The Mississippi, a vast river system that spreads across nearly half the United States. It can be a tremendous asset to our country, yet it can be a great liability in times of flood. Spring 1927. A torrent of rain causes the river to explode from its banks, triggering the greatest flood in American history.
It just wreaked enormous havoc and included an enormous amount of land and nearly a million people. On this episode of When Weather Makes History. As the flood ravages the lower Mississippi Valley, it also exposes profound racial and social inequalities. Planters exploit black sharecroppers. You actually had Boy Scouts holding guns on African American men.
They were part of the economic capital that many planters felt that they owned. And wealthy businessmen renege on a deal to help their poor neighbors. It brings in the disparity between rich and poor, who could escape the flood and who couldn't. April 21st, 1927. A storm of epic proportions lets loose on the Mississippi Delta. The main channel of the Mississippi River is more than nine and a half feet above flood stage.
Water threatens to unleash its fury across the land. At Mound Landing near Scott, Mississippi, hundreds of black laborers struggle. to reinforce a weak section of levee along an S-curve in the Mississippi River. As the mighty river whips around the bend, it threatens to rip a hole in the saturated levee. 8 a.m.
A large section of the levee collapses. A 25-foot wall of water crashes through the hole. There is no chance for escape for the men working on the levee.
The powerful wave sweeps them away. Hundreds of men drown. An enormous amount of water was pouring out of this levee break onto the Mississippi Delta.
There were 468,000 cubic feet of water a second. That's more than double. the flow of Niagara Falls.
The floodwaters surge through the gap, engulfing everything in their path. It just starts spreading out throughout the protected area. And anyone living behind the levee system were subject to some very fast rising water.
People throughout the region race for disaster. The tragedy at Mound Landing is the result of flood conditions that have been building for the past eight months.. August 1926. In the Mississippi Valley, rainfall for the month is 200% above normal.
It rained so hard there were not only floods but record floods hundreds of miles apart in the Mississippi River Basin. The rains continue through the fall and into the winter as the river rises higher and higher. After five months of downpours, the upper basin of the river system is fully saturated. River gauges measure record high water levels. January 1st, 1927. The Mississippi River reaches flood stage at Cairo, Illinois, where the Ohio River merges with the Mississippi.
When the river goes into flood stage, what happens is it's a gradual rise. in the river and so it rides a crest like a wave and that crest moves down the river. January 7th a 49-foot flood crest passes Cairo.
Steady heavy rain rainfall continues into the spring. Five storms that spring, each greater than any in the previous decade, send more water into the Mississippi. Water from rain-swollen tributaries makes the Mississippi even more powerful as it winds its way south. By the time you get to...
Early April, the river is so high, people are getting excited. The only protection residents have from the rising water are levees, massive earthen dams built adjacent to the riverbanks designed to hold back flood water. Thousands of people work around the clock, reinforcing the levees with sandbags and checking for signs of weakness. Well, the Corps of Engineers was assuring people they could hold all the water in sight. The levees were fine, everything's going to be fine here.
Still, in Greenville, Mississippi, one of the largest cities of the Delta with a population of 15,000, residents grow tense. The water already overwhelmed five levees upriver. The crest is heading straight for Greenville. The massive flood is about to expose long-standing divides between blacks and whites.
Here, the cotton industry drives the economy. Many of the cotton farmers are poor sharecroppers. Sharecropping, a system of tenant farming that developed after the Civil War, is widely practiced.
Ex-slaves and their descendants work the land belonging to plantation owners. They give a share of their crop earnings back to the landlords. These landlords, known as planters, hold an unfair advantage. The relationship was a power relationship where the landlord had all the power and the sharecropper was at the beck and call of the planter.
It became a very exploitative system. Oftentimes plantation owners would also own stores where African Americans would purchase supplies they may need. After the crops were sold, instead of having a profit, the sharecropper would oftentimes emerge deeply in debt.
Black sharecroppers are also subject to Jim Crow laws, which govern race relations throughout the South. 87-year-old Juanita Turney grew up in Greenville under her grandmother's watchful eye. She recalls the racial discrimination she encountered as a child.
I did not try to drink water from a fountain that said colored. I drank my water before I left home. We couldn't go to the library.
We couldn't go to their schools. There were a number of things that we could not do. Now, in fighting the raging Mississippi, wealthy white planters exploit their relationship with black sharecroppers and treat them as if they were still slaves. Every plantation owner would simply gather up his sharecroppers.
and trucks and drive them to the levee. They were part of the economic capital that many planters felt that they owned and had the right to manipulate and to dispense at their will. The planters ordered the sharecroppers to work without pay, filling sandbags and hauling them to the crown of the levee.
As the threat of flood increases, the planters'abusive methods ensured the blacks'cooperation. In some areas, you actually had Boy Scouts holding guns on African American men, forcing them to stay on the levee and work. April 15, 1927. A storm front from the Gulf of Mexico produces torrential rain. From St. Louis all the way to the Gulf, the downpour pummels an already saturated Mississippi Valley. The storm dumps between six and ten inches of rain.
The storm lasts six days. Yeah, it was tense, and they were finding faults with the levee, and nobody knew where it was going to break or if it was going to break. They were just praying that the water rain would stop and things would get better, but it didn't. The amount of rain was too much for the levee system to handle. April 21st.
It's at this point that a chunk of the levee at Mound Landing collapses, 18 miles north of Greenville, killing hundreds. It's only a matter of time before the massive wave of floodwater reaches Greenville. Coming up next on When Weather Makes History, the residents of Greenville pray that a levee around their town will save them from the approaching water.
April 1927. After months of storms that dump record-breaking amounts of rain on the country's midsection, a great flood is ready to unleash its fury. From Cairo, Illinois. Down to the Gulf of Mexico, rivers and tributaries are overflowing their banks. The mighty Mississippi is rising high and fast.
For weeks, the water has saturated levees up and down the river. In mid-April, an epic storm rages for six straight days. Then on April 21st, the river burst through a levee at Mound Landing, 18 miles north of Greenville, Mississippi.
8 a.m. in Greenville. Sirens blare.
People spring to action and rush to get out any way they can. People were panicking. They were getting in their vehicles and driving lickety-split.
But some don't have the means or money to get out of town. They take refuge in the upper levels of homes and buildings. Others find higher ground on a levee. Two levees protect Greenville. The large, mainline levee contains the river during periods of high water.
and a smaller so-called protection levee encircles the town. Residents hope this smaller levee can withstand the wave of water racing toward them. Late that night, floodwaters reach the north side of Greenville.
The water quickly overwhelms the protection levee. That back protection levee was about 8 feet high, and the water came in at 9 or 10 feet. Initially, the water doesn't appear threatening.
But by morning, shallow, muddy water covers the streets. Francis Carlton's family has lived in Greenville for three generations. That morning in 1927, her father, Herman Callowette, visits the local cafe for breakfast, just as the owner is making his escape. He said, well, I've got the batter over here.
Just fix you what you want, and you're welcome to it. So that's what Daddy did. He fixed him some pancakes and had a good meal, and then he said when he left, the water was up to his knees. Less than a mile away, Juanita Turney, then seven years old, and her grandmother evacuate their single-story home. When it happened, then we had just a very short time to get out of the house.
Her godfather urges them to find higher ground. We stood there watching the water roll across Nelson Street. My godfather, who lived in the house behind us, said, You see that water coming across Nelson Street?
You better come on. We're going to the courthouse. They rushed to the county courthouse just a few blocks away.
The turbulent flood water eats away at the city's protection levee. Finally it bursts through, creating wide avenues for the water to invade the city. If you were just inside the protection levee in Greenville, when the water ripped open the levee, you saw this great fury coming at you. John Wiley, then 17 years old, is at his home with his brother when he sees the water rapidly rising. John and his brother climbed to the roof to escape the deluge.
For the next several hours, they watched the chaos that unfolds as their city is flooded. We was all scared. We was all scared we was going to get drowned.
That morning, people hollering on logs, cattle swimming, horses and things drowning. Domestic animals, mules, cows, were really at the mercy of the ground they were on. If they could find high ground, they might survive. Within a matter of hours, the entire city of 15,000 is submerged under 10 feet of water. The next day, residents are stranded on rooftops and in trees.
makeshift rescue crews rush to their aid. Using small boats, they navigate through the flooded town and bring whomever they find to higher ground. Herman Callowett is among the local volunteers.
He uses a skiff to rescue nearly 200 people. Get in his boat and go up to Metcalf, which is a little north of Greenville, and pick up people there and transport them over to the main line of Levy. He would be looking for people up in trees. They'd hear a boat, of course, and they'd start shouting for help. But not everyone can be saved.
Herman approaches one family and witnesses the devastating power of the flood. He saw a house floating with a family on top of it, and he was going up to rescue them. And he said, all of a sudden, the house must have hit a stump or something underwater, and it just disintegrated. He circled and circled around.
there but nobody ever came up never not he said not even one hand he just engulfed him i suppose april 23rd 1927 the wall of water that crashed through the levee at mound landing has now spread across the land the break is so big it floods an area 60 miles wide to the east and 90 miles to the south Churning, muddy water has ripped out trees and swept away people, sharecroppers'cabins, homes, and animals. Overwhelmed local and state officials asked the federal government for help. Immediately, President Calvin Coolidge appoints Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover to oversee a rescue and relief effort. Never before had the federal government responded to a national disaster on such a large scale. Hoover had experience with relief out of World War I. He was a kind of person who understood organization.
And Herbert Hoover put together this team that went down into the flood area to help people. Hoover's first priority is to rescue those who are stranded. Nearly 200,000 people live in the flooded region. Most have been forced out of their homes.
Tens of thousands are trapped by the swirling waters. Under Hoover's direction, the Coast Guard and Navy run rescue operations. Navy seaplanes survey the area, while Coast Guard boats pick up stranded people. Ships and barges transport flood victims to dry land and Red Cross relief camps.
But some in Greenville are intentionally left behind. Coming up next on When Weather Makes History, wealthy planters use their clout to prevent the evacuation of black sharecroppers stuck on the levees. It was thought that if they were evacuated that they would possibly never come back. April 23rd, 1927. An ocean of water covers the Mississippi Delta. Tens of thousands of people are stranded and desperate to be rescued.
The city of Greenville, Mississippi is 10 feet underwater. 17-year-old John Wiley finds shelter in the upper floor of his father's office building in downtown Greenville. He's lucky. The poorest residents could only find shelter on the levee. Most of the people on the levee was black people because they didn't know where to go.
The displaced residents crowd together in the miserable weather and await rescue. At night, temperatures drop into the 40s. They didn't have tents, they didn't have cots, they didn't have any kind of housing on the levee.
It was, frankly, a dangerous situation. There was no water for people, much less food. April 25th.
Three days after Greenville is flooded, the local relief committee, headed by a wealthy 42-year-old lawyer, named William Percy, votes to evacuate 13,000 people who are stranded on the levee. The governor immediately deploys rescue vessels. The plan is to transport the flood victims 80 miles downriver to a newly established Red Cross relief camp in Vicksburg.
But before help can arrive, local planters intervene. They want to stop William Percy from evacuating anyone. Most of those who are displaced are black sharecroppers who work on nearby plantations. The white planters are convinced an evacuation would ruin them financially.
The planters believed that if the African Americans went to another place, Their camp or whatever, they wouldn't be able to get them back to their plantations. They were afraid some of the workers would skip out on them. The planters appeal to Percy's father, U.S. Senator Leroy Percy, the most powerful planter in the county. Leroy agrees the black sharecroppers should not be evacuated.
So he talked at length with his son. His son refused to reverse his position. But the relief committee now also sides with the planters and Leroy Percy. Faced with such opposition, William Percy concedes.
He cancels the evacuation. To appease the planters, he comes up with another plan. Percy decided to instead propose that Greenville become sort of the distribution center for Red Cross supplies.
Under Percy's new plan, all aid for the region will be shipped to Greenville, then unloaded and transhipped elsewhere. And of course, they would need a labor force to do that, and that labor force would come from those black people on the levees. The black sharecroppers would be forced to provide labor without pay. Those who managed to survive the flood must now face a harsh new reality. Being treated as slaves.
That's coming up next on When Weather Makes History. April 1927. In the days after the enormous levee break at Mound Landing, the Mississippi floodwaters continue to surge south. By late April, the flood ravages more than 15 million acres in Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana.
600,000 people in the region are homeless. The flood has now surpassed all others on record, becoming one of the worst natural disasters in American history. In 1927, a flood was front page news.
It was a massive story. And of course, the plight of the refugees was a big part of this story. Roughly one million Americans were flooded in that year, and that was almost 1% of the entire population of the country.
From coast to coast, concerned Americans donate their time, clothing, and more than $17 million toward the immense relief effort. Despite this outpouring of charity, rumors of abuse begin to circulate throughout the network of Red Cross relief camps. Nowhere is the plight of flood victims worse than in Greenville, Mississippi. In many ways, the treatment of displaced black sharecroppers in Greenville resembles slavery, which had been abolished more than 60 years earlier.
In order to receive food rations, blacks must supply free labor. To prove their eligibility, they have to wear labor ID tags. The sharecroppers are forced to help unload Red Cross relief supplies, fortify the damaged levees, and assist with the immense cleanup effort, all without pay. The Greenville camp on a narrow stretch of land on top of a levee was set up with the assistance of the Red Cross under the direction of 42-year-old attorney William Percy.
There was a lot of political power behind Percy, as well as a lot of economic power. In a lot of ways, people described his running of the camp as him having absolute control. Percy established the camp after being pressured by his father, U.S.
Senator Leroy Percy. The elder Percy sided with local planters, who were afraid of losing their sharecropping workforce. William Percy is angry with his father, and it's reflected in the way he runs the camp. He was basically in charge of the distribution of food to all these people.
And he could not take out this great anger that he felt over his father's betrayal on his father. So he started taking it out on the people in the refugee camps. They suddenly became essentially his slave labor. Percy even tries to force African Americans living outside the camp to work for free.
During the flood, teenager John Wiley takes refuge in a two-story building in Greenville. He stays out of sight to avoid being forced to leave. forced into labor.
We used to hide. We used to never go outside. The police would go around through the city picking up people and making them work on the levee. The Greenville Camp is one of 154 Red Cross relief camps set up throughout the region.
These camps house more than half a million black farm laborers and their families, and less than 55,000 whites. Within the confines of the camps, segregation and exploitation are common. Red Cross relief is done within the context of Jim Crow laws, which govern race relations in the South.
The camps reflected and reproduced the racial realities of the time period in the different treatment of black and white refugees. and it really became a place where local plantation owners would oftentimes have a say in how the camps were run. We're talking about 1927 in the era of segregation and discrimination. So when the relief started... First of all, the whites got the tents and the cots and the better food and the better clothing.
In the black relief camps, people got very meager portions of food, and the types of food they got was very low in terms of the nutritional scale. While displaced whites received meat and canned fruits, blacks get rations of bread and molasses. Making the camp conditions worse is another change in the weather.
The heavy rains and unseasonably cold temperatures subside, only to be replaced with sweltering heat. Temperature soars. were.
These high temperatures speed up the decomposition of dead fish floating in the floodwaters. The stench is unbearable. Those who are stranded can't escape the weather and can't leave the camps either.
National Guardsmen brought in to help preserve order keep the blacks confined to the camps. Such is not the case in the white camps. In the white camp, they provided kind of an advisory and supervisory kind of role, but in the African American camps, they were armed and they oftentimes prevented blacks from leaving and entering the camps on a free basis. The guardsmen do not allow displaced blacks to leave the camps without the permission of a planter. They were very much sort of helping to provide the enforcement mechanism that would keep African Americans in their places.
If you stepped out of place you would have to pay and you have to pay oftentimes by a confrontation with the National Guardsmen. The reason they were kept in the campus was so that the planters would have access to them when the water went down and only the planters could get them out. The planters also exploit the sharecroppers through the distribution of Red Cross relief supplies. The people who are in charge of the running of the camp and the distribution of those supplies, those would oftentimes be local planters, local plantation owners, who would oftentimes use those provisions in order to exercise control over sharecroppers.
and tenant farmers who were in the camps. Accusations of corruption circulate when white planters begin to stockpile Red Cross aid and then sell the goods to black sharecroppers on credit. They learned that they could manipulate federal relief to their own advantage. The planters would take the food and distribute it to their help, but they'd put it on their bill. The planters'methods generate income for themselves, while keeping sharecroppers in debt.
African Americans in relief camps are not the only ones who feel discrimination. As the flood crest moves south, New Orleans, the biggest city in the region, is directly in its path. Here, poor whites also face a harsh reality, resulting from a decision by the city's business elite.
In the 1920s, New Orleans was the economic and financial hub of the South. New Orleans was by far the wealthiest city in the South. It had literally double or triple the economic activity of Atlanta, of Houston, of Dallas, of Charlotte. New Orleans'large shipping port connects the country's interior to the international market. The city is run by a powerful group that includes bankers, the mayor, and the governor.
Flood preparations have been underway for more than a month. Still, the group is afraid the approaching crest could ruin their city, which lies below sea level. So they come up with a plan to divert the floodwater.
The banking community in the city wanted to make a definitive statement that they would never allow the Mississippi River to flood New Orleans, and they had the political power to ensure that. They proposed to dynamite a section of the levee to create an artificial break or crevasse. The thought was that if you make a crevasse south of New Orleans, it's like pulling the plug in the bathtub. It's going to drain the water through.
that and therefore the river will fall and New Orleans will be spared. Saving New Orleans however would be done at the expense of poor whites who live in two neighboring communities, St. Bernard and Plaquemines Parish. Those communities would be intentionally flooded without their approval. That's coming up next on When Weather Makes History.
It brings in the disparity between rich and poor, who could escape the flood and who couldn't. April 1927. As the massive Mississippi River flood crest moves south, several levees collapse and send floodwater crashing down on the land below. Within days large portions of Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana are underwater.
In towns throughout the region, residents do their best to maintain a level of normalcy despite the disaster. Residents use boats to get around. Some towns build raised walkways for pedestrian traffic. One ingenious man even turns his boat into a mobile barber shop. As the flood crest approaches New Orleans, powerful city and business leaders hatch a plan to divert the water into two neighboring communities, St. Bernard and Plaquemines Parishes.
Those communities are home to the area's poorest white residents. Most who live in these parishes work as fishermen and trappers in the fertile marsh. City leaders view the wetlands as underdeveloped.
Displacement of those who live here, they say, would be for the greater good of saving New Orleans. The two parishes were chosen because most of the people there were poor and were not on the scale of what New Orleans thought it was. Sophisticated, urbane and so forth.
These were expendable people. April 27th. Following a series of closed door meetings, New Orleans leaders secure state and federal approval for their plan. There is one condition. The city must agree to pay reparations to the victims.
The president of every bank in the city, the president of every business association in the city, the mayor, every member of the city council, they all signed a written pledge that they would make full restitution for any losses. New Orleans gives the residents of St. Bernard and Plaquemines Parish two days to evacuate. With little time to pack, residents must leave nearly everything behind. Edward Nunez, then 19 years old, lived with his family in a modest one-bedroom house in St. Bernard Parish. He recalls his parents'fears.
They were worried, yeah. You're leaving everything back, furniture, everything in the house, some clothes. That's all we could take, some clothes. On April 29th, engineers dynamite a section of Carnarvon Levy, located 30 miles from the 13 miles below New Orleans Canal Street. The first explosion throws dirt into the air, but only creates a small hole.
Forty-eight hours later, a significant section collapses after a diver plants dynamite in front of the levee. Two hundred fifty thousand cubic feet of water per second flows out of the river onto the land below. The river water level goes down. For wealthy New Orleans, the threat of flood is gone.
But for residents of St. Bernard and Plaquemines Parish, the deluge is just beginning. Edward and his brother travel by boat to see the devastation firsthand. Oh, man. Go through the prairie, straight across.
No land at all, you know? The water was so high. These photographs, shot by a local photographer, were taken as evidence of the flood damage.
Residents plan to submit them with their reparation claims. The murky floodwater covers 600 square miles of St. Bernard and Plaquemines Parish. 12,000 people are homeless.
But when residents of the flooded parishes begin to file their claims with the City of New Orleans, they make a startling discovery. The city refuses to honor its promise. No one done us dirty, man. They're double-crossers. They were supposed to pay us off.
They didn't. In the end, the city breaks its promise to pay reparations. Officials reject countless claims or pay paltry sums on those they do accept. On average, each family receives less than $300 for their losses.
In the weeks that follow, city and business leaders come under sharp attack in the press for protecting the city's financial interests at the expense of others. Nearly 10,000 people who live in St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes lose everything. In many areas throughout Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana, the floodwater remains until July. That's four months after the first levee break at mound landing.
Finally, the water has drained off the land. In total, the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 inundates nearly 17 million acres in seven states. Geographically, the 1927 flood was possibly the biggest flood in American history.
And from Cairo to the Gulf, it just wreaked enormous havoc and included an enormous amount of land. The flood directly affects roughly 1 million Americans. It was devastating and it just disrupted everything that was civilization at that time as people knew it.
As people returned to their homes... Considerable work lies ahead. People describe going back to their homes as just so sad. For one thing, the water that went through their homes and the mud that caked their homes smelled. really bad.
The smells were not only the smells of the house and the mud, but of course rotting carcasses of animals. I think for sharecroppers in the camps there was a sense that they had lost so much. They had lost perhaps the opportunity for economic advancements or at least the opportunity in order to continue along the same economic path that they had been on for so many years. Thank you.
They didn't know if they would be able to produce any cotton or sugar for that year. They didn't know what the land looked like when they would get back to it. There was just a lot of doubts in their mind about what the future would bring for them. With so many people hurt by the disaster, Americans begin to reconsider their views on the government's responsibility for providing relief.
If you measure public sentiment by letters to the editor and newspaper editorials and things like that, This was a sea change, a watershed moment. After the flood, the federal government expands its role in disaster relief, agreeing to provide money and manpower in times of natural catastrophes. And made people think that the federal government actually had a major responsibility to help citizens when they were in serious distress through no fault of their own.
The flood also leads to a profound shift in national politics. I think it precipitated sort of the movement of African Americans from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party. That's next in the conclusion of When Weather Makes History.
After the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, reminders of the devastation lingered. In Scott, Mississippi, the raging currents that ripped through the mound-landing levee dug a 100-foot-deep hole in the fertile delta soil. Today, those waters are still there, as part of a beautiful lake known as a Blue Hole. The Flood of 1927 changed the political landscape as well.
In 1928, Republican Herbert Hoover won the presidency. His success in leading the flood relief effort won him votes across the South. He benefited from the traditional support of African Americans. African Americans had a historic allegiance to the Republican Party, which was seen as the party of Lincoln, the party that ended slavery, the party of emancipation.
Hoover gained even more support from... African Americans when he promised to look into allegations of refugee camp abuses. He also pledged to develop new land appropriation programs. But Hoover never followed through on land proposals. The broken promises angered African Americans.
In the years to come, blacks would leave the Republican Party by the thousands and switch their allegiance to the Democrats. Well, Hoover turned his back on these people, and it was such a betrayal that, you know, the emotional connection between the African American leadership and the Republican Party was broken forever. Hoover wasn't the only one whose image was tarnished by the flood. The city of New Orleans damaged its reputation when it deliberately flooded St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes.
That decision reflected the city's willingness to allow powerful men to take advantage of those less fortunate. One of the things that the... The flood of 27 exposed is the disparity of wealth and circumstance in the United States.
The bitterness lingered for generations. So much so, that in 2005, when Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans, rumors circulated that the levee along the Lower Ninth Ward had been sabotaged. There are many members of the African community...
African-American community who believe that it did happen, and they point to what happened in 1927, saying, well, they did it once, that's proof they'd do it again. The 1927 flood did inspire a major change in flood control. flood management policy. Congress passed the Flood Control Act in 1928, which led to the creation of new flood control measures designed to reduce stress on the levee system. Since that time, we've got the system along the Mississippi built up with reservoirs, floodways, and levees such that if 27 were repeated, we could control that event today.
The whole levee system was strengthened and just the water... water got so high and it would go down a spillway. The flood ended the debate over how you deal with rivers forever, all over the world.
You have to accommodate great rivers. You cannot dictate to them. When you're talking about weather, you never know what Mother Nature is going to throw at you there.