Mr. Smith
US History P2
9 Feb, 2014
Mississippi River Floods of 1927
On the day of April 15th, 1927, New Orleans was pounded with 15 inches of rain in under 18 hours. More than 4ft. of water covered many parts of the city, and bankers met in town about trying to keep the townspeople safe since there was so much flooding upstream. In a matter of weeks the entire levee system along the river had collapsed. In some residential areas there was as much as 30ft. of water submerging them. Two months passed before the floodwater was able to subside.
Authorities were criticized severely because of the lack of relief provided to African Americans during the flooding. Many were forced to work while white women and white children were hauled to safety. Thousands of plantation workers were stranded without food and provisions or even drinking water. Even those who gathered in relief camps were forced to work and were basically turned into slaves again, working for the relief of those who were being taken care of. At the least one black man was shot, it was reported that he was refusing to work.
The flood, over time, caused a lot of social and political reform around the country. African Americans slowly switched their loyalty from the Democratic Party to the antislavery campaign of the Republican Party. Also, the disaster induced the Great Migration when a large amount of African Americans moved from the South to the North.
The flood also found its way into folklore, music, literature, and films. Popular songs about the about the event include Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie's "When the Levee Breaks" (1929), reworked in 1971 by Led Zeppelin, and Randy Newman's "Louisiana 1927" (1974).
The Great Flood of 1927 was one of the worst natural disasters in the history of the United States. More than 23,000 square miles of land was submerged, hundreds of thousands of people were displaced, and roughly 250 died.
Sources:
