For more on Katrina's aftermath, go to our Web site, npr.org. [2] [3] 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. 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. In Mississippi there were two levee areas of special concern. Copyright is retained in accordance with U.S. 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. African-American families were instructed by some community leaders to stay on the levee to work in flood control and, later, recovery efforts. Smaller levees had begun to break in northern and central Louisiana in mid-May, but a disastrous break in the Atchafalaya River levee came on May 17 at Melville in St. Landry Parish. 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. Raining constantly all this morning, none of us slept much. "Louisiana 1927" is on the brilliant 1974 album Good Old Boys that tells a narrative of people in the south who feel like the rest of the country is laughing at them. The Louisiana Digital Library platform has been developed by LSU Libraries on behalf of the Louisiana Digital Consortium. He joins us now from his office in Washington. And another reason, frankly, may be a certain intellectual prejudice. : PI/ 1992.0002.039, The Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad Station in Helm, Mississippi, on April 29, 1927. A 12-inch fall is reported for Cairo. Thousands of tenant farmer shacks had simply disappeared. Most of the refugees went to stay with relatives. A day too dark and stormy to go to church or even out of doors. An entire crop year was lost. Ewing, Jasper G. Flood damageLouisiana. Thus, the people struggling to live on a sliver of ground above water, became aggravated about their circumstances. The federal government did not pay a single penny for the clothing, food or shelter of any one of those 700,000 people. This decision to not let African-Americans evacuate and to work them without pay would soon bring an eruption of racial tensions. A few Acadians such as Franois Pitre and his wife settled the area between Evangeline and St. Landry parishes, preferring the rich pre-American and pre-Civil War era Cajun planter's lifestyle over that of the humble and isolated existence of their Acadiana cousins. Meet NPR hosts and reporters. A few have crops already growing, and cane and corn are making a brave attempt to put forth fruit despite the late start given them.. The Atchafalaya River forks away from the Mississippi River at Simmesport in Avoyelles Parish. The levees were not breached; river water did not rush in. The Evangeline Oak during the 1927 flood. WERTHEIMER: Were there any prominent politicians who vanished without a trace because of the way they handled the flood? Refine results. John Barry, author of Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 describes the epic disaster. The river rose all day and the river rose all night. By the next day, most of Port Barre was under about 6 feet of water and on May 20, the bridge over Bayou Fuselier at Arnaudville collapsed right after refugees from the flood had crossed it, The Advertiser reported. ", A second current traveled north, eroding a section of the railroad embankment, "allowing the water to go up into the town proper and completely inundate it," Catledge wrote. The river have busted through clear down to Plaquemines. She wrote, There was a low protection levee north of town. The floodwaters, however, would still cover the greater portion of the Delta for many more months. We were somewhat late in turning on the alarm, as we could get no one at the Levee Board with the proper authority to say where the break was., Sixteen-year-old Mildred Shepherd was studying for her Latin exam when she heard the fire alarm. Mr. BARRY: Well, it's a good question. SinceHurricane Katrina inundated New Orleans and the parishes to its south, there have been inevitable comparisons between the two disasters. (This piece initially aired on Sept. 9, 2005, on Morning Edition.) Criticism over the handling of Katrina contributed in large measure to the decision by Gov. Too dark to write, another big storm coming noon. Contact John Sharp (John.Sharp@Louisiana.Edu) for more information about use and reproduction. Some people got lost in the flood; some people got away all right. A refugee camp was established on the levee at the end of Washington Avenue in Greenville. That downpour also added more water to the Mississippi River as it rushed past New Orleans. Those who had no place to go were brought to a warehouse in New Orleans. That nobody would care if they were to disappear tomorrow. It was a strictly political power play. Jackson was the pharmacist, Edwin H. Myrick,in the 1981 report,recalled. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. In Melville, another town on the Atchafalaya River in St. Landry Parish, officials concluded it was hopeless to continue trying to shore up the levees. The flood caused more than $400 million in losses; 92,431 businesses were damaged and 162,017 homes flooded. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the parish has a total area of 680 square miles (1,800km2), of which 662 square miles (1,710km2) is land and 17 square miles (44km2) (2.5%) is water.[4]. 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. WERTHEIMER: John Barry is the author of "Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America." New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1997. "Especially when one realized that this water was coming from the Mississippi River. Some twenty thousand people were housed in Lafayette alone. 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. After Hurricane Katrina, one Randy Newman song was played often. When the waters of the Great Flood of 1927 receded, officials estimate some 26,000 square miles across seven states were flooded;700,000 people left their homes and 250-500 people lost their lives. "About daylight, 5:30 or so, we heard them shooting," he recalled in the 2002 report. They're tryin' to wash us away. How? Renee Montagne talks to Newman about Louisiana 1927. (You can unsubscribe anytime). Quiz yourself on Black history. Once again, housing had to be found for tens of thousands of refugees who had no relatives to stay with. 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. Instead, the levees held the rainwater inside the city. As the water rose on the levee, it was the levee guards duty to fill sandbags and place them on top of the levee in order to stay ahead of the water height. New Orleans-based singer/pianist Marcia Ball also covered the song at several Katrina benefit concerts. A new break appeared in the Bayou Rouge levee in Avoyelles Parish on May 14, and a levee on Bayou Courtableau between Port Barre and Washington in St. Landry Parish failed the same day. The 1927 flood demonstrated the government's levees only policy for controlling the Mississippi River was inadequate. The regions burgeoning tributaries caused the Mississippi River to overflow in eleven states from Illinois to Louisiana. 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. Newman's version starts out with piano solo, but builds into including a whole orchestra. Thousands were left homeless for weeks, even months. Smith's song "was the spark for it . He was in charge of disaster relief for the Coolidge administration. As heavy rainfall in 1926 continued into the spring of 1927, the Mississippi River began cresting in places like Cairo, Illinois, sending tons of water rushing southto Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi. Kid that I was, I yelled when I heard the fire whistle, Hotdog! In Mississippi it directly affected an estimated population of 185,495. Perhaps the only other natural disaster in the United States that comes close to the level of devastation of Hurricane Katrina was the 1927 flood of the Mississippi River. : PI/ 1992.0002.103, Flood refugees evacuated to tent city on the hills of Vicksburg, Mississippi. Lafayette served as host to around 26,000refugees in Red Cross centers established in May of 1927, Mouton reported in 1983. 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. Adding to their anger, a natural breach of the levees subsequently eased pressure on the New Orleans levee; the blasting had been unnecessary. I lived with her a few years when I was a baby, and I'd go back in the summers. This unit belongs to the 139th RSG (regional support group). WERTHEIMER: That's . Scott Simon will be back next week. 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"). MORE: 4,500 added to flood zones in Lafayette Parish. I think perhaps the most important impact the flood had we haven't discussed. Refugees had to file a claim to receive compensation under a complicated system that divided payments into various categories, provided that no partial payments could be made, and without legal representation. According to various estimates, there were between 250 and 500 flood-related deaths. 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. The 1927 flood also helped propel Herbert Hoover to the presidency a year later. Levee guards were placed in camps at strained sites along the top of the levee and ordered to maintain them from danger of crevasse, a break in the levee which would allow water to enter the area it protected. The people as a whole were confident the town would not get any water even should the levee break. Their intention, apparently, was to lower the level of the river and to save the city of New Orleans. [3] The majority of the area was originally settled by French Canadian colonists and former colonial marines (coureurs de bois) from such outposts as Fort Toulouse and Fort Kaskaskia and later included 19th-century French-speaking soldiers and immigrant families. Typhoid shots and other immunizations were given to prevent the spread of disease. 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. Each caused widespread dislocation of large numbers of people for many months. In earlier times, this would not have been the problem it was in 1927; the Mississippi River and its tributaries once overflowed into natural drainage areas. When James H. Wilkerson, who was 8 at the time, got word that the levee near Rayville broke and the water was heading his way, he and other neighborhood children went to the woods to see for themselves, he wrote in the1981 News-Star-World report. 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. Coordinates: 3044N 9225W / 30.73N 92.41W / 30.73; -92.41, United States presidential election results for Evangeline Parish, Louisiana, Last edited on 22 February 2023, at 14:35, Learn how and when to remove this template message, National Register of Historic Places listings in Evangeline Parish, Louisiana, https://web.archive.org/web/20091026030323/http://geocities.com/old_time_time/many.htm, "Census - Geography Profile: Evangeline Parish, Louisiana", "Population of Counties by Decennial Census: 1900 to 1990", "Census 2000 PHC-T-4. The parish was created out of lands formerly belonging to St. Landry Parish in 1910. Other towns in the area also were not spared. Greenvilles William Alexander Percy, son of LeRoy Percy, headed the Relief Committee in Greenville. Elsewhere, Leonce Leblanc, in a 1975 oral project recorded by Otis Hebert and on file with the UL Lafayette Center for Louisiana Studies,recalled seeing the Atchafalaya River levee break around McCreain Pointe Coupee Parish. The National Safety Council estimated deaths in the Yazoo- Mississippi Delta alone at 1,000. A boat was tied up at the Jones Pharmacy Drugstore where W.L. WERTHEIMER: Were there any prominent politicians who vanished without a trace because of the way they handled the flood? It was not until June that the floodwaters began to drain into the Gulf of Mexico. Courtesy Mississippi Department of Archives and History, accession no. Mr. BARRY: Well, Coolidge chose not to run for re-election, but that was independent of a flood decision. It rained in torrents and almost without intermission for nearly 48 hours. : PI/1992.0002.020, Intersection of Washington and Shelby streets in downtown Greenville. WERTHEIMER: Herbert Hoover was President Coolidge's secretary of Commerce in 1927, so he was the man in charge of rescue operations. Flowers and plants beaten to the earth, little half-drowned chickens in baskets in the kitchen, house leaking in many places. For weeks the river rose, it passed the highest stage ever known before, 52.3/10 feet reached in 1922 , and went up steadily, a foot a day, which, as well as the height, was unprecedented. To read a full account of the flood by Lucy Somerville, click here. My father, J.D. If the break happened below New Orleans, it would relieve pressure and spare the city from massive flooding. They're tyrin' to wash us away. They reneged on all their promises, written promises; they controlled the state Supreme Court, so the lawsuits against them went nowhere. The river have busted through clear down to Plaquemines. River appallingly high, and levees in very precarious condition. With a sea of water in the commercial and residential areas of downtown Greenville, the town resembled Venice, Italy, with its canals. And it was the other place that I knew, and I was interested in the history, and heard about this flood, and I wrote the song."[1]. Local and state agencies did what they could to shore up levees along the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers and adjoining waterways from Richland Parish south to St. Landry Parish. People couldn't get their arms or heads around it. Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline. He's also a resident of New Orleans and Washington, DC. Nature defeats man's efforts As heavy rainfall in 1926 continued into the spring of 1927, the Mississippi. 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.". NPR will continue to cover this story throughout the day. Used by permission of Dr. Ted Shepherd. 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. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1973. And the American people did not accept this. Year: 2003 2:57 69 Views Become A Better Singer In Only 30 Days, With Easy Video Lessons! 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. Unpublished. Many English Americans as colonists came from the Eastern United States to settle in the newly purchased Louisiana Territory often married into Acadian families. Hundreds of sturdy barns, cotton gins, warehouses and farmhouses had been swept away. Thanks for your interest in the Louisiana Digital Library. Each changed both the physical and political face of the region and played a role in national affairs. The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 was the most destructive river flood in the history of the United States, with 27,000 square miles (70,000 km 2) inundated in depths of up to 30 feet (9 m) over the course of several months in early 1927. A boat eventually took them to a Red Cross camp where they were assigned to a tent with army cots and blankets that was their home for at least two weeks. Lucy Somerville [Howorth] tells in her diary how citizens of Greenville, in anticipation of a crevasse prepared their town and homes for the flood. Mr. BARRY: That's correct. 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. 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. "A third current struck from the south. The water, higher and stronger than any previous flood, soon engulfed a large portion of the Mississippi Delta, covering some two million acres of land in its final reach. "Louisiana 1927" is a 1974 song written and recorded by Randy Newman on the album Good Old Boys. The federal government did not pay a single penny for the clothing, food or shelter of any one of those 700,000 people. That's one of the reasons. (See Ville Platte Gazette, Sept. 2010) In 19th-century American literature, she would gain popularity through Hollywood's interest, and thus began the embryonic 'Acadian-based' tourism which sprang up in St. Martinville. Red Cross volunteers served about 50,000 meals a day in Lafayette alone, Mouton wrote. "Tent cities sprung up overnight at the Lafayette fairgrounds, now the municipal golf," and at Holy Rosary Institute,he wrote. As of the 2010 United States Census, there were 33,984 people living in the parish. WERTHEIMER: Now the city fathers of New Orleans made a decision to take down a section of the levee 13 miles south of the city. A total of 41,673 homes were flooded; 21,836 buildings were destroyed; 62,089 buildings were damaged; and 2,836 work animals, 6,873 cattle, 31,740 hogs, and 266,786 poultry were drowned. 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]. I'm Linda Wertheimer. A special celebratory parade was held July 4, 1927. 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. The majority of the area was originally settled by French Canadian colonists and former colonial marines (coureurs de bois) from such outposts as Fort Toulouse and Fort Kaskaskia and later included 19th-century French-speaking soldiers and immigrant families. All rights reserved. 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. You know, history was largely written back in the '20s, I think, by people who looked askance at the South because of the blatant racism, and they really didn't care that much about what happened in the area that was most severely hit, which was Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi. New Orleans received 11.16 inches of rain in Februarycompared to an average of 4.4 inches for the monthand steady rainfalls thereafter. I think one is that it was so big and covered so wide an area, it was a little bit like a dog trying to bite a basketball. The parish was named Evangeline in honor of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's narrative poem, Evangeline. Mizelle, Richard M., Jr. 91.5 Chapel Hill 88.9 Manteo 90.9 Rocky Mount The president say, "little fat man isn't it a shame. The Mississippi was at flood stage for months. 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. The Flood of 1927 opened the door for the populist Huey Long to make his first successful run for the governors mansion and played a substantial role in the selection of his partys candidate for the presidency. 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. It rained real hard and it rained for a real long time. The population density was 53 people per square mile (21/km2). Everybody in a bad humor except Jane, the cook. 91.1 Welcome 91.9 Fayetteville 90.5 Buxton New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998. Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center: Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center Shreveport: Northwestern State University of Louisiana: Vermilionville Living History Museum and Folklife Park: Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center New Orleans, Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center Shreveport, Vermilionville Living History Museum & Folklife Park. In addition, a stingy fiscal policy that offered little aid to the flood victims, implemented under Republican President Calvin Coolidge, drove many African Americans from the party of Lincoln into the Democratic party, where they continue to be a considerable part of the constituency today. The water rose quickly, extinguishing the fire under the black pot and before long, there wasn't a dry spot in the yard. Both caused disruptions of life in southern Louisiana for thousands of people that arguably could be outranked only by the destruction caused during the Civil War. On April 27, 1927, 66 members of the Louisiana National Guard's Company B left Lafayette for New Roads in Pointe Coupee Parish to help strengthen levees on the Mississippi River, Locke Mouton of the Acadiana Area Red Cross wrote in theJuly 24, 1983, Daily Advertiser. The Mississippi River Flood of 1927 Album is a visual record of selected Louisiana losses from the 1927 Mississippi Basin flood. 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. Note elevated boardwalks. Louisiana 1927 Lyrics 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. The steady rainfall filled streams, bayous, creeks, and ditches in the Delta region and saturated the farmland. Yarborough, was one of those whose store was threatened." Photograph of the Evangeline Oak during the 1927 flood. "A sheet of water up to 15 feet deep in places covered such northeastern Louisiana towns as Lake Providence, Tallulah, Delhi, Winnsboro and Mer Rouge," the News-Star-World reported in the1981 retrospective. The Mississippi River remained at flood stage for a record 153 days. (You can unsubscribe anytime), Courtesy of Center for Louisiana Studies at The University of Louisiana at Lafayette, The Evangeline Oak during the 1927 flood. Additionally, the fund had to bear the expense of feeding the refugees at a cost of $20,000 a week. John Barry is the author of "Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood and How It Changed America." . I'm Linda Wertheimer. In some places, great mounds of sand covered fields and streets. Louisiana, Louisiana. Those who were less experienced immediately began fleeing the area by train and continued to do so until the tracks became unusable. Clouds rolled in from the north and it started to rain.