"Traditional Herbal Remedies in the African American Community"

As part of “New Orleans, the Founding Era,” THNOC hosted Eddie Boyd, a former faculty member of the University of Michigan College of Pharmacy, for an afternoon of demonstrations and discussions on herbs and their use in traditional medicine passed down through generations in the African American community. Some of these remedies date to the period in which enslaved Africans were laboring on Louisiana plantations.

For 30 years, Boyd researched the effectiveness of these home remedies—many of which he first encountered as a child growing up on a Mississippi cotton farm. Boyd will also discuss the important use of herbs in the African American community when limited health insurance or funds made it difficult to see health care practitioners.