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Great Mississippi Flood of 1927

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This article is about the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. For the Mississippi Flood of 1993, see Great Flood of 1993.

The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 was the most destructive river flood in United States history until the Hurricane Katrina flood of 2005.

Events

The flood began when heavy rains pounded the central basin of the Mississippi in the summer of 1926. By September the Mississippi's tributaries in Kansas and Iowa were swollen to capacity. On New Year's day of 1927 the Cumberland River at Nashville topped levees at 56.2 feet (17 m).

The Mississippi River broke out of its levee system in 145 places and flooded 27,000 square miles or about 16,570,627 acres (70,000 km²). The area was inundated up to a depth of 30 feet (10 m). The flood caused over $400 million in damages and killed 246 people in seven states.

Affected areas

The flood affected Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee. Arkansas was hardest hit, with 13% of its territory covered by floodwaters. By May of 1927 the Mississippi River below Memphis, Tennessee reached a width of 60 miles(100 km).

Attempts at relief

As the flood approached New Orleans, Louisiana 30 tons of dynamite were set off on the levee at Caernarvon, Louisiana and sent 250,000 ft³/s (7,000 m³/s) of water pouring through. This prevented New Orleans from experiencing serious damage but destroyed much of the marsh below the city and flooded all of St. Bernard Parish. As it turned out, the destruction of the Caernarvon levee was unnecessary; several major levee breaks well upstream of New Orleans, including one the day after the dynamiting, made it impossible for flood waters seriously to threaten the city.

Abatement

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.

Political effects

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. Previously, the move from the rural South to the Northern cities had virtually stopped. As a result of displacement lasting up to six months, millions of Southerm blacks moved to the big cities of the North, particularly Chicago.

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.

The flood had the unlikely effect of contributing to both the election of Herbert Hoover as President, and his defeat four years later. He was much lauded for his masterful handling of the refugee camps, but later concerns over the treatement of blacks in those camps caused him to make promises to the African-American community which he later broke, losing the black vote in his re-election campaign.

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. William Faulkner's short story "Old Man" (in the book, Wild Palms) was about a prison break from Parchman Penetentiary during the flood.

See also

References

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