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HISTORY + LOVE
Love Is Not Blind. Remember America's Ban on Black Marriage?
The history of "jumping the broom" and why it matters today
By now, I'm sure you've heard the phrase "love is blind" more times than you can count, but is that really true? Because history tells a different story, one where your skin color impacts your ability to tie the knot and who you can tie it with. This phenomenon isn't isolated to America. In India, dark-skinned women often struggle to find a match because of the prominence of colorism. But, in the United States, Black marriage was prohibited for 246 years. And unlike the prohibition on alcohol, this period is left out of the public school curriculum.
Colonial and antebellum legislation and jurisprudence prohibited marriages between bonded slaves. The end of the Civil War and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment brought postbellum recognition of marriages between emancipated African slaves (The History of Slave Marriage in the United States).
Jumping the broom is an important tradition for Black people, predating the Antebellum era. Starting in the West African nation of Ghana, couples began the practice of using ritual brooms in wedding ceremonies, which symbolized "sweeping away past wrongs or removing evil spirits." Women in the cities of…
