Who Is High John the Conqueror? Hoodoo, Hurston & Art

High John the Conqueror is a trickster hero of African American folklore and a spirit of hoodoo, the conjure tradition that enslaved Black Americans built in the South. In the tales he's an enslaved man nobody can break, who beats the men who hold him with wit instead of force. In hoodoo his power lives on in a root that people carry for luck, strength and protection. (Wikipedia; EBSCO Research Starters)

He goes by a lot of names: High John de Conquer, John the Conqueror, John de Conquer, Juan el Conquistador, and plain John or Jack. (EBSCO; Wikipedia)

Zora Neale Hurston wrote the essay that put him into American literature in 1943, and artists have been answering it ever since. This page covers the folk hero, the essay, the root and the art, with sources, and it ends with my own High John work.

THE FOLK HERO

Nobody knows exactly where the stories started. The EBSCO entry calls the origin "uncertain" and places the legends in the era of slavery. (EBSCO) In them John is a trickster who wins through cunning and is never beaten, in the entry's words, "physically or emotionally." He belongs to the same family as Br'er Rabbit and Anansi. (BookBrowse; Wikipedia)

Two tales come up again and again. In one, he takes the enslaved people on a magical journey while their bodies appear to rest under a tree. In the other, he courts the Devil's daughter, gets through the Devil's impossible tasks with an axe and a plow she gives him, and escapes, in some versions by shape-shifting. The endings differ: in some tellings the pair go back to Africa, and in others John leaves his magic behind in the American South. (EBSCO; Wikipedia, on Virginia Hamilton's retelling)

Later tellings give him a royal past. He becomes a prince, the son of a king of Kongo, who was sold into slavery and whose spirit was never broken. (Wikipedia; EBSCO) Scholars read him as a figure of freedom from slavery, and hoodoo ties him to the enslaved ancestors and to the soil of the South. (Wikipedia)

HURSTON'S ESSAY, "HIGH JOHN DE CONQUER" (1943)

Zora Neale Hurston published "High John de Conquer" in The American Mercury in October 1943 (vol. 57, no. 238, pp. 450–58). (CETAPS bibliographic record) She had already collected John tales for Mules and Men. She wrote this piece in the middle of the Second World War to offer the country hope and nerve. (Wikipedia)

She doesn't start him as a man. She starts him as a mood that the enslaved kept alive, "a will to hope, a wish to find something worthy of laughter and song." His sign is a laugh, and "his singing-symbol was a drum." Wherever the work was hardest and the lash fell, he was already there. (Robert Darden, Baylor University, quoting the essay) She notes that it was no accident white listeners had never heard of him. (Darden, same page) She compares him to King Arthur: he isn't dead, and he'll come back when his people call. (Wikipedia)

The essay was reprinted in the Hurston collection The Sanctified Church in 1981, and in 2000 Betye Saar chose it as one of six Hurston stories she illustrated (see below). (Wikipedia; Spencer Museum of Art)

My own reading, which is mine and not a sourced claim, is that Hurston's John isn't a luck charm. He's the power a person keeps when everything else has been taken, and that power doesn't depend on anyone recognizing it. The laugh is the part nobody can confiscate.

THE ROOT

In hoodoo, High John's power is said to live in a root. It's usually identified as the root of Ipomoea jalapa, also called Ipomoea purga or jalap, a relative of the morning glory and the sweet potato. It's a strong laxative if you eat it, so folk practice doesn't eat it. People carry it in mojo bags and put pieces of it in oils and washes, for gambling luck, love and sex, protection and power. Whole, unbroken roots are preferred. (Wikipedia) The dried root looks like a pair of testicles, which helps explain why it's tied to male potency. (Wikipedia, same page)

The plant's identity has always been a little slippery. The pharmacognosist Varro Tyler wrote a paper on it in 1991 titled "The Elusive History of High John the Conqueror Root." (Wikipedia references) Hoodoo also names lesser Johns. Low John, or Dixie John, is trillium root, used for family matters. Chewing John, or Little John, is galangal, which is chewed, and its juice is spat in a courtroom before the judge comes in to win a case. (Wikipedia, same page)

The root goes back a long way. Frederick Douglass's 1845 Narrative tells how Sandy Jenkins, another enslaved man, gave him a root to carry so that no white man could whip him. Douglass was skeptical and carried it anyway. (SparkNotes summary of chapter 10) Later writers identify that root as High John. (Wikipedia)

It also became a product. In the twentieth century, white-owned drugstores and spiritual supply companies sold it, and some put a white man on the label, which hid where the figure came from. (Wikipedia) Carolyn Morrow Long traced that history in "John the Conqueror: From Root-Charm to Commercial Product" (1997) and in her book Spiritual Merchants (2001), which includes a case study of the root. (University of Tennessee Press)

The blues kept his name in circulation. Willie Dixon's "Hoochie Coochie Man," which Muddy Waters recorded for Chess in 1954, is built from hoodoo references, the root among them. (Shmoop; Wikipedia) Dr. John recorded "Black John the Conqueror" in 1971. (Wikipedia, same page)

HOODOO IS A LIVING TRADITION

Hoodoo was built by enslaved African Americans in the South out of Central and West African religion, especially Kongo practices like the nkisi, the charged object with a spirit bound into it, together with Indigenous knowledge of North American plants and the Christianity that was forced on them and then remade. (Wikipedia: Hoodoo) The best scholarly introduction I know is Yvonne P. Chireau's Black Magic: Religion and the African American Conjuring Tradition (University of California Press, 2003). (Swarthmore)

It isn't a museum piece. People practice it today, and Black practitioners have criticized the whitewashed version that shrinks John down to a charm for virility, romance and gambling. (Wikipedia, citing MadameNoire, 2022) That critique is fair. The John of the tales and of Hurston's essay is about survival and freedom first, and everything else follows from that.

HIGH JOHN IN VISUAL ART

Wikipedia's article on John the Conqueror has no section on visual art, so I gathered what I could verify.

Betye Saar (1926–2026). In 2000 the Limited Editions Club published Bookmarks in the Pages of Life, a folio of six Hurston stories chosen and illustrated by Saar, and "High John De Conquer" is one of them. (Spencer Museum of Art) The edition was limited to 300 copies, with six serigraphs printed by Drexel Press and type set by hand at Golgonooza Letter Foundry. (Books and Vines) Saar built the images from layered fabric, paper and faded photographs. (1stDibs listing) The Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento holds an impression of High John De Conquer (2018.60.4). (Crocker Art Museum) Saar, the assemblage artist behind The Liberation of Aunt Jemima (1972), worked with altars and spiritual symbolism for decades. She died in Los Angeles in July 2026 at 99. (theGrio)
Renée Stout. Stout has built a body of work around conjure, partly through an alter ego, the conjure woman Fatima Mayfield, whose voice runs through the exhibition Tales of the Conjure Woman (Halsey Institute, 2013; Wellin Museum, 2015). (Hyperallergic) Her The Root Dispenser (2013) is a painted wooden cabinet of bottles that advertises High John roots among its herbs. It was shown in the 2017 group exhibition High John the Conqueror Ain't Got Nothing On Me at Rush Arts Philadelphia. (theartblog)
M. Scott Johnson. Johnson, a sculptor from the Detroit area who apprenticed in Zimbabwe under Nicholas Mukomberanwa, carved High John the Conqueror as a tall marble piece. From one side it reads as an eye and brow, and from another as a wing and a beak, so the shape-shifter shifts as you walk around him. Hurston's writing on High John was his starting point. (Museum of the African Diaspora; Detroit Metro Times)
Ja'Tovia Gary. Citational Ethics (Zora Neale Hurston, 1943) (2023) is a vanity built of wood, neon and obsidian. Its title cites the essay, and the obsidian mirror is engraved with Hurston's line "a wish to find something worthy of laughter and song." (Ja'Tovia Gary)
Antoine Williams. For the 2023 exhibition Marauders at the Greenville Museum of Art in North Carolina, Williams reworked an archival photograph of sharecroppers stringing tobacco into a large wheat-paste mural in which the leaves turn into feathers, which he describes as John the Conqueror himself. (Public Radio East)

There's one more kind of High John art, and it's the one most people have seen: the printed labels on spiritual-supply packaging. That commercial art is where the figure was whitewashed, as described above.

MY OWN HIGH JOHN WORK

My High John work is in objects. The Art of High John the Conqueror (P3E-005) is a cabinet of fourteen hand-built ritual objects, including flags, fetishes and loaded tools, which I made in the weeks after Hurricane Irma hit Miami in September 2017. They went out under the name Dr. Octopus. (The Art of High John the Conqueror)

They use the old Kongo grammar that hoodoo inherited: a figure with a cavity, packed with materials, given a job. Juan El Conquistador is a loaded statue with thirteen High John roots sealed into its base under beeswax poured over the 23rd Psalm. Another piece is a High John crucifix, built on the observation that John the Conqueror and Jesus Christ share initials, whose hollow cross holds High John root and coffin nails. A third is a small army of plant figures knotted from crooked High John roots. Each piece is one of a kind, and commissions are open.

Before that, in 2013, I made the Kongo Cosmogram Divination Kit with Unkle Rob, a printed cloth and booklet that shipped with a High John root. It's currently unavailable. A book about High John is in progress.

FAQ

Who is High John the Conqueror?

High John the Conqueror is a trickster hero of African American folklore and a spirit of hoodoo. In the tales he is an enslaved man whose spirit cannot be broken and who beats his enslavers with wit rather than force. In hoodoo his power is said to live on in a root that people carry for luck, strength and protection.

What is High John the Conqueror root?

It is the dried root of a morning glory relative, usually identified as Ipomoea jalapa or Ipomoea purga, also known as jalap. It is a strong laxative if eaten, so in hoodoo it is carried in mojo bags or used in oils and washes for luck, love, power and protection.

What did Zora Neale Hurston write about High John?

Hurston published the essay "High John de Conquer" in The American Mercury in October 1943, in the middle of the Second World War. She describes him as a source of hope and laughter that carried enslaved people through, and she compares him to King Arthur, a hero who is not dead and will return when his people call him.

Was High John the Conqueror a real person?

There is no evidence that he was a single historical person. He is a folk hero whose stories grew up during slavery, and later tellings make him an African prince sold into slavery. In hoodoo he is treated as a spirit who can be called on through his root.

Which artists have made work about High John the Conqueror?

Betye Saar made the screenprint High John De Conquer in 2000 for a folio of Hurston's stories. Others include Renée Stout, the sculptor M. Scott Johnson, Ja'Tovia Gary, whose 2023 sculpture cites Hurston's essay, and Antoine Williams. Rush Arts Philadelphia held a group show named after him in 2017.

Is High John part of hoodoo?

Yes. Hoodoo is the conjure tradition that enslaved African Americans developed in the South from Central and West African religion, Indigenous plant knowledge and Christianity. High John and his root are among its best-known elements, and the tradition is still practiced today.

GO FURTHER

I write about High John, hoodoo and folk magic done for real, as opposed to the festival-circuit version, in the Chthonograph. It's free, and it's where the work that doesn't fit on a website goes. Subscribe to the Chthonograph.

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SOURCES

Primary and scholarly

Hurston, Zora Neale. "High John de Conquer." The American Mercury 57, no. 238 (October 1943): 450–58. Record: https://cetapsrepository.letras.up.pt/id/cetaps/100094
Hurston, Zora Neale. The Sanctified Church. Turtle Island, 1981 (reprints the essay). Cited via Wikipedia.
Chireau, Yvonne P. Black Magic: Religion and the African American Conjuring Tradition. University of California Press, 2003. https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-religion/55
Long, Carolyn Morrow. Spiritual Merchants: Religion, Magic, and Commerce. University of Tennessee Press, 2001. https://utpress.org/?p=837
Long, Carolyn Morrow. "John the Conqueror: From Root-Charm to Commercial Product." Pharmacy in History, 1997. Cited via Wikipedia.
Tyler, Varro. "The Elusive History of High John the Conqueror Root." Pharmacy in History, 1991. Cited via Wikipedia.
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, 1845, chapter 10. Summary: https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/narrative/section6/