THE FLOOD OF 1927

WIKIPEDIA - The Great Mississippi Flood in 1927 was the most destructive
river flood in United States history. In the Great Mississippi Flood of
1927 the Mississippi River broke out of its levee system in 145 places
and flooded 27,000 square miles or about 16,570,627 acres. The area was
inundated up to a depth of 30 feet. The flood caused over $400 million
in damages and killed 246 people in seven states. . .

The flood propelled Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, in charge of
flood relief operations, into the national spotlight and set the stage
for his election to the Presidency. It also helped Huey Long be elected
Louisiana Governor in 1928. . .

By August 1927 the flood subsided. During the disaster 700,000 people
were displaced, including 330,000 African-Americans who were moved to
154 relief camps. Over 13,000 refugees near Greenville, Mississippi were
gathered from area farms and evacuated to the crest of an unbroken
levee, and stranded there for days without food or clean water, while
boats arrived to evacuate white women and children. Many
African-Americans were detained and forced to labor at gunpoint during
flood relief efforts.

Several reports on the poor situation in the refugee camps, including
one by the Colored Advisory Commission by Robert Russa Moton, were kept
out of the media at the request of Herbert Hoover, with the promise of
further reforms for blacks after the presidential election. When he
failed to keep the promise, Moton and other influential
African-Americans helped to shift the allegiance of black Americans from
the Republican party to Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Democrats.

The aftermath of the flood was one factor in the Great Migration of
African-Americans to northern cities. The flood resulted in a great
cultural output as well, inspiring a great deal of folklore and folk
music. Charlie Patton, Bessie Smith and many other Delta blues musicians
wrote numerous songs about the flood; Randy Newman's "Louisiana 1927"
was also based on the events of the flood. Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis
Minnie's "When the Levee Breaks" was reworked by Led Zeppelin, and
became one of that group's most famous songs.

htttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Mississippi_Flood_of_1927

[From a PBS Special about the flood of 1927. LeRoy Percy was a major
plantation owner and Will Percy, his son, was named head of the flood
relief commission]

March and April: LeRoy Percy and other plantation owners send their farm
hands to raise the height of Washington County levees. Other African
Americans in the area are pressed into work gangs to heighten and
fortify the levees. Police round up African Americans in town at gun
point and send them to the levee. Convicts are also pressed into action,
and altogether a gang of 30,000 men work to save the levee. . . 

April 25: The situation in Greenville is dire. Thirteen thousand African
Americans are stranded on the levee with nothing but blankets and
makeshift tents for shelter. There is no food for them. The city's water
supply is contaminated. The railway has been washed away, and sanitation
is non-existent. An outbreak of cholera or typhoid is imminent. . .

Many people are reluctant to abandon Greenville, despite the fact that
their homes have been submerged. The planters, in particular, oppose
Will's plan, fearing that if the African American refugees leave, they
will never return, and there will be no labor to work the crops. LeRoy,
placing his business interests above his family's tradition of aiding
those less fortunate, betrays his son and secretly sides with the
planters. Boats with room for all the refugees arrive, but only 33 white
women and children are allowed to board. The African American refugees
are left behind, trapped on the levee. . .

April: To justify his relief committee's failure to evacuate the
refugees, Will Percy convinces the Red Cross to make Greenville a
distribution center, with the African Americans providing the labor. Red
Cross relief provisions arrive in Greenville, but the best provisions go
to the whites in town. Only African Americans wearing tags around their
necks marked "laborer" receive rations. National Guard is called in to
patrol the refugee camps in Greenville. Word filters out of the camps
that guardsmen are robbing, assaulting, raping and even murdering
African Americans held on the levee. . .

May: Slowly word of the abuses in the refugee camps reaches the Northern
press. Once the situation in the refugee camps hits the national press.
. . Hoover forms a Colored Advisory Commission of influential African
American conservatives, led by Robert Russa Moton, to further
investigate the camps. The commission confirms the initial findings. In
exchange for keeping the report quiet, Hoover promises that if he wins
the election, he will support the advancement of African Americans,
including possible agrarian land reform. Moton agrees, and Hoover is
never called to account for the treatment of African Americans in
Washington County.

June and July: As the flood waters recede, Greenville faces the task of
digging the town out the mud. Again, the white leadership of the town
resorts to conscripting African Americans at gun point. . .

July 7: James Gooden, a well respected African American in the
Greenville community, is shot in the back by a white policeman for
refusing to return for a day shift after working all night on the
clean-up. Word of his death spreads quickly and work stops. Tensions
rise, and both blacks and whites arm themselves with guns and other
weapons. Greenville is at a standoff. Will Percy calls a reconciliation
meeting of the African American community at a local church, but places
the blame on them for the death of their neighbor.

August 31: Will Percy resigns from the Greenville Flood Relief Committee
and leaves for a trip to Japan the very next day.

Late summer: Thousands of African Americans pack up their belongings and
leave Washington County. Most head north and within a year, fifty
percent of the Delta's African American population will have migrated
from the region. Once "the Queen of the South," Greenville will never
recover the prosperity it once enjoyed before the flood.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/flood/timeline/timeline2.html

RISING TIDE: THE GREAT MISSISSIPPI FLOOD OF 1927 AND HOW IT CHANGED
AMERICA

By John M. Barry

JAMES CARVILLE, SALON, APRIL 1997 - I've just finished a brand-new book
on the Great Flood, and I've been sending it out to all my friends. John
M. Barry's "Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It
Changed America" is the best book I've read in years. . .

While today it is damn near impossible to name a single famous engineer,
in the 19th century engineers were masters of the universe -- with egos
every bit as outsized as today's Wall Street bigwigs. The first section
of "Rising Tide" focuses on two of the most egotistical and brilliant,
James Buchanan Eads and Andrew Atkinson Humphreys, who spent their
lifetimes trying to conquer the Mississippi. Unfortunately, the two men
worked equally hard trying to conquer each other. Like all great man vs.
nature stories, this book has a strong undercurrent of man vs. man
flowing beneath its surface.

Eads and Humphreys agreed on one thing: Continuing the work of building
high earthen levees parallel to the banks of the resting river made all
kinds of sense. Levees allowed the river to spill out well beyond its
banks, while still holding it to a predictable channel. Levees had
another benefit as well: Confining the flooding river would speed up its
current; the faster current, in turn, would gouge out the river's bed
and lower the water level in the future.

But would the faster current carve out enough to prevent big-time
floods? That was the billion-dollar question. Eads said no. He proposed
other ways of carving out the riverbed, because he knew levees alone
could not work. Humphreys actually had plenty of data showing the same
thing -- he simply chose to ignore it. Driven far more by rivalry than
reason, he put his name to a cockamamie levees-only policy. A
half-century later, during the Great Flood, that policy submerged more
than 27,000 square miles under a murky inland sea.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0684840022/002-6789337-7795235?v=glance