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. All rights reserved. The Flood Control Act of 1928 authorized the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to build levees, diversions and spillways for flood control. River appallingly high, and levees in very precarious condition. He joins us now from his office in Washington. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 98.10 males. "The fire whistle and the Standard Oil plant shrieked a warning as levee guards sped through the streets, firing pistols and rifles and shouting 'crevasse, crevasse.'". 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. All had been promised full compensation for their losses, but the lucky ones would get an average of only $274 each, and thousands of them would get nothing. 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. Now, I dont have to take that Latin Exam. And I threw my book into the air hitting the porch ceiling . loyno . B.H. . He used a boat to carry goods from the store to their house, which was on higher ground. MORE: What you should know about hurricanes, heavy rain and flood insurance. NPR will continue to cover this story throughout the day. Unidentified Additional Data Subscribe One-Year subscription (4 issues) : $20.00 Two-Year subscription (8 issues) : $35.00 Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 - Wikipedia And they didn't write about it. The levees there were under pressure from both sides, and concerned citizens began to buy boats and stockpile food. In a 2002 Daily Advertiser report by James Savage, the 89-year-old recalled her grandmother was up at 5 a.m.hanging laundry when a couple told her the levee at Melville had broken. Similar Red Cross refugee centers were operated at Opelousas, New Iberia, Franklin and Baton Rouge. 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. All Rights Reserved. The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 Laid Bare the Divide Between the North and the South. Nearly one million people were left homeless. Louisiana, Louisiana. Washtubs, work benches, household furniture, chickens and domestic animals went floating by.". This would give the flood a shortcut to the sea and drop the river level at New Orleans, at the cost of flooding further south. It tells the story of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 which left 700,000 people homeless in Louisiana and Mississippi. Could you tell us about that? 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. And in fact, he managed to deliver aid without airplanes faster than aid has gotten to New Orleans in the Gulf Coast today. 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. The Mississippi River Flood of 1927 was the nations greatest natural disaster. As heavy rains continued in the Mississippi River drainage area above Louisiana, more than 20,000 men were put to work sandbagging levees between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. 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. 25.71% reported speaking French or Cajun French at home, the highest percentage of any Louisiana parish.[13]. PHOTOS: Flood damage at Lafayette Parish schools, USA's infamous 'Tornado Alley' may be shifting east. See our upcoming events and sign up to attend. The Louisiana Digital Library platform has been developed by LSU Libraries on behalf of the Louisiana Digital Consortium. While these levees prevented flooding for a period, they proved unable to withstand the floodwaters of 1927. The Evangeline Oak during the 1927 flood - 64 Parishes Scott Simon will be back next week. The east and south were protected, or so most people believed, by a railroad embankment. Center for Louisiana Studies Archive; Evangeline Oak during the 1927 flood. About 27.20% of families and 32.20% of the population were below the poverty line, including 39.10% of those under age 18 and 31.00% of those age 65 or over. That downpour also added more water to the Mississippi River as it rushed past New Orleans. SinceHurricane Katrina inundated New Orleans and the parishes to its south, there have been inevitable comparisons between the two disasters. It was the only dry ground. Their intention, apparently, was to lower the level of the river and to save the city of New Orleans. Discuss North Carolina politics. The song is written in the style of a lament, and is performed at a slow tempo. Mr. BARRY: Well, Coolidge chose not to run for re-election, but that was independent of a flood decision. Privacy Policy, Center for Louisiana Studies at The University of Louisiana at Lafayette, The Louisiana Endowment has included this work in. 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. 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. Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline. Meet NPR hosts and reporters. 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. The boys rescued the chickens and placed them on a scaffold out of the water. Typhoid shots and other immunizations were given to prevent the spread of disease. Males had a median income of $30,386 versus $16,793 for females. In Mississippi there were two levee areas of special concern. She wrote, There was a low protection levee north of town. The average household size was 2.64 and the average family size was 3.19. Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline. Privacy Policy. 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. hnoc . Despite strenuous objections from people living downstream, Governor O. H. Simpson and his advisors acquiesced to a plea from New Orleans civic leaders to blast a breach in the levee. I have, you know, only speculative answers. Mr. BARRY: Well, it's a good question. One-Year subscription (4 issues) : $20.00 . . 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. It was from this poem that founding father Paulin Fontenot was to propose the namesake of "Evangeline" for this parish, allegedly foreseeing an emerging American tourism centered upon the Acadian saga. The two floods met just north of Port Barre in St. Landry Parish on May 18. Her grandfather, the Rev. Mr. JOHN BARRY (Author, "Rising Tide"): You're welcome. Criticism over the handling of Katrina contributed in large measure to the decision by Gov. Ninety years ago,the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers swollen from months of rainfall burst through levees, sending muddy water into businesses, homes and farmlandacross Louisiana. . "We thought it was a cattle stampede. The river rose all day. 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. 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. "A third current struck from the south. That music inspired Lauren Ashlee Messina's dance-based piece "Louisiana Flood Stories: 1927," which runs at the Contemporary Arts Center on July 8-9. The per capita income for the parish was $11,432. about 500. 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. 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. Most of downtown Monroe stayed dry as levees and a railroad embankment kept floodwaters at bay, the newspaper reported. "The last trainload of people pulled out about midnight May 16. Many people of Evangeline are primarily of French, English, and Spanish descent from Louisiana's colonial period. Nell went through pouring rain to the garden club. Join us for this ride! McCain, William D. The Triumph of Democracy 1916-1932 in A History of Mississippi, Volume Two, edited by Richard Aubrey McLemore. Louisiana, Louisiana. Courtesy Mississippi Department of Archives and History, accession no. 25.80% of all households were made up of individuals, and 11.90% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The river rose all day and the river rose all night. 70537. Mr. BARRY: That's correct. (Evangeline Parish, La.) Mr. Barry, thank you very much. The Daily Advertiser reported floodwaters were racing south due to a main levee break at Moreauville and Bordelonville in Avoyelles Parish. 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 threat continued to worsen, however, and state government officials believed the levees would inevitably break. 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. It tells the story of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 which left 700,000 people homeless in Louisiana and Mississippi. The financial leaders from New Orleans estimated that claims against a fund set up to compensate the victims would be between $2 million and $6 million. For every 100 females there were 99.40 males. It was a strictly political power play. Louisiana 1927 - The Boston Globe He, with the help of a committee of African-American leaders, got about five hundred Black men working two shifts around the clock for nine days to repair the protection levee. Some people got lost in the flood; some people got away all right. What the river has done to this poor . A refugee camp was established on the levee at the end of Washington Avenue in Greenville. Search terms . 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. In 1927 the Mississippi's floodwaters reached from Illinois and Missouri all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico. Discomfort. My mother is from there, her family is still there. The Atchafalaya River forks away from the Mississippi River at Simmesport in Avoyelles Parish. They're tryin' to wash us away. They're tyrin' to wash us away. New Orleans received 11.16 inches of rain in Februarycompared to an average of 4.4 inches for the monthand steady rainfalls thereafter. I mean, not necessarily down South but this was a huge flood across many states. Jo-El Sonnier - Louisiana 1927 Lyrics | AZLyrics.com Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014. 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. Legal Notices, Downtown Greenville, Mississippi, on April 30, 1927, six days after the levee break. . They promised reparations to the people they flooded out, and they stiffed them. A black and white reproduction of a photograph of the Evangeline Oak during the 1927 flood. John M. Barry's book describes a natural disaster that has faded a bit in the national memory. But 10 years later . Instead, they amounted to $35 million, and there wasnt enough money to go around. 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. But in the late 1800s, the Mississippi River Commission adopted a levees-only policy, which entailed the construction of levees that ran almost the full length of the river. Barry, John M. Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America. Please contact the Center for Louisiana Studies for more information. Ranking Tables for Counties: 1990 and 2000", Louisiana's Technical and Community Colleges, "Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Evangeline_Parish,_Louisiana&oldid=1140935995, Bayou Chicot Elementary School (Grades PK-8) (Ville Platte), Chataignier Elementary School (Grades PK-8) (Chataignier), James Stephens Montessori School (Grades PK-6) (Ville Platte), Mamou Elementary School (Grades PK-4) (Mamou), Vidrine Elementary School (Grades PK-8) (Ville Platte), Ville Platte Elementary School (Grades PK-4) (Ville Platte), W. W. Stewart Elementary (Grades PK-4) (Basile), Basile High School (Grades 512) (Basile), Pine Prairie High School (Grades 912) (Pine Prairie), Ville Platte High School (Grades 512) (Ville Platte), Evangeline Central School (Grades 412) (Ville Platte), Sacred Heart School (Grades K-12) (Ville Platte), Christian Heritage Academy (Grade K) (Ville Platte). It rained real hard and it rained for a real long time. Readers may wish to read a previous Mississippi History Now article on the Mississippi River: "Making the Mississippi Over Again: The Development of River Control in Mississippi," by Greg O'Brien. I mean, not necessarily down South but this was a huge flood across many states. 40.0% were of French, French Canadian or Cajun ancestry and 9.1% identified as having American ancestry. 15 The worst Good Friday I ever saw. 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. "We stretched those bags from Grayling Lane down South Grand to Oxen Dam," he recalled. 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. Members include public libraries, academic libraries, museums, and archives from arcross the state. The author and her sister, Rosalie, helped their mother dig up some of her favorite plants so they wouldn't die in the flood. He's also a resident of New Orleans and Washington, DC. Much of Lafayette remained dry. Evangeline Oak during the 1927 flood. | Louisiana Digital Library If you do that, the water will drain out--if you punch a hole in the levee. 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. The parish was created out of lands formerly belonging to St. Landry Parish in 1910. Some people got lost in the flood. 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. 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.". That their way of life is disappearing. Few had time to save personal belongings. . White people were housed on the fifth floor, Black people on the sixth. And the American people did not accept this. By the end of January, major tributaries such as the Ohio River were overflowing their banks. At the end of August 1927, an anonymous Associated Press reporter touring the Teche region was able to write, Little farmhouses, bearing brown watermarks at various heights according to the depth of the water reached, are once more occupied, and some of the farmers are plowing in preparation for new plantings. 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. The regions burgeoning tributaries caused the Mississippi River to overflow in eleven states from Illinois to Louisiana. Courtesy Mississippi Department of Archives and History, accession no. According to various estimates, there were between 250 and 500 flood-related deaths. Hundreds of sturdy barns, cotton gins, warehouses and farmhouses had been swept away. Arkansas Flood of 1937 rivaled Mississippi River flood of 1927 Whole communities, such as Bayou Chne, built upon a ridge in the Atchafalaya River basin, had to be abandoned because they were in the path of the floodwaters that might be diverted. 90 years ago, the Great Flood of 1927 changed Louisiana They combined to send an estimated 1.3 million cubic feet of water per second roaring to the south. On the fields, in the forests, in streets and yards and homes and businesses and barns, the water left a reeking muck. Each caused widespread dislocation of large numbers of people for many months. A black and white reproduction of a photograph of a boat with a barber chair in Melville, Louisiana, during the great flood of 1927. 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. "By the time we got to the levee, we were wading in water. Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline. 2.3% were Hispanic or Latino (of any race). Urged to leave, residents boarded trains for higher ground in Opelousas, Bradshaw reported. Engineers chose a westward loop in the river at Caernarvon and began blowing the levee apart on April 29. 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. ", In 2005, after Hurricane Katrina, NPR interviewed Newman about the song. 46, Flood refugees in Yazoo City, Mississippi, on May 13, 1927. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. : PI/CI/G74.4, no. 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. WERTHEIMER: Were there any prominent politicians who vanished without a trace because of the way they handled the flood? Each was caused more or less by a man-made breach of a levee. fpoc . 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. All were closed by the end of August that year, Mouton wrote. In December, heavy rains in Oklahoma, Arkansas, and northern Louisiana filled the Arkansas and Red Rivers. Meanwhile, conditions improved in Greenville once the protection levee was finished. Why don't more people know about this? Scott Simon will be back next week. That's one of the reasons. Some six hundred prefabricated cabins were sent to St. Martin Parish and more like them elsewhere to temporarily replace destroyed housing. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017. "Louisiana 1927" is a 1974 song written and recorded by Randy Newman on the album Good Old Boys. Despite the valiant effort,levees in northeast Louisiana began to fail. Here's the latest on Hurricane Katrina. 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. And another reason, frankly, may be a certain intellectual prejudice. GNIS feature ID. It filled the air with stench, and in the sun it laid baking and cracking like broken pottery, dung-colored and unvarying to the horizon.'. 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. Randy Newman - Louisiana 1927 Lyrics | Lyrics.com The parish was created in 1910. "Especially when one realized that this water was coming from the Mississippi River. They're tryin' to wash . And another reason, frankly, may be a certain intellectual prejudice. "The merchants worked all day through the night trying to scaffold up their store goods. With a little fat man with a note-pad in his hand. 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. 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. Many English Americans as colonists came from the Eastern United States to settle in the newly purchased Louisiana Territory often married into Acadian families. 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. Rosalie Yarborough recalled how they kept a boat tied up at the front steps of the house, "and every afternoon, my mother would get in the boat with her milking pail and paddle out to the edge of a hill where our cow was staked. Physical rights are retained by the Center for Louisiana Studies. 69.0% were White, 28.3% Black or African American, 0.3% Asian, 0.3% Native American, 1.0% of some other race and 1.1% of two or more races. 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. 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. Greenvilles William Alexander Percy, son of LeRoy Percy, headed the Relief Committee in Greenville. Jackson was the pharmacist, Edwin H. Myrick,in the 1981 report,recalled. 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".
Housing And Sanitation Reforms Progressive Era,
Houses For Rent In Kilgore, Tx On Craigslist,
Hive Truncate Table Partition,
Articles E
