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By Root 327 0

brother, Andrew, to go search for his missing stage assistant, Washington Reeves. Reeves had been dispatched to a local black cemetery to gather names and dates from tombstones—providing Herman with material for his “mind reading” act later that night. But Reeves was a drinker and had long gone missing. “I am receiving a distinct psychic impression that he’s drunk again,” Herman told his brother. “Let’s go find him.”

Herman and Andrew went to the local cemetery, where they were quickly approached by four menacing men carrying large sticks. “This is our turf,” one said. “You cross it, you got to pay a tax.” Herman brushed right past the men, declaring: “The Great Black Herman is exempt from any such tax.” The men smiled. They knew who the famous magician was and smelled big money. Gripping their clubs, they tightened around Herman and his brother. “If you’re such a great magician,” said one, “make us some money, now!” Herman shot back: “I do not deal with materialistic matters such as money. I do, however, occasionally practice the necromantic art of raising the dead!” Before the men could say anything, Herman shouted at the top of his stage voice: “Washington Reeves! Arise! Arise now!” Leaves rustled, and from behind a tombstone a figure struggled to its feet. The thieves dropped their sticks and ran in terror. Had they turned around, they would have witnessed the “undead” Washington Reeves stumbling forward—a pint of whiskey clutched in his hands.

Poor Man’s Psychologist

Even Black Herman encountered webs that could not be slipped out of. By the 1930s, New York State had enacted a stringent (and still extant) anti-fortune-telling law that prohibited the “claimed or pretended use of occult powers” for commercial purposes. Police spotted a very big target in Harlem’s most famous magician.*

While touring, Herman had known brushes with the law and usually understood how to sell his “spiritual products,” such as Black Herman’s Body Tonic, with standard label disclaimers like alleged and sold as a curio only. But he hadn’t expected that police would come after him on his home turf for another line of work. In Harlem, Herman offered private services as a mind reader, spiritual adviser, and root doctor. He maintained a formal waiting room and regular office hours at his town house. In a 1927 sting operation, a “lonely wife” visited Herman several times to seek help in winning back her cheating husband.

Consulting with his distressed client, Herman freely prescribed hoodoo formulas and methods—including sachet powders of herbs to be worn on the body, a John the Conqueror root, magical repetitions of the Psalms, and special uses of the husband’s foot scrapings to keep him home. It was a traditional hoodoo consultation, with Herman playing the role of “poor man’s psychologist,” as he often described himself. On June 17, the jilted wife—who turned out to be an undercover policewoman by the name of Nettie Sweatman—arrested him for “fortune-telling” and practicing medicine without a license.

Harlem Healer Given Setback by Woman Cop, announced the nationally read African–American newspaper Chicago Defender the next day. It was a bitter slap to the famous magician. Another came in September from his hometown paper, the New York Amsterdam News: “Black Herman,” Magician, Held for Trial in Special Sessions as “Quack.” In October, he received a short sentence at Sing Sing prison. Herman attempted to put up a brave face for his admirers, to whom he boasted of making so many breaks from his jail cell that the authorities could barely hold him. But the humiliated Herman never quite regained his stride. As the Great Depression hit Harlem in the early 1930s, spending money and leisure time for stage shows dried up. He found ways to continue performing, often by playing to segregated audiences in tours of the Deep South. Herman got back a little of the old fire in 1930 when he visited Detroit, the Defender reported, and proclaimed “that the depression enveloping the Motor City is chiefly mental, and he being chosen by God, is seeking to lift