Blues and the Mississippi Flood of 1927 Part 6 The Nation Takes Note

In this episode following the levee collapse at Mounds Landing and the flooding of Greenville Mississippi the nation finally takes notice of the ongoing disaster in their midst. Meanwhile I also look at the life of blues musician Big Bill Broonzy and his song about the 1927 flood Southern Flood blues.


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Ad free version available through Patreon subscription. Available on Spotify and through podcast aps that use RSS feeds. For more information:
https://www.patreon.com/distortedhistory




Please Rate and Review the podcast
To contact me:
Email: [e-mail]
Twitter @DistortedHistor https://twitter.com/DistortedHistor
Bluesky @distortedhistory.bsky.social
If you would like to support the podcast: ko-fi.com/distortedhistory

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
My name is Eric Gaskell, and you're listening to the
Distorted History podcast and program. I didn't give you many names,
and joy a blunder. Hey, look, I'm Rasling, I'm doctor Terra.

(00:27):
A long struggle for freedom, it thenly is a revolution.
Last time we saw the most significant of the federal
levee failures that took place during the nineteen twenty seven
Mississippi flood and the disaster that wrought in the surrounding
countryside and on the quote unquote queen city of the Delta, Greenville, Mississippi.

(00:51):
The scope of that singular crevass as he floodwaters finally
tore through the earthen levee, as we will see today,
was at long last enough to capture the nache's attention
before getting into those relief efforts. So first we're going
to look at another of the blues songs that were
written about this disaster, Big Bolm Brunsey's Southern Flood Blues,
because I'm trying to cover at least one song per

(01:12):
episode now because none really understandably talk about this phase
of federal response. That being said, before we talk about
the song and the life and times of Big Belt Brounsey. First,
like always, I want to acknowledge my sources for this series,
which include Richard M. Mazzel Junior's Backwitter Bluesy Mississippi Flood
of nineteen twenty seven in the African American Imagination, John M.

(01:34):
Berry's Rising Tied the Great Mississippi Flood of nineteen twenty
seven and How It Changed America, and Susan Scott Perishes
the Flood Year nineteen twenty seven a cultural history. And
like always, a full list of these and any other
sources like websites that I used, will be available on
this podcast Bluesky and kofee pages. Plus for anyone who

(01:54):
doesn't want to be bothered skipping through commercials, there is
always an ad free feed available to subscribers at patriot
dot com slash Distorted History. And with all that being said,
let's begin. When researching the life of Big Bill Brunsey,
I referenced Big Bill Blues a book that was assembled
from stories told and put down by Big Bill himself,
as he attempted to tell not only his own story,

(02:16):
but the story of the Blues. As such, not all
the stories are necessarily his own, as it seems he
might have used tales about events that happened to other
people and simply adapted them for his own purposes. Indeed,
later biographer Bob Riiseman would argue that, based upon his
own research, many a Big Bill's stories about his own
life were not strictly true, as according to Riseman quote,

(02:38):
he treated his life story as a set of food
possibilities as opposed to fixed events, and his imaginative powers
were formidable, as does Turkle said, Bill is telling the truth,
his own truth, as far as we can tell. Then,
the man it would go one to be known as
Big Bill Brunsey was born Lee Conley Bradley. Now, no
one truly knows where they name Bill Brunsey came from.

(02:59):
All although the Big Moniker was far less of a mystery,
considering that Bill would grow out to be a quite tall,
bronze shouldered, dark skinned man. Regardless, Bill was likely brought
into this world on the twenty sixth of June eighteen
ninety eight. Now, Bill himself would claim a different year, However,
his twin sister had documents attesting to this being the
actual year of their birth. Similarly, Bill would claim to

(03:21):
have been born in Mississippi, before being partially raised in Arkansas. However,
according to Bob Riiseman, bill was both born and raised
in Jefferson County, Arkansas, some sixty miles southeast of Little Rock.
According to Bell's parents had first met when they were
both slaves. As the story goes, it all started one
day when Bill's future father noticed Bill's future mother getting

(03:43):
whimped for not picking enough cotton. After seeing this, Bill's
father then made a point of picking the cotton necessary
to fill his quota extra fast so that he could
then have enough time to crawl through the grass, avoiding
the overseers gaze so he could help the woman and
see him getting whipped to pick enough cutt so it
wouldn't happen again. This act of kindness then forged a
bond so that when they were eventually freed, the pair

(04:05):
decided to get married and live together in Baton Rouge, Louisiana,
with Bill's mother noting that quote, anytime a man takes
a chance on his life to help me, he's good
enough for me to marry and have a Babyfore the
thing is. Though, this is a tale which Riseman very
much disputes, as he asserts that neither of Bill's parents
had been enslaved. Yet regardless of how they truly came together,

(04:27):
Bill's parents would end up having more than one child together. Indeed,
according to Bill, his mother had twenty one children in all,
sixteen of whom survived, among whom were two sets of twins,
with one set consisting of two girls and the other
consisting of a girl and a boy, with the boy
being none other than Bill himself, who was apparently born
thirty minutes before his sister. Meanwhile, Bill's father, who would

(04:50):
die in nineteen thirty, also apparently had another six children
with another woman. But Bill's momb clearly hadn't known about
the situation, because, according to Bill, quote, my mother just
found that out after he died. If she had known
about that, he might have died earlier. Now. Bill's mother
was apparently a very religious woman, and as such she
did not necessarily approve of her son's chosen way of life. Indeed,

(05:13):
to cornd to Bill, whenever he visited her he made
a point of leaving his guitar outside, as she did
not approve of the sinful instrument. That being said, she
still supported him, which included going to see Bill perform
when he was booked in Little Rock in nineteen forty.
She also couldn't have been that against him making music,
as he had been doing so since he was a child.
Indeeda's first instrument was a homemade fiddle that he had

(05:33):
constructed out of a cigar box. Young not yet, Bill
then gotta start as a country musician, playing his homemade
fiddle and singing as he provided music for dances and
quote unquote two way picnics, which were segregated events that
had these same entertainers. Indeeda cornd to Bill. During one
of these events, an old white man came up to
him and his friend, who was playing a homemade guitar

(05:54):
that Bell constructed in a similar manner, to tell them
they were too good to be playing such homemade instruments,
and though he was going to buy them some real ones.
As it turned out, though neither boy actually knew how
to play the real things, and thus couldn't make use
of them that night, a result which one racist in
the crowd insisted was proved that African Americans couldn't play
real instruments. The old white gentleman, however, insisted that Bill

(06:16):
and his friend keep them so they could learn how
to use them, and then took months, but eventually the
two boys did learn how to play their instruments over time. Then,
according to Bill himself, they became to the finest black
musicians in the area. Even as he was splitting a
spare time between making music and working as a preacher,
Bill though, would come to the conclusion that he could
not do both. This was partially because he wasn't comfortable

(06:38):
telling people what the right thing to do was when
he himself didn't really know. But things, according to Bill,
at least really came to a head when a white
man gave him fifty bucks to play a four day picnic. Now,
taking this gig would mean abandoning his responsibilities as a preacher,
but it was more money than he could make through
other means, and so he took the job and dedicated
his focus to playing the fiddle. This, though, did not

(07:01):
mean his full time occupation was that as a musician,
as his main means of supporting himself was the same
as many other African Americans in the South, sharecropping. Indeed
accorn to Bill, so take it with a grain of salt.
He had by nineteen fifteen become the best plowhand on
the plantation, although while playing the blues at parties on
the side. It was that these parties at Bill said

(07:21):
he learned to become a better guitar player. As you see,
he and his fellow performers only willly knew how to
sing a couple of songs, but they knew if they
could get people dancing, they would stop caring about the
singing and only care about the music. So Bill, along
with his fellow performers, figured out how to play music
that would keep the people dancing all throughout the night. Indeed,
Accorn to Bill quote, I got so I could play

(07:43):
four or five different styles without singing again. Though this
was just a side gig. As Bill and his family
relied upon share crop and could survive. However, a bad
harvest in nineteen sixteen due to a drought would send
him looking for other work. The trouble started when they
had to borrow five hundred dollars against the crop that
year to support themselves and their farm, something fairly typical

(08:04):
for those African Americans kept permanently in a cycle of
debt by the owners and lands they were working this year,
though it did not range from the start of May
to the end of August, which meant death not only
for their crops, but also a number of their chickens, hogs, cows,
and mules. Needing the payoff the five hundred dollars loan,
Bill and his brothers then found work in the coal
mines for a dollar a day, money that would then

(08:24):
be immediately claimed by the men who had loaned the
family five hundred dollars. Yet, for as much as his
life had been turned upside down by the events of
nineteen sixteen, that wouldn't be nothing compared to what happened
the following year, as Bill would be a part of
the American expeditionary force that took part in the fighting
in Europe after the country entered the First World War,
an experience which understandably changed Bill and unlikely wasn't just

(08:46):
a combat either, as like many other African Americans who
went to Europe to take part in that conflict, Bill
was likely exposed to a wider world beyond just a
little farms and communities that he had grown up in.
As you see, as a part of being shown the
wider world, they were importantly shown that the way things
were in the American South were not just the way
things were everywhere, and thus not the way things had

(09:09):
to be. As a result from these experiences, Bill was
reportedly a different man when he came back. It was
said he grew restless and resentful upon returning to the farm,
and so he ended up traveling north to Chicago, where
he found the job of the Pullman Company. While on
the side, Bill found opportunities to continue making music as
he started performing at rent parties. These were, as the

(09:30):
name implies, ways for poor African Americans to pay the rent,
as he would throw parties featuring food and music where
people would pay a fee to get in with their
money ultimately going to pay the rent. Sometimes the entrance
fee also included access to food, while other times guests
had to pay an additional amount. For example, Bill would
describe parties where fried chicken, pigs feed and Chitlin's cost

(09:51):
seventy five cents of plate. These were good gigs for
Bill because they happened pretty much every weekend, and because
he could get in and get fed without having to pay,
as he he was helping to provide the entertainment. This
was seemingly a standard arrangement for musicians in the community,
as he would provide the entertainment for free provided they
got to enjoy the party and got fed without having
to pay. Indeed, a Who's Who bluesman played such rent parties,

(10:15):
as according to Bill, this was how he meant the
likes of Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Blake, Lonnie Johnson, Shorty George,
Jim Jackson and Barbecue Bob All, men who had already
recorded blue songs and who suggested he'd give it a
try too, which Bill did. As from the late twenties
through the thirties, Big Bill Brudsey would record over two
hundred songs. However, he wasn't exactly widely known or recognized

(10:38):
until John Hammond brought the singer and guitars in New
York for his nineteen thirty nine from Spirituals to Swing
concert in Carnegie Hall as a replacement for Robert Johnson,
who had just recently died. Big Belden would be so
impressive in this performance that he would be invited back
the following year. That being said, despite the two hundred
songs he recorded and the recognitioning God for performing in

(10:59):
Carnegie Hall, according to Bill himself quote, none of us
would ever make enough money just playing music. I had
to have my day job and play music at night. Indeed,
it wouldn't be until nineteen fifty four that he could
rely upon his music alone to make a living. Even
prior to that time, though, Big Bill would prove to
be massively influential on other blues artists. Bill you Cy

(11:21):
had originally been a country blues artist, but after moving
to Chicago, he would prove to be influential in the
transition to and the development of the urban blues style
with its bands and electric guitars. Along the way, while
developing the shift away from a singular guitarist and singer
to a more group based style, Bill would come to
the conclusion quote, I would rather hire a musician that

(11:42):
use marijuana than one that drinks whiskey, A lesson he
learned from experiences quote I found out in all five
bands I've been the leader of, then a t smoker
is not nosy and don't forget his music, and isn't
hard to get along with, and he always wants to
try to learn something new and improve old songs. While
in contrast to them, musician who smokes and avoids alcohol
quote A musician who drinks whiskey, he either talks too much,

(12:05):
won't listen to his leader and the way he placed
a knighthill play in a different key tomorrow night, or
start an argument and won't play at all. Meanwhile, in
addition to helping pioneer and deveolove this small group in
electric guitar bassed style, Big Bill also helped out Muddy Woods,
one of the most important urban blues guitarists. As you see,
when Muddy first moved up to Chicago looking to break

(12:25):
into the music business, Bill allowed the younger bluesman to
open for his performances in Chicago's South Side clubs, thereby
exposing the young out of town artist to a receptive audience. Eventually, though,
Bill would revert back to his old classic country blues
ways as he went on to play an influential role
in the folk revival movement, seemingly making this transition back

(12:46):
to the older style at least in part due to
the younger generation of blues musicians who were taking over
the Chicago blues scene. So, rather than be left in
their dust and be relegated to obscurity, Bill simply adapted
and did something completely different, and in doing so, he
seemly found a different audience as Chicago's black community did
not seem to have much of an appetite for his

(13:07):
own timmy acoustic stylings. But as it turned out, white
audiences were very much invested in a folk revival. Yet
regardless of one style he was utilizing, Big Bill consistently
made a name for himself by interpreting classic blue standards
and by singing about topics that his audience could relate to.
This included issues of race with songs like Black, Brown

(13:28):
and White and when Do I Get Called a Man?
It then makes sense that he would record a song
about the nineteen twenty seven flood since it was such
a big and all encompassing topic at the time. Big
Bone Brunsy's Southern Flood Blues and speaks to the suffering
of those affected by these relentless floodwaters and how they
lost everything they owned when he sings quote, hey my
baby was crying. I didn't have a thing to eat.

(13:50):
Hey the water had come in, wash everything ahead down
the street. It also spoke to the terror experience by
those trapped in their homes when the lever s gave way,
as he sings quote, hey my house started shaking when
on floating down the stream. It was dark as midnight.
People began to holler and scream, and finally he related
to the plight of the people who were trapped and
had nothing to do but hope and pray for rescue.

(14:13):
As he adds, quote, Hey, I was hollering for mercy
and it were no boats around. Hey, that looks like people.
I've gotta stay right here and drown. It also made
sense for Bill to sing about the nineteen twenty seven
flood because it connected to his own past. As historian
Studts Turkle would note, the first blue song that Big
Bill ever heard quote concerned the Big flood of eighteen

(14:34):
ninety three. It was called Crying Joe Turner, a flood
that Bill would notably claim was the reason why his
parents knew the year of his birth, even though his
sister has documents stating otherwise, a story which seems to
indicate that Bill clearly felt some kind of connection to
that eighteen ninety three flood and the story surrounding it,
so it makes sense that he would choose to record
a song about the even more devastating nineteen twenty seven flood. Additionally,

(14:58):
while big Bell makes no specific reference to this song
in his autobiography, he does note that he worked in
a levee camp at some point potentially during this period,
which would have only deepened his connection to this particular disaster.

(15:42):
When the Mountains Landing levee had given way on the
twenty first of April, it was neither the first nor
the last time that the Mississippi broke through the vaunted
federal levees. What it was, though, was the largest breakthrough
not only of that flood but in the recorded history
of the Mississippi River. The resulting destruction of flooding from
the city regular failure then was so great that it
caught the attention of the nation. But notably, even the

(16:05):
events in Mounds Landing were not enough to convince Congress
to appropriate any funds to aid those stricken by this disaster,
because God forbid we spend any money to aid people
in need. Although some form of concern from the government
would come the day after the Mounds Landing Gervas when
President Calvin Coolidge officially opponent as Secretary of Commerce Herbert
Hoover to head up the relief operations, thereby giving Hoover

(16:28):
authority over the American Red Cross and the military. Yet
even this action only came after six governors and multiple
senators had been actively petitioned in Coolige to do something
for quite some time now. As remember, prior to the
Mounds Landing disaster, some seventy thousand people had already been
driven from their homes, all the while the presidents sat
back and did nothing. The failure of the Mounds Landing

(16:51):
let me though, it was so dramatic that it caught
the nation's attention to such a degree that they nor
the president could ignore the disaster any longer. That being said,
the full extent of Coolidge's involvements started and stopped with
the appointment of Herbert Hoover, as after doing that, Coolage
remained aloof and seemingly uninterested in the events playing out,
while in contrast, Hoover, for months from here on out,

(17:13):
regularly appeared in newspaper coverage as a man behind the
heroic relief efforts. This despite the fact that he had
very little impact on the initial efforts rescuing people stranded
by the floodwaters. In fact, Hoover would quickly determine that
there was little they could do to prevent further levee failures.
So while the Mounds Landing levee failure would capture the
nation's attention, it was far from the last to fail,

(17:34):
as a little over a week after the Mounds Landing
ker vas the Third of Bay saw the Levy and
capin Tel Louisiana fl flooding that region and making it
quote possible to go from Vicksburg to Monroe, Louisiana by boat,
according to the Memphis Commercial Appeal. Indeed, thanks to these
levee failures, so much land was now flooded around the
Mississippi a virtual inland sea had been created. A reporter

(17:56):
for the New York Times who flew over the affected
region would describe what he saw, quote for a mile
after mile, all the land in view was the tops
of the levees, to which thousands had fled for safety.
In places, the tops of giant cypress and oak tree
still swayed in the breeze, the only green spot in
the picture. The lake extends far into Arkansas, and probably
one hundred miles from the banks of the Mississippi into Louisiana.

(18:20):
So with nothing really to be done to prevent this
flood from spreading, the focus shifted to assessing those affected
by the flood and recovery slash rebuilding efforts. It was
in this that Hoover took control, guiding these efforts by
organizing and sending policy for the response. Hoover then, once
in charge, look to move swiftly, as he were closely
with the States and with the Red Cross who would

(18:42):
be responsible for setting up camps for the refugees. Camps
at Hoover would decide should be run by the local
Red Cross chapters in conjunction with local authorities, as they
were the ones on the ground and thus could react
faster to these situation than if they were to try
and run everything through a central authority, or at least's
but they claimed the sole motivation for this setup was

(19:03):
but as we will see in later episodes, that was
not really the case. Regardless, Hoover, with his powerful connections
in the government and with the cooperation of the press
to control the narrative, was able to pressure railroads into
providing refugees with free transportation, while also seeing that free
charges were cut throughout the course of the flood so
that it would be more affordable to transport the much

(19:24):
needed supplies to the region. Now again, the main group
that Hoover worked hand in hand with during this disaster
was the Red Cross because they worthy de facto main
sources support for many affected by the flood. The organization, though,
was fully reliant upon donations, as the government would only
eventually appropriate three hundred million dollars the following year. The public, then,

(19:45):
adam necessity provided much of the funding for these relief efforts.
So to elicit donations, Hoover and the Red Cross had
to work with the media to ensure that the public
was invested in the disaster and understood the need for
their assistance. In doing so, they we the line upon
the fairly new phenomenon of propagandas slash public relations, by
which I mean, obviously neither of these things were actually new,

(20:07):
but they had only recently been given a name and
really started being studied in an academic sense following the
First World War because of the job wo Joel Wilson's
Committee on Public Information, which was headed up by Colorado
newsman George Creole, had done on selling the nation on
joining the war. It was and through this formal study
that people really began to understand that convincing slash. Tricking

(20:29):
large masses of people into working together through calculated have
truths and full all lies was more effective than traditional
methods of coercion, a very potent realization due to the
new methods through which large masses of people were able
to be presented the same narrative. New technologies like telegraphs,
radio broadcasts, and even early newsreels would be employed to

(20:50):
one extent or another to get Hoover and the Red
Cross's message out to the people. That being said, the
most powerful tool they had in reaching the public was
through newspapers, which in that moment still the dominant source
of news in the country. Indeed, at this time there
were some twenty two hundred daily paper servicing various communities
across the nation. Among the largest of these papers was

(21:11):
the Los Angeles Times, which had one hundred and thirty
five thousand daily readers, the New York Times with thee
hundred thousand daily readers in six hundred thousand on Sundays,
and the Chicago Tribune, which had over seven hundred thousand
daily readers, while over a million individuals bought their Sunday editions.
Mean while, in addition to these quote unquote mainstream papers

(21:31):
were once that catered specifically to a black audience, like
the NAACP's Crisis, which had one hundred thousand readers monthly,
and the Chicago Defender, which boasted a daily readership of
over two hundred thousand. The thing was, as they were
putting their message out there, the government authorities who were
directing this publicity campaign and their allies in the media

(21:51):
were all careful to make sure that the government's own
army Corps of Engineers and the Mississippi River Commission were
not blamed for contributing to the disaster. They very much
did not want the public to know that agreed to
which this was a man made calamity, because while the
unusual weather would have obviously caused flooding, the reason why
things were this bad very much came down to decisions

(22:13):
made by the government and the American public at large.
So instead of looking for the underlying causes of this flood,
the focus was on combating the flood in a military
like way, as the government, in lieu of actually appropriating
funds to assist in the relief effort, lote to use
the power of the media to unite the public in
this fight over. Then, on the thirtieth of April nineteen

(22:34):
twenty seven, nine days after the Mounds landing, Gervas would
address the entire nation over the radio, urging listeners to
participate in this quote national fight against the most dangerous
flood our country has ever known in its history. In
undertaking this public relations campaign, though, the government and the
press had to deal with the problem that floods, by
their very nature, are a slow moving disaster. As unlike

(22:56):
your typical disaster, say, something like a hurricane, a tornado,
or or an earthquake, events that take place over a
small period of time and whose devastation can be seen immediately.
Floods in general, and this flood in particular, tend to
be protracted events that don't typically have the same kind
of immediate violent destruction. The closest floods typically come to
such moments is in the case of a damn or

(23:18):
levee collapse, which is why despite something like seventy thousand
already being displaced by the flood, and wasn't until the
Mound slanning disaster that the nation truly started to take notice.
The press and the government then had to find ways
to keep the public interested and present this disaster and
the relief efforts in a way that they could understand.
One of the main ways in which they frame these

(23:39):
events to achieve these goals was by portraying it like
it was a war. For example, the New York Times
would describe the levee failure in the spreading waters like
they would a military campaign, writing quote, first, the Chyro
to Memphis sector was lost next to the river traut
as it searched south through the Memphis to Vicksburg sector.
Its victory has been complete and overwhelming in these sector

(24:00):
stretches from Vicksburg to the mouth of the Red River.
Now comes a struggle to hold the levees of the
Red and Mississippi. Reporter Herschel Bricknell, also the New York
Times would use the same imagery, as he wrote, quote
once more, the war is on between the mighty old
dragon that is the Mississippi River and his ancient enemy man.
The Washington Post would also maintain this narrative device, as

(24:21):
he wrote, quote, it is essentially a question of national
defense against the savage power of nature. The nation then
was at more with the Mississippi or with nature itself,
which made the floodwoods the quote invading enemy. This kind
of framing is notable because such conflicts traditionally required the
nation to come together against a common enemy. In some ways, then,

(24:42):
the ongoing nature of this disaster helped in their attempts
to get the public involved and to donate money, because
in this disaster they weren't just trying to clean up
after the fact. They were an active participant in an
ongoing drama and fight, a fight that the public felt
even more a part of. Due to the new technology
radio as now active, reports from the affected region were

(25:03):
being transmitted instantly to the rest of the country, thereby
putting everyone at ground zero of these events. Indeed, when
Hoover took advantage of this new technology to address the nation,
he too brought up the specter of war in conflict,
or to be more precise, a very specific war in
its aftermath, as he would declare, they intended to bring
quote reconstruction to the region because quote very catastrophes come

(25:27):
to the people of our South. This was a deliberately
chosen statement, as Hoover very much wanted to redefine the
meaning of the word reconstruction when it came to the
relations between the northern and southern sections of the country,
as he wanted to recast the north, as he quote
army of rescuers by aiding the residents of the Lower Mississippi.
The New York Times even picked up this messaging, as

(25:49):
the paper assured its readers at Hoover would quote see
that the reconstruction machinery is well oiled and running in
perfect harmony. Basically, what Hoover was promising was they were
going to do reconstruction quote unquote right this time, by
which they meant they were seeking to modernize the South,
but this time they would seek to do so without
any kind of political strife getting in the way, which

(26:10):
meant they weren't going to do anything to upset the
white supremacist power structure that many a white Northerner was
fairly cool with anyway. As such, they weren't coming there
with radical goals of helping or uplifting Southern African Americans.
They were just there to make the South better, specifically
for whites. Indeed, when the press featured photographs of the disaster,
they used photos of white families being aided by Red

(26:31):
Cross workers. In contrast, he suffering a Southern blacks seemingly
wasn't something that the national press wanted to bring much
attention to, as they likely did not care and also
believe that their readers wouldn't care either. Indeed, it seems that,
at least initially, they treated the experiences of Southern African
Americans as an opportunity for comic relief. For example, the
Red Cross would disseminate a story supposedly gathered by the

(26:54):
relief workers, in which a group of African Americans, in
anticipation on the coming floodwaters, built a boat slash raft
so as to save themselves and their belongings. However, this
quote unquote arc as the press called it quote refused
to float, as quote water poured in from one hundred
leaks in the uncogd hall, thereby forcing the ARCS builders

(27:15):
to abandon their craft and flee to a nearby railroad embankment,
a tale that positions black Southerners as helpless and worthy
of both pity and mockery. Indeed, the La Times, when
reprinting this story, would do so alongside a cartoon drawing
depicting this scene with full on black faced stereotypes. This
was an isolated incident. Either, as in generally mainstream presses,

(27:35):
depictions of blacks and Red Cross camps focused primarily on
stuff like how silly it was to see quote, a
call black person prominating in price, barefooted and sporting a
full evening suit. Basically, it was funny seeing a poor
black person dressing up in fancy clothes. Indeed, it was
a scene straight out of the minstrel shows. In a
similar vein the press also liked to present, especially in cartoons,

(27:58):
Southern blacks are at least a section of them as
layabouts who saw this flood as an opportunity to be
freed from labor and taken care of by the government,
an opportunity, in the mind of ignorant racist writers and cartoonists,
to return to the days of the plantation, where their
needs were provided for. The said truth was, though, the
reality for many black people in Red Cross camps was

(28:19):
vastly different than these little comedic skits presented in the
mainstream press. But that is a story we'll get to later.
Although I have to know, the suggestion that this flood
returned them to the days before the Civil War wasn't
actually all that far off the mark. In some cases,
now to be clear, as much as many a Northerner
was eager to depict this as a second attempt at reconstruction,

(28:40):
just without that whole problematic bit about trying to aid
African Americans, this was not the case for everyone living
in the North. Indeed, African Americans not residing in the
flooded region, and many leftists were very much interested in
the plight of the African Americans affected by the flood,
and thus very much wanted to use this so called
second reconstruction as an opportunity to change their lives and

(29:01):
put an end to the cruel, exploitive systems of sharecropping
and debt painage. For the mainstream white press, though, basically
the core their narrative of reconstruction done right was by
rescuing their Southern brethren from this disaster, the North would
be able to bring their troubles of Southern family members
back into the fold, finally healing those old wounds and
making the country whole again. The thing was, as many

(29:23):
in the South didn't take too kindly to the North,
positioning themselves as saviors who were coming to save and
or liberate the South. This was in part because they
felt like they were being ridiculed. The North was essentially
coming to save them, not just from the flood, but
from themselves. The North felt like it needed to modernize
the South because it saw them as being backwards in
anti progress. Indeed, as the jazz aged Dawn, the South

(29:45):
was looked upon as being especially conservative and reactionary. After all,
just two years prior to this had been the Scopes
Monkey Trial, in which Tennessee's law prohibiting the teaching of
evolution was challenged, a trial which, in the eyes of many,
especially those in the North, had cemented the South as
being their anti science, backwards cousins who were more interested
in religious fundamentalism than the signs and progress of the

(30:08):
New Age. This resembinant being seen and treated as backwards
and regressive, which mixed with the classic resemina the Hated Yankees,
which was a holdover of the Civil War era, then
caused many in the South to brissel at the north
portrayal of themselves as blameless heroes come to save and
uplift the South, feelings that I'm not particularly sympathetic with,
as we're living in the results of the very same

(30:30):
racist and anti science attitude that they were being criticized
for having. Of course, though this was not representative of
all Southerners, as others rightly recognized that this flood was
the result of bad river management policies. For some in
the South, then this flood was a result of Yankee wood.
As such, this was another invasion. For example, the Atlantic

(30:51):
Constitution would write, quote, the unvarnished truth is the great
disaster in its entirety is directly chargeable to congressional neglect,
while the Memphis Commercial Appeal would add quote, control all
the flood orders of the central area of the United States,
from the Rockies to the alleg danis is the government's problem. Therefore,
was the government's fault that this flood was happening. Had

(31:12):
they done their jobs properly, there was no reason why
the flood should be this bad. Yet first right as
they were. This very same paper would later state that quote,
it is not the first time that the South has
suffered and been penalized for no offense it committed and
because of no fault of its own, which is a
statement drowning in its own delusional bullshit, as if the

(31:33):
Southern States were just some innocent, blameless victim that the
North had decided to one day attack, It's not like
they had one by one succeeded from the Union doing so,
in their own words, to preserve slavery, which was bad enough.
But they then further ensured that war would happen by
firing the literal first shots when they attacked a federal fort.

(31:53):
But no, they were just innocent put upon victims who
were punished for no reason. Yet, putting aside the ridicules
revisionist history, the fact remained that those pointing out that
this wasn't so much a Southern problem as a national
one did have a point. Indeed, A's journalist herostics and
when known at the end of his naturally publicized twelve
part series on the flood, quote, glance at a map

(32:15):
of the Father's watershed, Note that our lands lie in
the mouth of an enormous funnel. Then remember that every
creek and gutter from western Pennsylvania to Wyoming anties its
water into the top of that funnel. We get the
drainage from thirty two states. Adding that quote, two thirds
of this student combines its flood to dramas. So we
do earnestly insist that those who don't porter into this

(32:38):
funnel should help to minimize its disastrous results. As all
this was indeed connected to choices made in other parts
of this system. Alterations to the environment elsewhere in the
Mississippi River Valley had contributed to this issue, a point
that was increasingly being picked up on and repeated in
papers all across the country as it became increasingly clear

(32:58):
that mismanagement had played a significant roland causing this disaster.
The Nation, for example, would run a story written by
engineer Walter Parker on the eleven of the May in
which he outlined the issues I covered in the first
two episodes of the series, as he wrote about how
accident enriched northern landowners. The destruction of various forests, marshes,
and lakes had the effect of also increasing the amount

(33:19):
of water drained into the various systems that all eventually
fed into the Mississippi and contributed to this destruction. Furthermore,
he even wrote that the levees only polsey of the
Mississippi River Commission had quote gone bankrupt, an opinion that
would be echoed by Gifford Pinchot, the first chief of
the US Far Service, who called the levees only policy
of the quote most colossal blunder in civilized history. Unfortunately,

(33:43):
his stuff like this came delighted. Also gave regressive Southerners
what they saw as more justification for the resistance of
things like progress and science. For example, Southern preachers would
declare that the flood had been sent by God because
of the quote in roads of free love, the quote
petting parties not to mention the quote dress of some

(34:03):
of our women. These people never change. Meanwhile, the Memphis
commercial appealed run a cartoon featuring a flag labeled quote
Christian education rousing up above the floodwaters that were in
turn labeled the flood of rationalism, indicating that just like
these Southern people had to rouse above these dangerous flood
waters coming from the north, so too did they have

(34:23):
to rouse above and survive the dangerous effects of rationalism.
As according to such people, progressive and scientific ideas like
evolution were the exact same thing as stuff like the
Levees only policy that had contributed to this flood, when
really the flood was a combination of altering the environment
out of greed and short sightedness, while also ignoring the
actual science to embrace the Leve's only policy, which was

(34:46):
only embraced because of the policy of the federal government
to not do anything to improve the lives of its
citizens unless it could be argued in specific edu cases
that constitutionally they had to do something. And it's on
that pretty depressing note that I wi bring this episode
to an end, but our tale is still far from over,
as we still have to talk about the recovery efforts,

(35:06):
how terrible the Red Cross camps were, especially the one
in Greenville, and how this flood ultimately led to many
African Americans fleeing northward, bringing their culture and their music
with them. Next time, though, I will focus even more
on how the public tried to help with this tragedy
while also taking it long. Last, a look at Bessie Smith,
the Empress of the Blues, whose song Backwood or Blues

(35:27):
would become a bit of a soundtrack for the flood
for many a song that was so successful that it
helped to lead to the creation of all the other
songs that we have and we'll be talking about. However,
like always, that will have to remain a story for
another time. Thank you for listening to Distorted History. If

(35:47):
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(36:09):
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Once again, thank you for listening and until next time,