uses the term “witch-doctor” starting in Line 23 of the poem’s first section, “The Congo” marginalizes its subjects as superstitious, illiterate, and barbaric. The term would only be used by white populations describing African or diaspora cultural practices, especially those ceremonies and behaviors outside Christian tradition. With these images, Lindsay conjures negative stereotypes of cannibals and war-like native peoples. Similarly, the name “Mumbo Jumbo” is a Caucasian invention designed to mimic African languages without specificity. While the terms “voodoo” and “hoo doo” can hark back to some original African religious practices, these terms in popular culture can represent any number of syncretic religions in areas where African enslaved people lived from the 17th century on, including the Caribbean, South and Central America, Cuba, Haiti, Louisiana, and the coastal communities of South Carolina and Georgia. By using these terms in “The Congo,” Lindsay flattens Black culture through shorthand, implying that all Black cultures are the same. Lindsay includes images of witch-doctors and voo-doo above all for dramatic effect, since their relation to both the occult and to the unknowable aspects of Black culture would have astonished and frightened his mostly-white audiences.