The Flood of 1927 affected seven states on the lower Mississippi, but the river’s waters spread their widest—sometimes over fifty miles wide—in Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana. In all, the levee system suffered major failures in forty-two locations in the three states lowest on the river, giving way to a volume of water that levee engineers never considered in their planning and testing. The Mounds Landing crevasse flooded 2.3 million acres of western Mississippi, forcing 170,000 people to seek refuge. In Arkansas, 5.1 million acres flooded—the combined result of the overrun Arkansas River, two crevasses on the Mississippi River levees, and eight levee breaks on interior rivers. In Louisiana, the levee at Cabin Teele gave way where water from the Mounds Landing crevasse was forced back into the main channel cross-bank near Vicksburg, Mississippi. The Cabin Teele crevasse sent 6.2 million acres of eastern Louisiana under water, forcing 270,000 people out of their homes. Fleeing refugees, knowing their homes would be destroyed, grabbed what few belongings they could and were sent to Red Cross camps. Farm families often saved their Victrolas and favorite records, but many never had the luxury of saving personal belongings. Officials estimated the total number of people killed between 250 and 500 (remarkably low given the scale of the disaster), although it is likely that many more died of exposure, starvation, and disease as the floodwaters receded over the coming months.17
Black musicians wasted no time in grappling with, responding to, and documenting the flooding.18 In the late spring or early summer, Blind Lemon Jefferson recorded one of the early responses to the Mississippi flood, the aptly named “Rising High Water Blues.” Centered around Memphis, Jefferson’s musical story captures the struggle between human life and the uncaring physical force of the waters. Likely because of his blindness, Jefferson’s description of the scene emphasizes sounds and voices:
Water all in Arkansas, people screamin’ in Tennessee,
Aaah, people screamin’ in Tennessee,
If I don’t leave Memphis, backwater been all over poor me.
People says it’s rainin’, it has been for nights and days,
People say it’s rainin’, has been for nights and days,
Crowds of peoples stand on the hill, lookin’ down where they used to stay.
Jefferson’s voice adds life—and death—to the lyrics, but the tragic weight of the heart-wrenching last verse cannot be fully communicated in written transcription:
Children standin’ screamin’, “Mama, we ain’t got no home,”
Aaah, “Mama, we ain’t got no home,”
Papa says to the children, “Backwater has left us all alone.”19
Jefferson hailed from Texas, but he hit on many important themes to make his song of the flood seem personal; he tied specific locations to common blues tropes such as material losses (“where they used to stay”) and loneliness (“left us all alone”). These same chords were struck by Barbecue Bob Hicks, an Atlanta-based bluesman who made his blues feel personal by capturing the immediacy of the losses suffered in the flood. Again, material loss was paired with a tragic abandonment.
Lord, Lord, Lord, I’m so blue, my house got washed away,
And I’m crying, “How long for another pay day?”
That’s why I’m crying Mississippi heavy water blues.
I’m sitting here looking at all of this mud,
And my girl got washed away in that Mississippi flood,
That’s why I’m crying Mississippi heavy water blues.20
These desperate emotions were both propagated and preserved in part because the flood coincided with the pre-Depression heyday of race record production, and many blues songs that might otherwise have been temporary fads became industry standards. Two years after Jefferson’s and Hick’s recordings, blues pianist Kansas Joe and Memphis Minnie collaborated on “When the Levee Breaks,” destined to become the most popular song remembering the flood. Kansas Joe, no less than Jefferson, captured the sense of powerlessness among people living near the river.
If it keeps on rainin, levee’s goin’ to break,
If it keeps on rainin, levee’s goin’ to break,
And the water gonna come and have no place to stay.
The mood devolves from foreboding to despair:
Well all last night, I sat on the levee and moaned,
Well all last night, I sat on the levee and moaned,
Thinkin’ ‘bout my baby, an’ my happy home.
Later verses point to fruitless effort; despite working on the levee “both night and day,” the singer “ain’t got nobody to keep the water away.” Mother nature trumps all human and supernatural efforts: “Oh, crying won’t help you, praying won’t do no good.” In short, “when the levee breaks, mama, you got to move.”21
As the 1920s became the 1930s, blues lyricists continued to recall the flood in epic terms, as a larger-than-life force of nature, and flood motifs lived long in blues lyrics.22 Recorded in 1936, Carl Martin’s “High Water Flood Blues” reveals less of his native Piedmont blues style and more of the new, jazzy rhythms he was picking up in Chicago. A soulful saxophone accompaniment enters the song a few times, dampening the already gloomy mood of Martin’s lyrics. The same themes—desperation and helplessness—that define Jefferson’s and Memphis Minnie’s songs take central stage in Martin’s piece:
Well it rained, it rained, and the rivers began to rise,
Banks began to overflow, thousands lost their lives.
But the water kept on flowin, flowin’ on and on,
As thousands of people have done lost their happy home.
Well the whistles began blowin’, and the bells began to ring,
People runnin’ and screamin’, but they couldn’t do a thing.
Cause the water kept on flowin’, flowin’ on and on,
As thousands of people have done lost their happy home.
The full epic quality of the flood is realized in the final verse.
Well, high water’s here, high water’s everywhere,
High water’s here, high water’s everywhere.
I believe if you go to China, you’d find high water there.23
In Martin’s recording, time has done little to heal the wounds left by the death and destruction, but the devilish Wheatstraw took a lighter view. Beginning with his first recordings, such as “Tennessee Peaches Blues” (1930), Wheatstraw consistently incorporated romantic and sexual themes in his music. In 1937, he was at it again, using the memory of the 1927 flooding on the Mississippi’s tributary, the Red River, as a backdrop for his mischievous desires in “Give Me Black or Brown.”
Red River risin’, women all on high land,
Red River risin’, women all on high land,
I’m lookin’ for that woman, ooh well well, that ain’t got no man.
Many a songster recognized the healing power of laughter—”you gotta laugh to keep from cryin’.” “Give Me Black or Brown” demonstrates once again that difficult subjects could be wrought into humorous irony in the hands of blues musicians.24
Most of the songs recorded in the immediate wake of the Flood of 1927 convey less humor, however, and more tragedy. Charley Patton’s “High Water Everywhere” (1929) was dark and foreboding; unlike Jefferson and Barbecue Bob, Patton came from the devastated area. As an itinerant musician traveling the plantations of the Mississippi Delta, Patton had firsthand knowledge of the sharecropping communities that dotted the Mississippi and Yazoo floodplains. The flood displaced over 200,000 people in the Delta, two-thirds of whom were black field laborers and their families.25 In his six-minute, two-part ode to the flood, Patton drew on his knowledge of the Delta as he described the deluge’s effect on his homeland’s residents.
The backwater done rose ‘round Sumner now, drove me down the line,
Backwater done rose ‘round Sumner, drove po’ Charley down the line,
Lord, I tell the world the water done jumped through this town.
He is awestruck at the water “jumping” through towns, coming
at great speed. Buttressing the powerfully vocalized yet raspy lyrics, Patton smartly strums the guitar strings and slaps the instrument’s body to drive home the energy of the water’s movement.
Lord, the whole round country, Lord, creek water has overflowed,
Lord, the whole round country, man it’s overflowed,
I would go to the hill country, but they got me barred.
Now looka here now at Leland, river was risin’ high,
Looka here boys ‘round Leland tell me river is risin’ high,
I’m goin’ move over to Greenville, ‘fore I say “goodbye.”
Patton’s consternation rises from frustration to exasperation, becoming nearly frantic.
Looka here the water now, Lordy, levee broke, rose most everywhere,
That water at Greenville and Lula, Lord, it done rose everywhere,
I would go down to Rosedale, but they tell me there’s water there.
Later verses are simply tragic as Patton describes the indiscriminate horror of the destruction, yet still makes note of details such as the surveillance aircraft:
Ooh water was risin’, families sinkin’ down,
Say the water was risin’, airplanes was all around,
It was fifty men and children, floods was sinkin’ down.
Ooh Lord, women and grown men drown,
Ooh aah, women and children sinkin’ down,
I couldn’t see nobody’s home, and wasn’t no one to be found.26
Patton’s song in many ways represents his need to express amazement and grief at the awesome power of the flood and the water’s potential to destroy human life and property. In this respect, “High Water Everywhere” resembles the other songs that documented the flood’s effect, but a close reading of Patton’s lyrics offers the potential for further analysis.
In Patton’s second stanza, the narrator says he would flee the flood by going to the “hill country,” but “they got me barred.” It is not the rising water that restricts his movement, but “they”—some human adversary. Patton may well have been referring to the tightly controlled refugee camps set up by the Red Cross, local white leaders, and federal officials; more than 300,000 refugees— most of them black field hands and their families—were held in over 150 camps throughout the Lower Mississippi Valley.27 In what seems to be a minor point in “High Water Everywhere,” Patton recorded for his listeners the understanding that the flood was not the only obstacle blacks faced during the crisis.
Patton’s narration indicates that he made for the Delta town of Greenville. Near Greenville, local leaders and federal relief officials had set up a Red Cross camp. Since evacuees were not allowed to leave freely and many had to perform labor, critics of the relief effort condemned such camps as “peonage pens.”28 William “Will” Alexander Percy, “man of letters” and son of powerful Delta planter and former senator Leroy Percy, was given charge of the relief effort at Greenville. The Percys maintained the paternalist-planter approach to race relations in the Delta, and Will assumed from the beginning that he and other elite whites were obligated to take care of their black laborers. “Of course, none of us was influenced by what the Negroes themselves wanted: they had no capacity to plan for their own welfare; planning for them was another of our burdens.”29 Percy proved sincere in planning for the tenant farmers’ welfare by recommending that the African Americans endangered by the flood be evacuated to higher ground. This evacuation did not happen, and Patton and other blacks in the sharecropping communities found their way “barred.”
Senator Percy, a man once investigated by the Justice Department for imposing peonage on his tenant farmers, joined with his planter peers to overrule his son’s decision to evacuate the laborers.30 The elder Percy and his colleagues encountered little resistance and garnered much aid from state and federal officials. The National Guard was called in under the command of General Curtis Green and given the imperative of keeping the black laborers in the camps and keeping northern labor agents out. Later, in an interview, Green revealed the landowners’ motive behind maintaining the camps. After the flood, a planter could come to the camp and claim “his niggers,” with “no man being allowed . . . any other but his own niggers.” Many refugees accused the national guardsmen of physical assault and rape; Will Percy confirmed that the guards “were guilty of acts which profoundly and justly made the Negroes fear them.” Blacks rightly considered themselves imprisoned; those caught escaping were beaten, and several were shot.31 While African Americans in the Delta were herded into camps and denied adequate food, medical treatment, and shelter, relief administrators siphoned off funds and supplies to white flood victims, who suffered few physical restrictions and were cared for in their homes whenever possible. Black refugees under Percy’s care were forced by the Greenville police to perform “volunteer” labor. Of the 33,000 relief workers under Secretary Hoover’s command, only 1,400 were paid. In Greenville, a resident was shot on his front porch by a white officer trying to force him to work without pay.32
The plight of African American refugees during the Flood of 1927 did not go unnoticed. Over the summer, reports began to surface in northern black newspapers, such as the Chicago Defender, regarding the alleged abuses suffered by black sharecroppers at the hands of the guardsmen and police. For his part, Hoover tried to deflect the discussion of racial discrimination, but he realized it was not a make-or-break issue in the upcoming 1928 presidential race. According to the Republican “southern strategy” in the 1920s, there was little benefit to courting black southern supporters who had been Jim Crowed out of the electorate at the risk of losing southern white supporters who actually turned out on election day. In his public statements, Hoover reminded critics that perhaps 400,000 people had been saved by the relief effort and that statistics demonstrated that affected farm families were better off as a result of the relief campaign. Furthermore, he formed a Colored Advisory Commission to quell the dissent coming from the black press. The commission’s chairman, Robert Moton, recommended that Hoover look back to Reconstruction’s promise of “forty acres and a mule” and replace sharecropping by implementing some form of land redistribution program once the waters receded. Moton reported to Hoover: “We were interested in a song that these people sang in the levee camps—that the flood had washed away the old account.” Hoover declined the opportunity to pursue land redistribution, as had the Reconstruction Republican Congress nearly six decades before. Conversely, when the flood waters dried up, and the Red Cross delivered post-flood aid to the Delta (seed, feed, tools, clothes), relief administrators—in a prelude to the New Deal’s Agricultural Adjustment Act—distributed the benefits directly to landowners, not the tenant farmers who worked the land. Some planters passed the goods on to their workers at no cost; others sold the supplies at plantation stores, often on credit only; others withheld them altogether. Although the efforts under Hoover’s leadership had saved hundreds of black farmers’ lives, the discrimination that shaped those efforts ensured that the name “Hoover” became a sore spot in southern African American popular memory, even before the unprecedented economic collapse that took place on his watch in the White House.33
A Hard Time Killin’ Floor: The Great Depression
The black farmers of the Lower Mississippi Valley relearned in 1927 what they had been taught a decade before in 1917 and 1918: federal action in the South would be executed according to Jim Crow custom. During the 1910s and 1920s, southern Democrats wielded sufficient power in Congress to protect their interests in Washington. Complementary to the southern Democrat voting bloc was that most nonsouthern policy makers in the federal government—and most white citizens in the general public—were not interested in racial reform.34
In hoping to reestablish support for the Republican Party in the South, Hoover shrugged off the mantle of Abraham Lincoln as he won the party’s nomination for the presidency in 1928. He was a problematic candidate for many African Americans, however. Hoover’s management of the Flood of 1927
was a still-open wound across the black communities in the Lower Mississippi Valley. Furthermore, the party of Lincoln had become the party of Prohibition. Temperance initiatives appeased many dedicated Christians—white and black—but prohibition laws created a threat to urban blacks in the North as well as black field laborers in the South. Under the new antiliquor laws, local white authorities could even more easily bust traditional jook joints and regular house parties. Most irksome to African Americans was the Republican Party’s racial conservatism, which had been developing since the end of Reconstruction. Hoover’s desire to rekindle the support for the Republican Party in the white South required his silence on racial reform, leaving open the door for Democrats who would soon attempt to attract northern black voters.35 Still, Hoover’s administration had little to “live up to” in black southerners’ minds, so little had previous Republican presidents done for them. In 1928, it seemed that business went on as usual for the South’s blacks. Of course, life in America ceased to be “business as usual” on October 29, 1929. Not even a year into his presidency, Hoover watched as the nation’s economy crumbled. His approval among the people would soon follow.
Following the initial economic collapse in 1929—what sharecroppers aptly named the “panic crash”—the financial health of Americans declined for the remainder of Hoover’s term. By 1933, agricultural prices had dropped by fifty percent, as had industrial production. Twelve million able and willing workers were without jobs.36 Areas trying to recover from the 1927 flooding were immediately beset with new problems. The backbone of the Lower Mississippi Valley’s economy, the cotton crop, suffered mightily after the stock market crash. Cotton prices dropped from eighteen cents per pound in 1929 to only six cents in 1933; gross cotton farm income dropped over two-thirds, from $14.7 million in 1928-29 to $4.6 million in 1932-33.37 Living on credit and rarely able to accumulate much capital, the plantation districts’ black farmers were among the hardest hit by the Depression. Two-thirds of the black cotton farmers in the South failed to clear a profit in the early 1930s, either breaking even or falling further into debt. Rural blacks continued to move to the cities, even without the lure of jobs, further exacerbating the plight of urban African Americans who had already been “first fired.” In short, the Great Depression “magnified all [blacks’] traditional economic liabilities” while creating “newer and harsher ones.”38
Jim Crow's Counterculture Page 20
