Harry Middleton HyattHoodoo.Conjure.Witchcraft.Rootwork.

Harry Middleton Hyatt preserved the largest known body of recorded material on hoodoo, conjure, witchcraft, and rootwork in the United States, but its importance is not only its size. He devoted extraordinary time, money, and labor to documenting these traditions as they were described by the people who lived with them: their practices, beliefs, stories, remedies, rituals, warnings, humor, fears, hopes, and daily realities. His work did not reduce the material to neat categories or strip it from its human context. It preserved voices as closely as possible on their own terms.

This is the legacy this project seeks to honor.

Hyatt’s materials are not simply texts. They are records of lives lived, knowledge carried, and traditions passed through communities that were too often ignored, misrepresented, or extracted from. His commitment gave those voices endurance. Our work is to carry that endurance forward into the digital era.

This project exists to make the Hyatt materials more accessible while preserving the academic integrity of the original texts. These materials should not remain known only through secondhand references, inaccessible volumes, or institutional barriers.

We are building this resource for researchers, students, practitioners, and descendants of the traditions represented here. Its purpose is to widen access without weakening the record: to preserve the material carefully, present it clearly, and keep it connected to the lives and traditions it documents.

Let the voices recorded here continue to speak.