In the winter and spring of 1927, record-setting rain fell across the central United States. The Mississippi River swelled to capacity, and by April, the water breached major levees. It was the start of the most catastrophic river flood in American history. When the flood threatened the town of Greenville in the Mississippi Delta, white plantation owners pulled tens of thousands of Black workers from the cotton fields and sent them to the river...
Early in the morning on April 22nd, 1927, flood waters from a break in the Mound Landing levee entered the town of Greenville, Mississippi. Within hours, the town was submerged in 10 feet of water. Thousands of residents fought to reach higher ground, desperately clinging to tree tops and floating houses. The flood inundated 27,000 square miles in seven states. Soon, President Calvin Coolidge appointed Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover to manage relief efforts for the Red Cross...
Herbert Hoover’s management of the flood relief garnered widespread praise and put him in position to secure the Republican nomination for President. But the African-American press told a different story, one of rampant racial abuse in Red Cross camps throughout the flood zone. In Greenville, Mississippi, the exploitation of Black workers was especially persistent. In the summer, tensions rose to new heights, and soon, a fatal shooting would tear the battered town apart...
In 1927, a slow-moving catastrophe like the Great Mississippi Flood was perfect material for a relatively new medium: radio. Over the airwaves, the flood became the first natural disaster that Americans could follow almost in real time, day by day, as the rising river waters swept away one town after another...