Great Mississippi Flood of 1927

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

Mississippi River Flood of 1927 showing flooded areas and relief operations

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

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 Christmas Day of 1926, the Cumberland River at Nashville topped levels at 56.2 feet (17 m), a level that remains a record to this day, even exceeding the devastating 2010 floods.

Flooding overtook the levees causing the Mounds Landing to break with more than double the water volume of Niagara Falls. The Mississippi River broke out of its levee system in 145 places and flooded 27,000 square miles (70,000 km²). This water flooded an area 80 km (50 mi) wide and more than 160 km (99 mi) long. 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.

The flood affected Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas. Arkansas was hardest hit, with 14% of its territory covered by floodwaters. By May 1927, the Mississippi River below Memphis, Tennessee, reached a width of 60 miles (97 km).

Arkansas River flooded Natural Steps, Arkansas in 1927

Attempts at relief

On April 15, 1927, 15 inches (380 mm) of rain fell in New Orleans in 18 hours. More than 4 feet (1.2 m) of water covered parts of the city, and influential bankers in town met about how to guarantee the safety of the city, with the scale of flooding upriver already known. A few weeks later, about 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 was intended to prevent New Orleans from experiencing serious damage, but flooded much of St. Bernard Parish and all of Plaquemines Parish's east bank. 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 demolitions, made it impossible for flood waters to seriously threaten the city.

A river levee is blown up at Caernarvon in 1927

Political, sociological and cultural effects

Following the Great Flood of 1927, the Army Corps of Engineers was again charged with taming the Mississippi River. Under the Flood Control Act of 1928, the world's longest system of levees was built. Floodways that diverted excessive flow from the Mississippi River were constructed.

The aftermath of the flood was one factor in the Great Migration of African-Americans to northern cities. During an era in which racism was commonplace, blacks built levees at gunpoint, starved in refugee camps and many were left to fend for themselves during the flood, while whites were rescued. Previously, the move from the rural South to the Northern cities had virtually stopped. The flood waters began to recede in June 1927, but interracial relations continued to be strained. Hostilities had erupted between the races; a black man was shot by a white police officer when he refused to be conscripted to unload a relief boat. As a result of displacements lasting up to six months, tens of thousands of local African-Americans moved to the big cities of the North, particularly Chicago; many thousands more followed in the following decades.

The flood propelled Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, who was in charge of flood relief operations, into the national spotlight and set the stage for his election to the presidency, but indirectly contributed to his defeat four years later. The flood also aided Huey Long's election to the governorship of Louisiana in 1928. Hoover was much lauded for his masterful handling of the refugee camps, but later concerns over the treatment 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 reelection campaign. Several reports on the terrible situation in the refugee camps, including one by the Colored Advisory Commission by Robert Russa Moton, were kept out of the media at Hoover's request, with the pledge of further reforms for blacks after the presidential election. When he failed to deliver, 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 flood resulted in a great cultural output as well, inspiring a great deal of folklore and folk music. Charlie Patton, Bessie Smith, Barbecue Bob, and many other blues musicians wrote songs about 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 If I Forget Thee Jerusalem) was about a prison break from Parchman Penitentiary during the flood. Several decades after the flood, Randy Newman wrote the song "Louisiana 1927," Zachary Richard wrote the song "Big River," and Eric Bibb wrote the song "Flood Water" about it.^{[citation needed]}

See also

• 2011 Mississippi River floods
• Effect of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans
• Great Flood of 1993
• Mississippi River floods
• Timeline of environmental events

Further reading

• Payne, John Barton (1929). The Mississippi Valley Flood Disaster of 1927. Official Report of the Relief Operations. Washington, DC: American National Red Cross. OCLC 1610750. 
• Daniel, Pete (1977). Deep'n As It Come: The 1927 Mississippi River Flood. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-502122-3. 
• Barry, John M. (1997). Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-684-84002-2. 
• Sevier, Richard P. (2003). Madison Parish (Images of America). Charleston, SC: Arcadia. ISBN 0-7385-1510-8.  Contains over 200 pictures of the flood as it affected the Tensas Basin in eastern Louisiana. Website with selected photographs from the book.
• Eldredge, Charles C. (2007). John Steuart Curry's Hoover and the Flood: Painting Modern History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0-8078-3087-1. 

External links

• A film clip of the Mississippi River Flood of 1927 is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more] - Short silent film of the flood aftermath and relief efforts for the refugees. Produced by the US Army Signal Corps.
• Disaster Response and Appointment of a Recovery Czar: The Executive Branch's Response to the Flood of 1927 - Well referenced CRS report.
• 1927 Flood Photograph Collection Historic images of the flood from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History
• Delta Geography Information about how the Flood of 1927 currently influences the life of people that live in the Delta
• PBS American Experience: Fatal Flood
• U.S. Army Engineers periodical "ESPRIT", March, 2002 - Lead article relying heavily on John M. Barry's book; includes some photographs.
• The Final Report of the Colored Advisory Commission Text of the report provided by "The American Experience."
• Historic video footage of 1927 Mississippi Flood and US Coast Guard rendering aid to flood victims
• Youtube video from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Vicksburg District