A History Lesson
History repeats.
Rising Tide tells the story of the greatest flood in American history. In June of 1927, after months of record-breaking rain across the entire country, thirty feet of water covered an area of the South "roughly equal to Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Vermont combined," Barry writes. There are no official figures for the death and destruction wreaked along the upper Mississippi valley and its tributaries, and there are great disparities among the reports from farther south. But as many as 1,000 people were killed, and one million - a little less than 8 percent of the country's total population at the time - were left homeless. Dollar estimates of the total damage ranged from $246 million to $1 billion - between $2 billion and $8.4 billion in today's dollars.
The flood was not an equal-opportunity catastrophe. Barry reminds us that in the United States, economic disaster almost always makes distinctions based on race. In Greenville, Mississippi, blacks and whites worked side by side to shore up sagging levees during the early stages of the flood. But as the waters rose higher, so did racial tensions. When food grew scarce, the local chapter of the Red Cross, under the direction of William Percy - son of former U.S. Senator Leroy Percy and a member of one of the South's most powerful family dynasties - initiated dicriminatory policies for the distribution of relief to flood victims. Percy also instructed the National Guard to begin rounding up black sharecroppers from the Mississippi Delta at gunpoint to rebuild the levees around Greenville as subsequent flood crests bore down on the city. Though the blacks' crops were under thirty feet of water, their livestock was gone, their homes were washed away, and many of their wives and children were drowned, Percy and his fellow landowners wanted to protect what little property they had left and ensure that when the waters receded, there would be a labor force to till the Delta's rich soil. Refugee camps became concentration camps; blacks were forbidden to leave.
Farther south, things were not much better. New Orleans, Barry writes, "perhaps more than any other city in America, was run by a cabal of insiders." Its leader, James Pierce Butler, was president of the Canal Bank and wielded more political and economic power than anyone else in the city. The flood threatened everything Butler and his rich white friends owned, but they hatched a scheme to ensure the security of their assets. They would dynamite a levee on the opposite side of the river, and the Mississippi would gush millions of gallons of water over Plaquemine and St. Bernard parishes (where bootlegging and gambling were the main industries). The affluent sections of New Orleans would remain unscathed.
Barry is at his best describing the backroom deals that led to the decision to flood the homes of 10,000 people in Plaquemine and St. Bernard. There was virtually no public debate on the matter, and since every newspaper in New Orleans was controlled by a member of the city's elite, the only details on record are from the deliberately misleading information circulated by Butler. In New Orleans on April 15, 1927, Barry writes, "those who did belong to the inner sanctum gathered at the Hibernia Bank. Smoke filled the room. The windows were opaque with condensation, isolating them from the world outside." The scene is palpable; Barry's words nudge us into place beside Butler and his cigar-smoking cronies.
Rising Tide tells the story of the greatest flood in American history. In June of 1927, after months of record-breaking rain across the entire country, thirty feet of water covered an area of the South "roughly equal to Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Vermont combined," Barry writes. There are no official figures for the death and destruction wreaked along the upper Mississippi valley and its tributaries, and there are great disparities among the reports from farther south. But as many as 1,000 people were killed, and one million - a little less than 8 percent of the country's total population at the time - were left homeless. Dollar estimates of the total damage ranged from $246 million to $1 billion - between $2 billion and $8.4 billion in today's dollars.
The flood was not an equal-opportunity catastrophe. Barry reminds us that in the United States, economic disaster almost always makes distinctions based on race. In Greenville, Mississippi, blacks and whites worked side by side to shore up sagging levees during the early stages of the flood. But as the waters rose higher, so did racial tensions. When food grew scarce, the local chapter of the Red Cross, under the direction of William Percy - son of former U.S. Senator Leroy Percy and a member of one of the South's most powerful family dynasties - initiated dicriminatory policies for the distribution of relief to flood victims. Percy also instructed the National Guard to begin rounding up black sharecroppers from the Mississippi Delta at gunpoint to rebuild the levees around Greenville as subsequent flood crests bore down on the city. Though the blacks' crops were under thirty feet of water, their livestock was gone, their homes were washed away, and many of their wives and children were drowned, Percy and his fellow landowners wanted to protect what little property they had left and ensure that when the waters receded, there would be a labor force to till the Delta's rich soil. Refugee camps became concentration camps; blacks were forbidden to leave.
Farther south, things were not much better. New Orleans, Barry writes, "perhaps more than any other city in America, was run by a cabal of insiders." Its leader, James Pierce Butler, was president of the Canal Bank and wielded more political and economic power than anyone else in the city. The flood threatened everything Butler and his rich white friends owned, but they hatched a scheme to ensure the security of their assets. They would dynamite a levee on the opposite side of the river, and the Mississippi would gush millions of gallons of water over Plaquemine and St. Bernard parishes (where bootlegging and gambling were the main industries). The affluent sections of New Orleans would remain unscathed.
Barry is at his best describing the backroom deals that led to the decision to flood the homes of 10,000 people in Plaquemine and St. Bernard. There was virtually no public debate on the matter, and since every newspaper in New Orleans was controlled by a member of the city's elite, the only details on record are from the deliberately misleading information circulated by Butler. In New Orleans on April 15, 1927, Barry writes, "those who did belong to the inner sanctum gathered at the Hibernia Bank. Smoke filled the room. The windows were opaque with condensation, isolating them from the world outside." The scene is palpable; Barry's words nudge us into place beside Butler and his cigar-smoking cronies.
posted by Chris Oliver at 9:44 PM
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