The Landlord and Renting Rooms

“ah’m gon’a full up mah rooms.” Lizzie Smith of Waycross said it when a neighbour brought her the dead buzzard she had paid fifty cents for. She burned its long wing feathers in kerosene at night, and he swore her house filled (Hyatt 2445 · Waycross, Ga. · informant 1120).

Renting rooms was one of the few businesses open to Black women in the 1930s South. Boarding houses, rooming houses and houses let by the night ran on a steady stream of lodgers, and the women who kept them worked the floors, the steps and the stove to get them.

What it is

Landlord work covers three jobs, and Hyatt’s informants worked all three:

• Bringing in roomers and tenants when the house stood empty.
• Keeping the landlord, or the rent man, from putting you out.
• Driving out a tenant or neighbour you wanted gone.

Bringing in roomers

Most of it was floor work. A Memphis woman who ran a boarding house put oils of bergamot, cinnamon, rose and wintergreen in her mop water with new Ivory Soap, and mopped from the front steps straight back through the house on Monday and Friday mornings. She said “it would bring a crowd an’ bring jis’ whatevah yo’ would want” (Hyatt 2486 · Memphis, Tenn. · informant 928).

She went further for the trade she wanted. For men, she had a man urinate in the water. For women roomers, a woman.

Other ways of filling the house:

• Brown sugar sprinkled at the bed to bring a tenant (Hyatt 2461 · New Orleans, La. · informant 853).
• Sugar and cinnamon burned in the four corners after scrubbing with lye water (Hyatt 2485 · New Orleans, La. · informant 839).
• Good Luck Powder mixed with the dust swept out of the house (Hyatt 2439 · Fayetteville, N. Car. · informant 1412).
• Sweeping the four corners towards the middle, never out of the door: “Sweep in inwards , don’t sweep it out” (Hyatt 2464 · New Orleans, La. · informant 859).

The same Waycross informant who told Lizzie Smith’s story described another woman who took dirt from the middle of the forks of the road, beat bluestone, saltpetre and brimstone over it in a small pot with splinters, poured on kerosene, and “burns it about three a’ clock in de mornin’ befo’ day” to get roomers (Hyatt 2483 · Waycross, Ga. · informant 1120).

Handling the landlord

Tenants had their own work. A New Orleans informant scrubbed the house on a Friday morning with bluing and white sugar in the water, and no soap, before anyone crossed the sill. After that, when the landlord came, she said, you tell him you have nothing and he goes away content (Hyatt 2422 · New Orleans, La. · informant 837).

Another New Orleans woman went much further. She cut her landlord’s photograph out of the Picayune, laid it in a coffin made from a cigar box, and buried it under the floor behind her piano. She stayed more than a year in a sixteen-dollar house and paid less than twenty dollars in all (Hyatt 1787 · New Orleans, La. · informant 824).

Moving people out

Getting rid of an unwanted tenant or neighbour was done with the same methods used to drive out any enemy:

• Graveyard dust slung against the windows of the house next door at night (Hyatt 88 · Jacksonville, Fla. · informant 562).
• Graveyard dirt thrown over a porch. The woman it was done to moved, and said “They sure make you move.” (Hyatt 1629 · Wilmington, N. Car. · informant 238).
• Devil’s dust from the drug store thrown at the house (Hyatt 1827 · New Orleans, La. · informant 791).
• Knocking on the door at night until no one could live there (Hyatt 1815 · Waycross, Ga. · informant 1080).

Hot foot powder was the commonest tool of all, and has its own entry in The Hyatt Files.

In their own words

“She taken a cigar box and she made a little coffin”

(Hyatt 1787 · New Orleans, La. · informant 824)

“He’s gone – he ain’t going to put you out, you can stay right there in that house.”

(Hyatt 2422 · New Orleans, La. · informant 837)

“They sure make you move.”

(Hyatt 1629 · Wilmington, N. Car. · informant 238)

How it’s worked today

The boarding house has given way to the rental flat and the holiday let, but the work carries straight over. Landlords still wash floors and doorsteps with sugar, cinnamon and oils to bring in good tenants, and still sweep inwards rather than out.

Tenants still work on landlords with sweetening and with name-papers. Hot foot powder, graveyard dirt and the thrown mixture remain the standard tools for moving someone on.

Learn the work

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Source: Harry Middleton Hyatt, Hoodoo – Conjuration – Witchcraft – Rootwork, 5 vols., 1970-1978. Numbers refer to Hyatt’s own item numbers; the town and informant number follow. Written by Hoodoo Witch in our own words, with short quotations from Hyatt’s informants for reference.