Members include public libraries, academic libraries, museums, and archives from arcross the state. about 500. Steamboats carried many of the white wives and young children away to Vicksburg or Memphis. Search within institutions . Urged to leave, residents boarded trains for higher ground in Opelousas, Bradshaw reported. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. He was in charge of disaster relief for the Coolidge administration. (This piece initially aired on Sept. 9, 2005, on Morning Edition.) The per capita income for the parish was $11,432. You know, the Greenville public schools actually--while other Mississippi counties seriously debated whether they wanted to teach African-Americans to read--in Greenville African-Americans were being taught Latin. : PI/1992.0002.071, People get around in boats at the railroad station in Cary, Mississippi, on May 1, 1927, ten days after the flood. Mocking birds often nested in the arch. They're tyrin' to wash us away. He immediately went to work on plans to build a mud box with driven pilings and sandbags to seal the gaps. Over the next ten days they used thirty-nine tons of dynamite to open a channel that released 250,000 cubic feet of water per second from the river. A black and white reproduction of a photograph of a boat with a barber chair in Melville, Louisiana, during the great flood of 1927. That nobody would care if they were to disappear tomorrow. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1997. Most settled for pennies on the dollar, and practically all of them remembered that it was a man-made catastrophe that put them where they were. The Flood of 1927 was described by US Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover as the greatest peace-time calamity in the history of the country. It inundated 16,570,627 acres (about 26,000 square miles) in 170 counties and parishes in seven states, driving an estimated 931,159 people from their homes. The teenager Mildred Shepherd, whose father was an auditor for Mississippi Power & Light Company in Greenville, remained with her family at home throughout the flood with water at the top of their doorsteps. Greenvilles William Alexander Percy, son of LeRoy Percy, headed the Relief Committee in Greenville. The flood killed the hedges and they had to be removed.. Despite the valiant effort,levees in northeast Louisiana began to fail. That downpour also added more water to the Mississippi River as it rushed past New Orleans. An upstream break, on the other hand, would send a disastrous flood into New Orleans. It would be a continuing flood of water the Mississippi River flowed through the crevasse for months. A major result of the 1927 flood, which had an impact in eleven states, was the National Flood Control Act of 1928 passed by the U. S. Congress. River water poured through the breach and began to rush to the south, soon joined by floodwaters caused by a break in a Bayou des Glaises levee to the north of St. Landry, in Avoyelles Parish. They reneged on all their promises, written promises; they controlled the state Supreme Court, so the lawsuits against them went nowhere. The Flood Year 1927: A Cultural History. Nearly one million people were left homeless. Year: 2003 2:57 69 Views Become A Better Singer In Only 30 Days, With Easy Video Lessons! Analyze how and why you love the way you do. It prevented a second wave of rising water in June and with the aid of large pumps the town was drained. loyno . Some twenty thousand people were housed in Lafayette alone. "By the time we got to the levee, we were wading in water. Parishes set up rehabilitation committees to find food and shelter for the displaced families. Photograph of map by Princella W. Nowell. Go to the levee! WERTHEIMER: And some of them were evacuated, but not everybody. They felt that it was wrong, and looking at this, I think, created a real change in the way Americans as a people viewed the role of the government's responsibility toward individuals. As the waters receded people drifted back to their homes to clean up and continue their lives where they left off. Many black tenant farmers, driven from their land by the flood, moved north to cities like Chicago and Detroit, Bradshaw wrote. The Louisiana Digital Library (LDL) is composed of collections from many different institutions. The prelude to the flood began in August 1926, when rainstorms began to swell streams in eastern Kansas, northwestern Iowa, and part of Illinois, all of which fed into the Mississippi River. River appallingly high, and levees in very precarious condition. Her grandfather, the Rev. About 100,000 people in Acadiana fled their homes during the Great Flood of 1927, Savage reported in 2002 for the 75th anniversary. The median age was 34 years. As of the 2020 census, the population was 32,350. Area code. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR. WERTHEIMER: Were there any prominent politicians who vanished without a trace because of the way they handled the flood? Courtesy Mississippi Department of Archives and History, accession no. The parish was created out of lands formerly belonging to St. Landry Parish in 1910. Adding to the excitement was a man on horseback going pell-mell down the street yelling, Go to the levee! Copyright laws. As word spread about the mistreatment of Black people in the levee camps, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, who served as chairman of a special committee to coordinate all flood relief efforts, created the Colored Advisory Committee to look into the allegations and named Robert Moton from the Tuskegee Institute to head it. The refugees were caught between a system of legalities they did not understand and marshes still filled with water that kept them from going home. The Mississippi was at flood stage for months. And that was because of the elite, aristocratic planter class, who did feel a certain noblesse oblige toward their sharecroppers, but they didn't let that interfere with a fairly ruthless sense of dollars. Mr. BARRY: Well, it's a good question. Ewing, Jasper G. Flood damageLouisiana. WERTHEIMER: Now when the flood hit Greenville, Mississippi, you write in the book that people, blacks and whites together, took refuge on the highest ground they could find, which was the levee. The river have busted through clear down to Plaquemines. Could you tell us about that? More than 10 inches fell. Frank M. Yarborough, who lived with them, "gathered up the few chickens left in the yard and put them in a coop on one end of the porch. The men feared that if they allowed this labor force to leave they might not return. Nature defeats man's efforts As heavy rainfall in 1926 continued into the spring of 1927, the Mississippi. Most of the refugees went to stay with relatives. Yarborough, was one of those whose store was threatened." New Orleans-based singer/pianist Marcia Ball also covered the song at several Katrina benefit concerts. by Jim Bradshaw Courtesy of State Library of Louisiana. What has happened down here, is the winds have changed Clouds roll in from the north and it started to rain It rained real hard, and it rained for a real long time Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline The river rose all day, the river rose all night Some people got lost in the flood, some people got away alright The river had busted . There is a passage in your book where you described what it looked like when the river--the Mississippi River--finally subsided back into its banks, and I wonder if you could just read part of that for us. Those who were less experienced immediately began fleeing the area by train and continued to do so until the tracks became unusable. (You can unsubscribe anytime). Courtesy Mississippi Department of Archives and History, accession no. In Louisiana alone, 10,000 square miles in 20 parishes went underwater. John Barry is the author of "Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood and How It Changed America." Scott Simon will be back next week. The cost of the damage has been estimated to be between $246 million and $1 billion, $4.2-$17. A 12-inch fall is reported for Cairo. It runs on the Islandora open-source digital repository software. The boys rescued the chickens and placed them on a scaffold out of the water. In 2007, the song was covered by Ray Stevens on his tribute album to New Orleans and Louisiana culture, New Orleans Moon. He's also a resident of New Orleans and Washington, DC. WERTHEIMER: That's Aaron Neville singing Randy Newman's song, "Louisiana 1927.". The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 Laid Bare the Divide Between the North and the South. fpoc . Close Subscribe. : PI/CI/G74.4, no. Thus, the people struggling to live on a sliver of ground above water, became aggravated about their circumstances. When the water finally subsided, the Red Cross provided seed, tools, and rations to farm families facing the daunting task of surviving the winter and starting a new crop in the spring. 90 years ago, the Great Flood of 1927 changed Louisiana Families and farm animals sought refuge on rooftops, raised railroad beds and levees. Dupre and Baudin Streets during Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. For more on Katrina's aftermath, go to our Web site, npr.org. Evangeline has a post office with ZIP code 70537. 1.04% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. Mr. BARRY: Yeah, that's correct, and the idea is very comparable to simply pulling the plug out of the bathtub. Courtesy Mississippi Department of Archives and History, accession no. Residents in Rayville, a community inRichland Parish, fought to avert the Mississippi River flood by erecting a 6-mile long levee around thetown in a two-week period, according to a May 1981 story in the Monroe News-Star-World. To find the contact who can help you, find the field called "Contact Information" next to the image of interest to you. You know, the Greenville public schools actually--while other Mississippi counties seriously debated whether they wanted to teach African-Americans to read--in Greenville African-Americans were being taught Latin. I think perhaps the most important impact the flood had we haven't discussed. The laborers were not paid and resented being threatened that if they did not participate in the levee repair, or other work such as unloading the food sent on barges by the Red Cross, that they would not be allowed to have the food that the Red Cross was handing out. Once again, housing had to be found for tens of thousands of refugees who had no relatives to stay with. (See Napoleon's Soldiers In America, by Simone de la Souchere-Delery, 1999). Evangeline Parish is also served by the Diocese of Lafayette with one school: Additionally, Evangeline Parish is served by one unaffiliated private school: Evangeline Parish is served by one institutions of higher education: The 1086th Transportation Company of the 165th CSS (Combat Service Support) Battalion resides in Ville Platte, Louisiana. LSU Libraries' Technology Initiatives: lsudiglib@lsu.edu. It was a strictly political power play. Ville Platte, Louisiana, the seat of Evangeline Parish, was itself so named by one of Napoleon Bonaparte's former soldiers, Adjutant Major Marcellin Garand (1781-1852), of Savoy, France. Why don't more people know about this? I'm Linda Wertheimer. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 98.10 males. The east and south were protected, or so most people believed, by a railroad embankment. All rights reserved. Both calamities caused widespread dislocation of Black people, the first adding to a migration to the major urban cities of the north, the second to cities such as Houston and Atlanta. They started to evacuate the city and they evacuated the whites, but the planners got together and decided that if they evacuated the black sharecroppers, the labor force for much of the Mississippi delta would disappear and would never return, and so they decided to keep them on the top of the levee and formed a camp for them for--stretched about 11 miles; thousands of people, many animals, and these people became almost slave labor. . I said there were almost 700,000 people being fed by the Red Cross. Jackson was the pharmacist, Edwin H. Myrick,in the 1981 report,recalled. Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline. I mean, not necessarily down South but this was a huge flood across many states. Until the American Red Cross arrived, families, mostly African-Americans, slept in makeshift tents of quilts and materials brought along in their escape from their homes. The National Safety Council estimated deaths in the Yazoo- Mississippi Delta alone at 1,000. This unit belongs to the 139th RSG (regional support group). And they didn't write about it. McCain, William D. The Triumph of Democracy 1916-1932 in A History of Mississippi, Volume Two, edited by Richard Aubrey McLemore. Our side of the street featured a hedge beginning at MP&L Co. corner and continuing to the corner of Clay and included Uncle Clarences and Aunt Rubys property. Thelma Sturgeon Smith from Alto in Richland Parish, recalled in 1981 that her family was living in Franklin Parish southwest of Winnsboro near the Oak Grove Baptist Church in May of 1927. Louisiana, Louisiana. Could you tell us about that? A weather system that stalled over the Midwestern states in the fall of 1926 brought untold amounts of water to the Upper Mississippi River region. The song became identified with Hurricane Katrina in the public consciousness after being sung by Aaron Neville at NBC's "A Concert for Hurricane Relief", being sung by Newman at the multi-network television fundraiser Shelter from the Storm: A Concert for the Gulf Coast, and a fully orchestrated version of the song performed by Newman during Saturday Night Live's "Mardi Gras Special". The Oct. 26, 1999, Advertiser included thiseyewitness account ofTurner Catledge, a reporter for the Memphis Commercial Appeal:"The water leaped through the crevasse with such fury that it spread into three distinct currents. Some people got lost in the flood; some people got away all right. 57. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014. The flood caused more than $400 million in losses; 92,431 businesses were damaged and 162,017 homes flooded. NPR will continue to cover this story throughout the day. Even at the age of 8 years, I could imagine the expanse of water that would reach from the Mississippi to where we were 60 miles away.". Their squalid living conditions and work requirements were first reported through the Associated Negro Press and by the end of May had spread to the White press. It was the only dry ground. They promised reparations to the people they flooded out, and they stiffed them. Louisiana 1927 Lyrics What has happened down here is the wind have changed Clouds roll in from the north and it start to rain It rained real hard and it rained for a real long time Six feet of. You know, tens of thousands of whom were living on tops of levees, some of which were only eight feet across with the river on one side and the flood on the other. People of Spanish Canary Islands heritage (Isleos) can be observed to have settled in the Parish as well, bringing names like Aguillard, Casaneuva, De Soto, Ortego, Rozas, and Segura. "About daylight, 5:30 or so, we heard them shooting," he recalled in the 2002 report. Used by permission of Dr. Ted Shepherd. African-American families were instructed by some community leaders to stay on the levee to work in flood control and, later, recovery efforts. 46, Flood refugees in Yazoo City, Mississippi, on May 13, 1927. The two floods met just north of Port Barre in St. Landry Parish on May 18. Percy, William Alexander. The 1927 flood also helped propel Herbert Hoover to the presidency a year later. The Mississippi River Flood of 1927 was the nations greatest natural disaster. There is a passage in your book where you described what it looked like when the river--the Mississippi River--finally subsided back into its banks, and I wonder if you could just read part of that for us. Islandora advanced search. I just carried a cigar box with my marbles," he added. 25.71% reported speaking French or Cajun French at home, the highest percentage of any Louisiana parish.[13]. In the days that followed, water from the levee breaks spread to the south. In early April 1927, Henry Waring Ball of Greenville, Mississippi, wrote in his diary: April 8, 1927at 12 it commenced to rain hard and I have seldom seen a more incessant and heavy downpour until the present moment 9 p.m. As a result of the living conditions caused by the flood, Black citizens were compelled to leave Washington County, of which Greenville was the county seat, to seek better lives in the North. Though it and its tributaries were lined by levees, they were filled to overflowing, and part of the Mississippi River sought this shorter, straighter course to the sea. : PI/ 1992.0002.039, The Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad Station in Helm, Mississippi, on April 29, 1927. On May 12 or 13, the levee at Bayou des Glaises near Cottonport in Avoyelles Parish, north of St. Landry Parish, failed. I mean, not necessarily down South but this was a huge flood across many states. Discuss North Carolina politics. The river have busted through clear down to Plaquemines. "They worked hard, but the levee broke at 3 o'clock in the morning," Leblanc recalled. John Barry, author of Rising Tide:. They felt that it was wrong, and looking at this, I think, created a real change in the way Americans as a people viewed the role of the government's responsibility toward individuals. Through the early spring of 1927, the rains continued and the flood pushed downriver toward Louisiana. He's also a resident of New Orleans and Washington, DC. One force shot straight west, wrecking houses, barns and fences as it went. Jolie Holland covered "Louisiana 1927" on Hummingbirds & Helicopters Vol 1: A Benefit for South Texas, a benefit album released after Hurricane Harvey in 2018.[2]. "The merchants worked all day through the night trying to scaffold up their store goods. Martin Parish line on May 19; Breaux Bridge and St. Martinville in St. Martin Parish two days later; then New Iberia and Jeanerette in Iberia Parish; and Franklin and Morgan City in St. Mary Parish. WERTHEIMER: When you think about the scope and scale of the 1927 flood, I wonder why it is that it hasn't passed into the sort of legend that most schoolchildren remember, like--as they do the Chicago fire or the San Francisco earthquake. If the break happened below New Orleans, it would relieve pressure and spare the city from massive flooding. The river rose all day and the river rose all night. Newman's version starts out with piano solo, but builds into including a whole orchestra. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline. Article continues after advertisement Randy Newman, "Louisiana 1927." . Thousands of tenant farmer shacks had simply disappeared. Center for Louisiana Studies Archive; Evangeline Oak during the 1927 flood. The Evangeline Oak during the 1927 flood. . Each institution contributes the digital items and the descriptive text for their collections. People couldn't get their arms or heads around it. The Mississippi was at flood stage for months. Courtesy Mississippi Department of Archives and History, accession no. Adding to their anger, a natural breach of the levees subsequently eased pressure on the New Orleans levee; the blasting had been unnecessary. Mama woke me up and said the levee had broken.". Their intention, apparently, was to lower the level of the river and to save the city of New Orleans. All Rights Reserved. The Louisiana Digital Library is a service provider only and has no authority to grant permission to publish or supply high-resolution images. Many of the towns citizens were experienced from previous floods and had prepared their homes and businesses by pulling up carpets and placing furniture and goods on raised platforms above the water that would enter their homes. Some people got lost in flood, some people got away alright The river had busted through clear down to Plaquemine Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline Louisiana In particular, the narrator lays out the widespread nature of the destruction ("river had busted through clear down to Plaquemines") and the volume of water the flood produced ("six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline"). And the American people did not accept this. Learn how and when to remove this template message, Shelter from the Storm: A Concert for the Gulf Coast, "Jolie Holland to Release Compilation Album Benefit Post-Harvey Recovery", Lonely at the Top: The Best of Randy Newman, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Louisiana_1927&oldid=1147989520, Song recordings produced by Lenny Waronker, Articles needing additional references from September 2018, All articles needing additional references, Articles with MusicBrainz work identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 3 April 2023, at 11:30. The crevasse was so huge it allowed a volume of raging water that covered nearly one million acres with water ten feet deep in ten days. 40.0% were of French, French Canadian or Cajun ancestry and 9.1% identified as having American ancestry. There were 12,736 households, out of which 38.00% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 52.30% were married couples living together, 15.50% had a female householder with no husband present, and 28.10% were non-families. Courtesy Mississippi Department of Archives and History, accession no. That flood dumped as much as 30 feet of water on land from Illinois and Missouri down to the Gulf of Mexico. Jim Bradshaw wrote in "Great Flood of 1927" for Know Louisiana, wrote, "the Red Cross provided seed, tools, and rations to farm families facing the daunting task of surviving the winter and starting a new crop in the spring. Two-Year subscription (8 issues) : $35.00 And in fact, he managed to deliver aid without airplanes faster than aid has gotten to New Orleans in the Gulf Coast today. People couldn't get their arms or heads around it. They started to evacuate the city and they evacuated the whites, but the planners got together and decided that if they evacuated the black sharecroppers, the labor force for much of the Mississippi delta would disappear and would never return, and so they decided to keep them on the top of the levee and formed a camp for them for--stretched about 11 miles; thousands of people, many animals, and these people became almost slave labor. About 81 percent of St. Landry Parish was inundated, while about 67 percent of the land in Iberia and St. Martin parishes going under water. In 1927, New Orleans was the most vital economic city in the South by far, and it was run entirely by bankers who didn't not even bother to consult elected officials; they simply decided they were going to dynamite the levee to reassure their correspondent banks in New York, London and Boston that they would never allow the Mississippi River to threaten the city. Kathleen Blanco not to run for reelection in Baton Rouge, and in lesser degree to a change of party in the White House in Washington. Aunt Ruby lost her fruit and nut trees, purple plums, peaches and apples along with an English walnut tree which was an oddity of this particular section of the country. Overview. Snead, J., P. V. Heinrich, and R. P. McCulloh, 2002, This page was last edited on 22 February 2023, at 14:35. ebrpl . The May 6, 1927, Daily Advertiser asked Catholic church goers in St. Martinville, Parks and Breaux Bridge to volunteer that Sunday and a special Mass would be held at 4 a.m. to accommodate the volunteers, Bradshaw wrote. Sung from the perspective of a nameless resident of the area recounting the flooding of St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes during the flood, "Louisiana 1927" features lyrics that depict the devastation of the residents of those parishes in the aftermath of the flood. Permission to publish and acquire images or requests for more information about materials that you find in the LDL should be directed to the institution that contributed the item to the LDL. Another train stood ready to roll if the worst happened, hauling to safety the hardy, or foolish souls who stayed behind, even though water from Bayou des Glaises had inundated nearby Palmetto, LeBeau and Rosa," he wrote. NPR will continue to cover this story throughout the day. One of the great ironies--the great irony of all that is that Greenville, Mississippi, before the flood was easily probably the best city in the South to be a black person. Im holding to my pants.. All Rights Reserved. Thousands of cattle drowned and farm crops were wiped out as southern Louisiana turned into a lake 200 miles long and 50 to 100 miles wide. "Louisiana 1927" is a 1974 song written and recorded by Randy Newman on the album Good Old Boys. This troop was known as Troop 1 until 1924, the year Evangeline Area Council was established, and in that year it was gived the number 27. : PI/CI/G74.4, no. Mr. BARRY: He did a magnificent job in managing the logistics of feeding, delivering aid, shelter to 700,000 people, and half of whom were living in tents. The song also appeared in an episode (S03E7) of HBO's show Treme, sung again by Aaron Neville. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. Part of that was because nobody realized how much would be washed away.
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