Blues and The Mississippi Flood of 1927 Part 10 Greenville Exposed

Red Cross relief camps throughout the flooded region in general tended to have issues when it came to seeing to the needs of African American refugees. The situation in Greenville however is particularly bad as Black refugees there are practically returned to a state of enslavement.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
My name is Eric Gascall, and you're listening to the
Distorted History podcast, and I can't give you many names,
and you're a blunder. Hey, look, I'm Raisling. I'm got

(00:24):
the mine, Sarah. A long struggle for freedom, it really
is a revolution. In the last episode, we looked at
the history of Leroy Percy in Greenville. Leroy was both
very wealthy and extremely well connected, as he was friendly

(00:47):
with political powerhouses like Teddy Roosevelt in addition to having
financial connections to both the Carnegie and Rockefeller foundations. LeRoy's
main center of power, though, was Greenville, Mississippi, worthy Percy
family had long held sweaty. Leroy then was determined to
preserve his own personal little kingdom against all comers. Indeed,
we saw him successfully keep both the federal government and

(01:08):
the Italian government at arm's length when they loved to
investigate the mistreatment of Italian immigrants who had been tricked
into the sharecropping system, which, to be clear, the conditions
that sparked these investigations were no worse than the ones
that African Americans had been forced to live in for decades.
It's just that these immigrants had people with power looking
out for them. They just didn't have the power to

(01:28):
take down someone as well connected as Leroy Percy. Yet,
while Percy saw both Italian immigrants and African Americans as
less than and people who he was absolutely fine with
trapping in the cruel cycle of sharecropping and debt painage,
he also saw the KKK and their ILK as being
a step too far. Leroy then fought back against the
rising tighter racist politics and even successfully kept the clan

(01:51):
from making any serious inroads into Greenville. At first glance,
and it would seem unusual that Greenville would be the
home of some of the worst abuses of African Americans
who had been displaced by the nineteen twenty seven flood.
As we will see, though, for as much as Leroy
Percy did not hate African Americans like members of the
Klan did, he really was much more interested in their
labor than their wellbeing. Percy, you see, recognized something that

(02:14):
the Klan apparently didn't, and that was the South needed
African American labor to continue to function the way it had.
It was then his determination to not lose his valuable
source of labor that would be at the root of
everything that happened in Greenville during the flood. However, it
will be LeRoy's son, William Alexander Percy, who will be
the one setting the policies and essentially overseeing a return

(02:35):
of the slavery system in Greenville. Yet, before I get
into everything that happens in Greenville and how it gets
exposed to the rest of the country, first, like always,
I want to acknowledge my sources for this series, which
include Richard M. Mazzone Junior's Backward Blues, the Mississippi Flood
of nineteen twenty seven in the African American Imagination, John M.
Berry's Rising Tide, the Great Mississippi Flood of nineteen twenty

(02:57):
seven and how it changed to America, and Susan and
Scott Parish's The Flood Year in 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 his podcast Bluesky and cofee pages. Plus
for anyone who doesn't want to be bothered skipping through commercials,
there was always an ad free feet available to subscribers
at patreon dot com slash to started history and with

(03:20):
all that being said, let's begin now. LeRoy's son, William
Alexander Percy, even before the events of the nineteen twenty
seven flood, had not exactly lived up to the expectations
of his father nor the society he grew up in,
by which I mean William did not enjoy going fishing,
and he hated going hunting. Instead, he preferred activities like
reading books and preserving flowers to such pursuits. William, though,

(03:43):
was determined to gain his father's approval, and so he
became a lawyer and joined his father's law firm. Yet
still Leroy seemed to prefer his nephew over his own son,
as it would be with him that he spent time
hunting and gambling. Meanwhile, likely seeking to emerge at least
somewhat from utter his father's shadow, William became the chairman
for the local Washington County Red Cross Chapter, a position

(04:03):
that prior to the nineteen twenty seven flood wasn't all
that important. Indeed, it had primarily involved asking for donations,
something that will did not like to do. Now, though,
in this emergency, will found himself suddenly one of the
most important men in the region. Indeed, as he Mountains
Landing Levy broke and the people of Greenville were driven
into a panic. Will found himself in a meeting with

(04:23):
the region's congressman, the head of the Mississippi National Guard,
the local National Guard commander, and other prominent figures as
they were to plan the response, a meeting which will
was technically leading thanks to his position as the head
of the local Red Cross chapter. This relief committee then
oversaw such crucial issues like the food supplied, the drinking
water situation, and seeing too that kitchens and lights were

(04:45):
set up in the cancer refugees, while also having to
deal with sanitation concerns and making sure that people could
still get around, all of which seems to have been
handled in a timely, incompetent manner. Indeed, even before this meeting, William,
along with his father Leroy, had spent the entire morning
of the mountains Landing Levee failure on the phones, tracking
down as much food supplies and boats as they could

(05:05):
find in the region, while also ordering the construction of
new boats that would be needed throughout the course of
this emergency, as boats would be crucial in navigating and
getting around. While all this running countryside in the city
of Greenville itself was underwater, water which in some places
was as much as twenty feet deep, and which was
especially dangerous thanks to the bower, for currents had whipped
through the city. Currents had followed the paths of the

(05:27):
city streets and then clash chaotically and dangerously at intersections. Now,
following the Mounds Landing disaster, the people at Greenville and
the surrounding countryside had sought high ground and safety wherever
they could find it. Some then hid in railroad box cars,
while others fled to the upper fors of buildings, whether
they be houses, barns, oil mills, or cotton gins. These
various isolated hunting spots, however, while safe and drive for

(05:49):
the moment, made it difficult to see that everyone's needs
were provided for. So it was decided that people should
be brought together in one location where there would be
access to food and water, and it was decided that
the Greenville Levee was the most logical place to set
up a refugee camp, as this man made hell was
by definition high ground, although space here was at a premium,

(06:11):
as while the levee was five miles long and it
was still only twenty to fifty feet wide, which wasn't
all that much space when you consider it not only
had to be the home to residence of Greenville who
had nowhere else to go, but also to the people
from the surrounding region as well. Indeed, during the duration
of this disaster, Greenville's population grew dramatically, as some twenty
five thousand people resided in the city or on its levee,

(06:34):
which was ten thousand more people than resided in Greenville normally.
And it also wasn't just people either, as farmers often
brought cows, mules, horses, and pigs to the safety of
the levee as well. Now, the vast majority of the
refugees who were brought to the quote unquote safety of
the levee were African Americans, and conditions there were not good,
as While the percys and the Relief Committee set about

(06:56):
organizing and making plans to respond to this to reality,
for the time being, nothing was in place or prepared.
As such, the refugees who were brought to the levee
had no dry clothes and no shelter. As the rain
continued to fall, there was no actual relief and their
whole world at that point was basically mud. Meanwhile, there
also wasn't much in the way of food, as the

(07:17):
National Guard only had some five thousand rations, and thanks
of the flood, there was no easy way to bring
in supplies as they were effectively cut off in the
racy nation. Now they were able to bring in some
tents and field kitchens from the Army's fourth Core in Atlanta,
but even that came slowly and reluctantly, as their commander
did not seem particularly concerned. Then the situation in Greenville

(07:39):
and only Levee in particular became even more precarious as
these cities water supply became contaminated and useless. Now there
was one obvious solution to this problem, and that was
to evacuate the refugees, because if they couldn't support them
in Greenville, they had to get them someplace else where
they would have aiden supplies. Now this was notably Will's

(07:59):
initial in nation, as he had a doctor his father's
view of a kind of noble aristocracy who had the
paternalistic responsibility to look after the less fortunate to at
least some degree. According to Leroy Percy's world view, his
family and others liked them, due to their high position
in society, had a responsibility to do what was right
and for his son will that many evacuating the refugees. Indeed,

(08:23):
some refugees were already being taken by rescue barges from
Greenville to Vicksburg, where there were more well organized camps,
in addition to railroad connections to other regions. Of course,
though was primarily white refugees who were the beneficiaries of
these efforts. As you see, there was something of a
problem when it came to evacuating black refugees, namely the

(08:44):
fact that the planner class feared that should their labor
force be allowed to leave, they might never come back.
After all, what would be keeping them there now, with
what little they owned either being carried away with them
or otherwise being washed away by the flood. So if
they left, it's not like they would be loose anything
if they never returned. Indeed, if anything, walking away would

(09:04):
be beneficial, as they would be leaving behind the dance
that the planners had purposely settled them with to keep
them tied to the land. In fact, under normal circumstances,
these sharecroppers would never be allowed to leave until that
debt was paid off, something that the planners ensured would
never happen. Yet, thanks to this emergency, the fear was
should these sharecroppers be taken someplace else, they could just

(09:24):
melt it to the crowd or otherwise keep going, and
there would be no practical way for these planners to
enforce their control. And to be clear, this was a
calculation that these men and their elk had made from
the very beginning of this disaster, as it seems that
preserving their workforce and by extension, their way of life
was foremost in their minds above saving lives. For example,

(09:45):
following the failure of the Mountains Landing levy, a steamership
patrol in the area looking for people to rescue, spotted
a group of some two hundred African American individuals and
a pair of white men. The ship then naturally pulled
in the shore nearby and lowered its gang plank so
these people come on board. The two white men, though,
who were armed, refused to let any of these African
American individuals board the boat. This was because these two

(10:08):
men owned the plantation where these individuals lived and worked
as sharecroppers, and they weren't about to let them leave now.
The captain tried to talk some sense into these two men,
but they refused to listen to reason. It was then
round about this time that a physician walked off the
boat and started approaching the two hundred black sharecroppers, but
again the two white plantation owners interfered. The physician, though,

(10:30):
had enough, as he declared that quote I come here
by the authority of the American Red Cross and the
gun of all creation. If either of you has guts
enough to pull the gun you carry, please start now
or get out of my way. And I don't believe
either of you has the gouts. The doctor then pushed
his way past the two men and saw to it
that all two hundred black men, women and children were

(10:51):
allowed to board the boat. This behavior by the plantation
owners would seemly also appear in songs written about the flood.
For example, Charlie pad who he talked about last time,
and his song Heighwoder Everywhere, would talk about being displaced
by the flood as he sung quote backwartered dun Rose
around Sumner drove poor Charlie down the line as he

(11:11):
was driven out of Sumner. Though Penn would know that
his choices of places to go were limited, as quote,
I would go to the hill country, but they got
me barred, a line that is likely in reference to
the way that local landlord slash plantation owners were working
with the local government and the Red Cross to keep
their black workers from leaving. This, however, does not stop
Charlie from wanting to leave the region altogether, as he

(11:33):
sings quote, I'm going up that where lands don't never flow. Well,
I'm going over the hill where woter Oh don't ever flow,
a desire clearly shared by many, as they wanted not
only to escape these floodwaters, but also these systems of
jim crow and sharecropping. The Planner's greatest fear, then was
that if they allowed the black refugees or their labor
forces they actually thought of them to leave, they would

(11:55):
never return, and they didn't know if they would ever
be able to replace them. It is then for this
reason that the other members of the Greenville Relief Committee
bought when Will announced that the refugees had to be evacuated. Will, though,
was insistent because this was the right thing to do,
and the others reluctantly agreed to follow his lead, assuming
as they did that he had consulted his father and

(12:16):
Leroy had approved of this plan. The problem was Will
had not actually consulted as father. Indeed, Leroy would first
learn of this evacuation plan when some angry plantation owners
went to him to complain about losing their workforce and
how this plan was threatened to upend their entire economic system.
After all, their entire system was based around using sharecroppers

(12:36):
to prop up the wealth and privilege, so without them,
everything was bound to collapse. Now, to be clear, Will
did not see black people as his equal in any way. Indeed,
he really didn't even seem to think of them as individuals,
as he had no apparent interest in dealing with them
one on one. Yet for him this moment, the moral
calculus was simple, and so he dismissed and announced the

(12:57):
planners for putting their pocketbooks ahead of the welfare of
their black workers. His father, Lero, however, would have a
different view of things, as while Leroy had fought against
the Klan and hand on multiple occasions helped out and
stud up for various African American individuals in the region,
he did both because he saw it as his paternalistic
duty to protect them, which was the same motivation driving

(13:18):
his son, But he also had done so because he
feared that allowing the clan and racism the run rampid
would drive their workforce away. Leroy then was very much
of the same mine as the other plantation owners. To
that end, he tried speaking with his son in private
to encourage him to come to their way of thinking
when it came to not evacuating the African Americans, Will, though,

(13:39):
would not budge, At which point Leroy simply went around
his son to speak with the other members of the
relief committee, informing them that his son had not in
fact received the support on this matter. As a result,
the next time they met, every member of the committee
was now insistent that the black refugees remain where they
were on the levee. Will would then argue with the
rest of the relieve Kimnedy for two hours until he

(14:02):
finally gave in and issued orders to these ship captains
conducting the evacuation to lead the African American refugees where
they were. With this, the entire plan of dealing with
the flood changed, as instead of evacuating Greenville, they now
looked to make it a point of centralization. Food, clothing,
various supplies, construction material and even other refugees would now

(14:22):
all be sent to Greenville. Meanwhile, with all these variou
supplies and materials coming in, someone was going to have
to do all the unloading and moving of these goods,
not to mention, have to be the ones doing the
actual rebuilding when the waters started to recede, and of
course it would be the black refugees who would be
volunteered to provide the labor for these various projects. A

(14:43):
plan which Will present it as his own idea to
Herbert Hoover himself when he visited Greenville as a part
of his store of the affected area, a plan which
then received Hoover's full endorsement. The truth of the matter was,
though Will had effectively been betrayed and humiliated by his father,
who had essentially showed the that he was the one
who actually held the power in Greenville, regardless of what

(15:04):
Will's official position might be. Now, bitter and humiliated, Will,
unable to do anything to the people actually responsible, seemingly
began to lash out of the people who had even
less power than he did and who he saw as
being the cause of his humiliation. The black refugees Greenville, then,
instead of being a refuge from the worst offenses of
the Jim Crow, South, became ground zero for a whole

(15:26):
new set of horrors and outrages. Now, some of these
outrages were simply rumors based upon misunderstandings. For example, a
rumor ran rampant that the National Guarded throwing black man
into the river with stones tied to his feet in
arms as punishment for stealing bananas. Now, the reality of
the situation was the man in question, after having not
eaten in days, had stopped himself full of bananas. This, however,

(15:49):
proved to be too much for a system to handle,
and thus he died. It was and only after his
death that the man's now dead body was taken out
by boat into the river, where rocks were tied to
its arms and legs, basically because they were looking to
dispose of the corpse, since with so little dry land left,
there was no place to bury him at that time
nor for months to come. Meanwhile, a sheriff red Tackard,

(16:10):
was also seen fairly regularly towing black bodies behind his boat.
The rumor then was these were looters that he had
shot and was now towing their bodies around as a warning.
The truth, however, was that while Taggard did in some
way seem to be your typical Southern sheriff, the bodies
he was seen towing around weren't from people he had killed. Instead,
they were the corpses of people who had drowned in
the flood, and he was likely simply taking them away

(16:32):
to dispose of them. The thing is, with all that
being said, even though those particular rumors weren't true, the
recent people believed and spread them was because reality wasn't
much better. As given what they were personally seeing and
experiencing on a daily basis, the idea of the authorities
murdering black men and putting their bodies on display didn't
seem all that far fetched. Now. Of course, this was

(16:54):
not the reality experienced by everyone in Greenville. As you see,
for numerous white individuals residing in the city, they were
able to carry on relatively normally despite the emergency. For
more than a few. In fact, it was kind of
like a weird vacation. For example, several hundred of Greenville's
wealthiest residents were able to stay in their homes get
their newspapers daintly and basically carry on like nothing had happened,

(17:15):
because the floodwaters never really reached their neighborhoods because they
were built on higher ground. Meanwhile, some four thousand other
white individuals were able to shelter on the upper floors
of various offices and hotels in the city, and the
business section in particular, scaveling was turned into a boardwalk
assorts that allowed people to travel around outside and buy
goods like soda, peanuts, and popcorn from the various vendors

(17:37):
who set up shop there. Indeed, there was even a
cafe that operated twenty four hours a day that the
white residents of Greenville could visit and experience a sense
of normalcy. Meanwhile, the Kowan Hotel, the finest hotel of
the Delta, made sure that its pool room, its Bluebird cafe,
and its fine dining room were all kept open throughout
the disaster. In fact, it said that people regularly just

(17:58):
sang and danced to the piano music that was playing
in the Kuwan Hotels mezzanine. The flood for many whites
in Greenville then wasn't exactly a terrible experience, whines in general,
could get whatever they needed to survive. Now it came
with a price, of course, but still pretty much everything
they wanted, with the exception of sugar, was available through
various black markets and bootleggers that set up shop around town. Life, however,

(18:21):
was quite a bit different for the city's black residents.
To begin with. Their neighborhoods, unlike those of the wealthy,
had been built in low lying areas and thus were
completely flooded and destroyed. Plus, unlike the city's white residents,
who were able to live fairly comfortably on the upper
floors of offices and hotels, some five thousand African Americans
would find themselves packed to do various warehouses and oil mills,

(18:41):
while another fourteen thousand lived on the levee, where while
they were at least provided with the electric lights, piped
in water and barteres for latrines, there were also forced
to sleep on the wet ground, as there were no
counts and the tents they were belatedly provided with had
no floors. Additionally, they had no forks or spoons or
anything like that, much less anything resembling tables and chairs

(19:02):
for them to sit down it and having meal meaning
the black refugees were forced to stand or squad while
they ate with their fingers, which is a far cry
from what the white residents of the city were experiencing
with their boardwalk, their diners, and their clubs. Meanwhile, the
food that the black refugees on the levee were provided
with was another strong indicator of the level of any
quality that existed in the city. As you see, while

(19:24):
six cows a day would be soldered to provide me
for the main kitchen on the levee, that me primarily
went to the white refugees, thereby leaving little to none
for the African Americans. It wasn't just meat either, as
the black refugees were also denied stuff like canned peaches
on the justification that it would quote unquote spoil them. Indeed,
according to one of those in charge, there was quote

(19:45):
no sense in giving them anything which they had not
had before, because it would quote simply teach them a
lot of expensive habits. Also, to be clear, it wasn't
just human refugees residing on the levee, as were also
joined by thousands of head of livestock and their accompanying smells.
For the duration probably The most notable thing about the
Levee camp, though, was the fact that the African Americans

(20:07):
resigning there were not allowed to come and go as
they pleased. In fact, National guardsmen actively patrolled the camp
controlled who could and could not leave, doing so because
local plantation owners and they like, feared losing their cheap workforce. Now,
to be clear, this particular phenomenon was not unique to
the Greenville Levey refugee camp, as he seem was true
in Red Cross camps all throughout the state of Mississippi.

(20:29):
And it's not like this was a secret that the
Red Cross didn't know about. Indeed, a memo was circulated
within the Red Cross that red quote plantation owners desiring
their labor to be returned from refugee camps will make
application to the nearest Red Cross representative. Basically, then they
had a system set up where the plantation owners could
come to the camps and request the return of their workers.

(20:51):
This then represented really the only way that black refugees
were allowed to leave the camp. They could leave to
go to work, but otherwise they couldn't go anywhere. George Carter,
a Blues man that we really don't know all that
much about outside. Of the four songs recorded for Paramount
Records would touch upon the restrictions placed upon black men
and women during the flood and his Rising River Blues

(21:12):
as he sings quote I gotta move in the alley,
I ain't allowed on the street, a line that is
probably a reference to these segregation of the laws that
looked to limit and prevent his movement. George, or at
least the narrator of his song, could not move about
freely in the street lest he be arrested and forced
to work in one capacity or another. As it wasn't
just on plantations where black refugees were expected to labor either,

(21:34):
as you see the way Greenville work now by the
order of will Percy, and why the white residents were
largely able to treat this like a weird vacation was
because the black refugees were put to work ensuring that
everyone else was provided for. As keep in mind, with
these cities surrounded by water, the only way to get
supplies in was by boat, so by utilizing barges it
had been created to move cargo. During the First World War,

(21:56):
the city was supplied thanks to tug boats that pushed
to these massive barges that carried three hundred to four
hundred tons of food each. The thing was someone had
to unload all the supplies that were needed to sustain
some fifty thousand people and thousands of additional animals, and
then reload those same supplies on the smaller boats that
would then take the goods to where they're needed in
the city. Work then included unloading and loading the thousands

(22:19):
of forty pound containers, each containing five gallons of fresh water.
The African American refugees were also the ones charged with
sorting and distributing these supplies, in addition to other work
like repairing the city's water system, feeding the livestock, and
preparing the food for the people in town. And keep
in mind, while they were handling, sorting out, and cooking
up all this food, they in turn were given stuff

(22:39):
like meat and canned peaches. Plus once the water started
to recede, it would also be the same refugees who
were put to work cleaning and repairing the buildings in town. Now,
to be clear, the refugees were required to do this
work or they wouldn't be allowed to eat. Thanks to
Will Percy's declaration of quote no Able bodied negroes in
tonnled to be fed at all, and he is tagged

(23:00):
as a laborer, a degree that meant that the only
way black man in his family would be fed on
any given day was if he was wearing a large
tag that he could only receive upon completing an assigned task,
a set of rules that strangely enough, did not seem
to apply to whites, as he did not have to
work to be given a tag to prove that just
to be fed. Now, to be clear, using black refugees

(23:20):
as a labor force wasn't exactly uncommon among the Red
Cross camps, and nor was forcing them to do said labor. However,
Greenville was worse than all the other camps because while
black men were also forced to serve as a labor
force elsewhere, in those other places, they were at least
paid wages for their work. Now, I'm sure in most
cases those wages weren't fair, but they were at least

(23:41):
paid something. In Greenville, though, the only thing these refugees
were given in return for their labor was food, something which,
to be clear, was provided to refugees in all other camps,
regardless of whether or not they weren't meaning that Greenville
had essentially become a slafe camp, as black refugees were
given no choice. They either worked or they starved. William

(24:02):
Percy's order was explicitly clear on this matter, as if
they cleared that quote, no negro men in Greenville nor
their family will be rationed unless the men join the
labor gang or are employed. Additionally, per William Percy's orders,
if a black man was paid more than a dollar
a day in some other employment, they were not entitled
to rations, a role that basically made it so the
black men who were being hired to help repair damaged

(24:24):
buildings in town by definition, would not make more than
a dollar a day because don would work for more
than that and be denied food and clothing as the masters.
Didn't make any sense because there was known where they
would be paid enough to provide for their families without
the rations. And again, to be clear, this was unusual
even in these circumstances, as black men and other camps

(24:45):
were paid wages of up to two dollars a day
and were still provided for by the Red Cross. In fact,
in other camps, men were getting paid to due work
for the Red Cross, including unloading supplies and alike. While
Will was ensuring that did not happen in Greenville, Sational
guardsmen in Greenville also just made this situation even worse,
as they were brutal and drunk with power. The quality

(25:06):
of the guardsmen in the way in which they forced
the African American refugees to work would be noted by
both black and white witnesses. African American woman missus Adley Oliver,
for example, would say that her people were treated quote
just like dogs. Percy mcgreaney, a black man, would expand
on this as he described, quote Whites were kicking colored
and beating them and knocking them around like dogs. Hungry people.

(25:28):
They wouldn't feed them sometimes. Meanwhile, Missus Ransom, a white woman,
would add quote the guards would come along and say
there's a boat, come and go unload. If they didn't
hurry up, they'd kick them. They didn't mind taking their
guns pistols out and knocking them over the head. Now,
the worst of these offenders seem to have been the
members of the National Guard companies out of Corinth and Lambert, Mississippi,

(25:50):
as the members of these companies were known to beat
black refugees for any infraction from trying to leave the
camp to quote unquote talking back. Furthermore, these men would
also be accused of stealing whatever meager belongings the refugees
had in their tents, and they also, whenever they found
a card game in progress, would just sweep in and
steal all the money. Ploster also reports the rapes and

(26:10):
at least one murder being committed by the National guardsmen,
all of which was stuff not covered in the official
reports and the glowing coverage of the relief efforts in
the national press. There also aren't a lot of accounts
of the flood left behind by African American individuals due
to the high literacy rates among Southern Blacks, a phenomenon
which was a legacy of slavery, the result of Jim

(26:31):
Crow policies, and just the general treatment of African Americans
as second class citizens who weren't deserving of an education.
This general lack of accounts of the people most impacted
by this disaster then make the blue songs about the
flood even more important as to become these rare narratives
all the disaster from an underrepresented people, These songs that
had the potential to show what people were thinking and

(26:52):
what they were responding to, as they illustrate not only
what the blues singer was potentially experiencing, but what their
audiences were responding to. So even if these songs are
not a direct accounting of events, they still pitomize the
experiences of many, which brings us to Alice Parson's Greenville
Levey Blues, which was recorded in July nineteen twenty seven
in Paramount Records Recording studio in Chicago. It was one

(27:15):
of six songs in Alice would record during this or
only recording session. As such, we really don't know much
about her or Freddy Coates, the man who accompanied her
on the piano that day. Regardless, these song starts off
like many of the other flood blues songs, including Bessie
Smith's Blackwater Blues, as Alice sets the stage by singing quote,
I woke up this morning, couldn't even get out my door.

(27:37):
The levee broke, and the town has overflowed. Like many
others who engaged in this form, Alison lays out the
destructive nature of the flood, both in terms of the
scope of its destruction and on a more personal level,
as she sings quote, there were rowing little boats lowered
five to ten miles away. They were picking up people
didn't have no place to stay. In doing so, she

(27:58):
gives you an idea of the scope of this disaster
as was also affecting people at least ten miles away.
She then makes things personal as she adds, quote, delta
wood have caused me to lose my clothes and shoes.
You can tell them by that it left me with
the delta wood or blues. What makes Alice Parson's song unique, then,
is its focus on Greenville in particular, as she, in
just a few words, sums up the conditions in the

(28:19):
Red Cross camps that the Black refugees were forced to
live in, as she sings quote living on the levee,
sleeping on the ground, as the camp was situated atop
the levee, which meant they were living on top of
what was essentially a muddy hill. Meanwhile, they had little
to no protection from the elements, as there were exceedingly
few tents, which meant the roasted in the heat and
humidity during the day and shivered during the cold and

(28:41):
windy nights, all the while being exposed to the wind
and the rain. It was and this treatment in the
Star contrast to how the whites were treated in the
city that led Alice to sing quote, I want to
tell everybody that Greenville's a good old town, which, to
be clear, is not a good thing, as it's a
veiled way of saying that it's a place running the
old ways, being in the classic southern good old boy

(29:03):
Reese's kind of way. The song in that line, in particular,
then was a secret warning to stay away. Throughout the

(29:42):
course of the nineteen twenty seven flood, the Red Cross
would operate one hundred and fifty four concentration camps in
these seven the flood rapid states. Now, not all these
camps had issues, but a significant number did. However, the
one that would ultimately draw the most attention was, of course,
the won in Greenville. The mainstream press, however, would generally
ignore these issues, still rumors about it that things are

(30:03):
not all sunshine and rainbows in these Red Cross camps. Indeed,
the understanding in some quarters whilst the flood had exposed
a true ugly face of the South, and then the
feld of black newspapers like the Chicago Defender to try
and bring this to the publics know this as they wrote, quote, now,
while the whole Southland is under the greatest devastating flood
in its history, the cold line is given its most

(30:24):
rigid enforcement. The Pittsburgh Courier, another African American paper, would
similarly note that quote in times of stress, people reveal
their souls, and the South during this time was definitely
experiencing a time of stress, as quote, the flood is
brought home to Negroes. To fact that the would South
is still in its attitude toward the negro The spirit
stands floods, fires, and hurricanes. Physically it may be a

(30:46):
new South, socially and psychologically it is the same old South.
It wasn't just vague allegations either, as in May, the
Chicago Defender would run headlines like quote refugees herded like
cattle to stop escape from pa end quote deny food
to flood sufferers relief bodies issue worker starve rule, while
the Pittsburgh Courier would write quote conscript labor gangs keep

(31:10):
flood refugees in legal bondage as a rand stories, effectively
detailing not only efforts to keep sharecroppers from fleeing the
flooded region, but also how black refugees were effectively being enslaved.
And it wasn't just African Americans across the country learning
of these abuses either, as progressive whites were also being
alerted to the conditions in the flooded region and in
Greenville in particular. Now, these revelations about Greenville and the

(31:33):
Red Cross camps in general were important to Herbert Hoover
as he was looking to run for president. In doing so,
he notably did not have the support of the political
professionals in the Republican Party, which meant he needed all
the help he could get, namely with the Supreme Court.
Out long White's only primaries. African Americans and white progressives
and intellectuals who actually cared about African Americans became a

(31:56):
fairly crucial voting block that Hoover needed to hold on
to if he wanted to to secure his shot at
the presidency. Now, Hoover had been warned that trouble was
brewing by Claude Barnett, who ran the Associated Negro Press
as Claude, after spending time in the flooded region, had
warned the great humanitarian and President Jehopeful that rumors abound
it that could potentially cause a scandal. Barnett also wasn't

(32:18):
alone in warning Hoover either, as others like Kansas Republican
Senator Arthur Kapper warned of protesters who alleged that black
refugees were being mistreated. Then there was prominent social worker
and soon to be recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize,
Jane Adams, who alerted Whover that quote charges of race
discrimination were swirling. As such, she urged him to appoint

(32:38):
a quote colored committee to investigate what was going on.
Not wanting a scandal to derailist candidacy, Hoover then reached
out to the head of the relief Everrett Henry Baker,
to ask him to look into these accusations, which Baker
agreed to do, even though he had already been queried
by the associated Negro press and had declared, quote, the
American Red Cross makes noicetation as to creed, politics, or

(33:01):
anything else in its relief work. Indeed, Baker would assert,
quote the way the Red Cross was treating the Negro
in the disaster was much better than the treatment received
by the Negro in normal circumstances, And to be fair,
in some cases, Baker was not wrong. Indeed, a endable
ACP activists from Pine Bluff, Arkansas would report that, under
the leadership of the Red Cross quote, never before have

(33:24):
I seen the color line obliterated to the same extent.
The dominant thought appeared to be to relieve suffering, save humanity,
care for the needy, regardless of color. The thing was
that didn't hold true across to board. For example, one
question about the accusations concerning the treatment of blacks, some
Red Cross chapters just basically refused to answer the question,
while others would admit that the accusations of colored refugees

(33:47):
being prevented from leaving were true, although they would give
excuses as to why that was, like, for example, the
Mississippi Board of Health ordering them to prevent the black
refugees from leaving. That being said, the head of one
camp would actually admit that quote, it is the desire
of all concerned that labor b returned to places from
which they were forced to leave, Meaning they were working

(34:08):
hand in hand with local authorities and plantation owners to
keep these sharecroppers from leaving, not because that's what was
best for the sharecroppers, but because it was best for
the plantation owners. Now. Upon receiving this information, the first
instinct to Hoover and those closest to him wasn't to,
you know, put a stop to these abuses, but to
just keep a little things. Indeed, Hoover's friend and liberal

(34:29):
journalist Will Irwin, rather than exposing what was happening, instead
attempted to mollify the black community during his visits to
the affected area. The problem, at least in Erwin's opinion,
was that Walter White of the NAACP, who Erwin considered
to be a quote unquote fanatic, was already on the case.
You see, Walter, who was light skinned with blue eyes
and blonde hair, could pass his white, which then allowed him,

(34:51):
during his visits to Mississippi to get answers to questions
that he otherwise wouldn't have been able to ask. White then,
upon returning to New York would Hony Prescott It's only
twenty seventh of May, in which he praised the Red
Cross efforts in general, while also condemning what he had
witnessed in Vicksburg, before notably adding that he had been
prevented from visiting Greenville completely. Northern papers, including The New

(35:13):
York Times, in a New York Carol Tribune would then
run articles containing Walter's remarks, while he personally pen an
article on the subject for the Nation. Hooever, meanwhile, remained
less interested in fixing the situation than in keeping it
as quiet as possible. To that end, the presidential hopeful
reached out to Robert Russom Moulten, the man who had
taken over as he had at the Tuskegee Institute for

(35:33):
Booker T. Washington Mountain. Ucy was sort of seen as
the ambassador of his race, and that he was the
black man that powerful white politicians consulted. As such, Moton
was a man who held some influence to do good,
but in doing so, he was not the type of
man who would make too much of a fuss or
ask for too much change, as the white people who
consulted him would not appreciate such behavior, which is to

(35:56):
say that Mowton wasn't exactly popular among more radical affront
Frican Americans. To give you an idea the type of
person a Moan was, he liked to tell a story
about how his father, as an unsaved man, had ended
up behind the Union lines during the war. Yet, despite
being titnally free. At this point, his father had returned
to his plantation, as he had given his master his
promise to stay with him until the war was over.

(36:19):
Now we have no idea that actually happened or not,
but it is notable that this is the story he
liked to tell whites, as not only did he recognize
that this would make him more appealing to them, but
because it also in some ways exemplified his philosophy than
simply by acting honorably he would be able to convince
white people to respond in kind and thus improve the

(36:39):
conditions for his people. Indeed, he was convinced that radicals
had the wrong approach in loudly demanding and fighting for change. Instead,
it was better to appease the whites and get them
to gradually come to your way of thinking, which explains
why he was chosen to take over the Tuskegee Institute,
as it very much sought to work with the white
power structure and not confronted in any meaningful away. In fact,

(37:01):
when Mohen was asked by the local white power structure
to assist him in their efforts to keep their black
labor force from leaving, he responded by issuing a radio
address urging Southern blacks to stay. Mowen then unsurprisingly saw
this meeting with Hoover as an opportunity. Hoover, after all,
was powerful. In fact, Hoover was in prime position to
become the next President of the United States, which men

(37:22):
if Mohden could come to Hoover's aid, now he would
be in prime position to influency president himself. Hoover would
even make a point of hinting that he had significant
plans in the works to help the nation's black population.
It was and up to moan the smooth things over
and generally keep the ugly details about the flood relief
under ramps so it didn't blow up and become a
scandal that could undermine Hoover's candidacy and by extension, his

(37:44):
plans to aid Moon's people. Hoover, then, based upon Mohan's recommendations,
announced the creation of a Colored Advisory Commission on the
very same day that the newspapers picked up Walter White
story about what was happening in some of the Red
Cross camps, effectively looking to get ahead of this story
and looking proactive by having his new Colored Advisory Commission
investigate this matter. A commission that consisted of sixteen prominent

(38:07):
black men and two women, and which would be led
by Boten himself. Indeed, Bowten personally selected each and every
member of the Commission as such, they were largely men
and women like himself, meaning they knew how to appease
white people and not appear threatening or too radical. Indeed,
the closest any one of them came to being quote
unquote radical with Sidney Redman, who had led a group

(38:28):
of African Americans in petitioning the Mississippi legislature for voting rights.
In fact, a so called radical behavior ensured that Redmen
would not actually take part in the commission, as the
Governor of Mississippi and his floods are both remember Redman's
petition for voting rights and objected to his presence on
the board. Moten, then, as he was wont to do,
acquiesced and just quietly excluded Redmen from the Commission simply

(38:51):
by not informing him when and where they were meeting.
As you see, Mowten very much knew and understood why
he had been selected. His goal then wasn't so much
to help the people in the camps, bought to help
Hoover keep this from becoming a scandal, as that way
he hoped Hoover would feel indebted to him once he
became president. Meanwhile, as all of these political machinations were underway,

(39:11):
the situation in Greenville was about to get worse, as
by this time late May, the water had receded enough
that about half the city was accessible again. Yet, just
as people were starting the word to make things somewhat
normal again, where came they? Yet another floodcress was coming
down the river. So to try and prevent losing what
they had just regained, plans were put into motion in

(39:31):
Greenville to plug the gaps that had been gouged into
the levee protecting the city, which promised to be quite
the undertaking, as there were stall several thousand feet worth
of gaps that stall on water flowing through them at
a rate of eight miles an hour. It was then
estimated that they were going to need something like a
thousand men working twenty four hours a day so as
to fill these gaps in time, and of course, the

(39:52):
plan was that the vast majority of them undertaking this
work would be black. Greenville City Council then would announce
these plans in a public ba that everyone was encouraged
to attend, during which the council voted on a resolution
that read quote, we proposed to close the gaps of
protection LEVI before the coming rise. To do this, free
libor is required. We hope to do the work with volunteers,

(40:15):
which will be asked for tonight. If, however, sufficient volunteers
do now appear available, then conscription means will be used.
And it was seemingly understood by all in attendance that
the only people who would be conscripted were black men.
In response, several black men in the audience spoke out
against the policy of conscription, asserting that if white people
put their guns away and let the black residents of

(40:37):
Greenville work out their own system for organizing this undertaking,
they would not only have their workforce, but a much
more effective one at that. As they would explain, they
were residents of Greenville too, and they did now want
to see the city deluged again, especially since it would
be their own houses most at risk. This proposal was
an accepted by the city's white leaders, which, in turn,

(40:57):
for their undermind will Percy's authority and plans, and indeed
without the use of force eight thousand men went to
work on the levee, working every day round the clock,
hunches at a time for eight days straight. They filled
sandbags and hauled them into position to not only fill
the gas, but also further raise the head of the
levee so that when the wooters came again in rows
two feet higher than the hided the levee itself, Greenville

(41:20):
was still protected. Yet the retreating waters only meant more
working hard times with the black refugees, because when the
water went down it was no longer possible to transport
goods by boat. This then meant that everything had to
go by wagon, which had to be hauled through knee
deep butter and waste deep mud. And of course African
Americans were the ones expected to do all this labor.

(41:40):
And it wasn't just hauling goods either, as the wooters
had left behind four to eight inches of mud which
coated everywhere they had been. Now this wasn't your normal
mud either, as this mud was described as smelling like
dung mixed with swamp gas, a stench that was then
further mixed with the smell of millions of dead and
decaying fish and crawfish that had been left behind by
the foot Plus, all the formerly flooded buildings were also

(42:03):
now infested with all the various insects, spiders, frogs, and
sneaks that had made these structures their homes during the flood.
A lot of work then had to be done to
clean up and restore the city, work that, just like
the repair of the levees and the hauling of goods,
was considered to be quote unquote n word work. Meanwhile,
as all this was going down, while Percy was doing
his best to keep the true ugly face of Greenville

(42:24):
from being exposed for the rest of the country to see.
For example, when the Red Cross started looking into accusations
of fraud, like say, charging black people for supplies that
were meant to be distributed for free, or white merchants
taken the Red Crosses free supplies and stockpiling them to
later solve for their own profit, Will responded by making
a big stink about how offended he was that they

(42:44):
were looking into Greenville, his Greenville. In fact, he was
so offended that he threatened to resign from his post
working as he had of the Red Cross efforts in
the area. As in Will's mind, if he was going
to be in charge of Greenville. He should be completely
in charge of Greenville, with no one looking over him
or anyone else's shoulder, a tactic that somewhat surprisingly weren't
as he ran cross backed off. Although as much as

(43:06):
anything else, that feels like maybe they weren't super interested
in doing the investigation in the first place, and thus
were more than happy to back off. Regardless, The situation
in Greenville soon came to a head when two cops
are sent to gather a big crew to work the levee,
meaning they had orders to statch up a bunch of
African Americans so as to force him to work on
the levee without pay. Now, one of the men that

(43:28):
these two cops targeted was James Gooden, who had actually
just finished a shift on the levee. More importantly, though,
whilst the fact that Gooden was a well respected figure
in the black community, plus crucially he was also acquainted
with the percys, meaning he had plenty of reason to
expect a certain level of protection considering these prominent ties.
Thing was one of these cops, James Moseley, was due

(43:48):
to the job and so as far as he knew
or was concerned there was no difference between Gooden and
any other black man that he was ordering to get
on the truck, or to put it in his own parlance,
all and words were the same, and so when Gooden
refused to get on the truck and even went so
far as to walk into his own home ignoring the
CoP's orders, Mosey pursued him into the dwelling, repeatedly staying

(44:08):
stuff like and word you're going to work, and word
don't give no back talk, and word get your black
ass in that truck, throughout all of which Gooden tried
to de escalate the situation, insisting that he had just
gotten finished working, he wasn't back talking Mosey, and just
asking Mosey not to pull his gun on him. The
next thing that anyone knew, though, was he sounded a

(44:29):
gunshot hiring out of James Gooden's home. Local blackson rushed
inside to see what had happened, and upon finding good
and shot, they rushed him to the hospital. As to
what had happened, while Mosey had claimed that Gooden had
grabbed for his gun and that's why he had shot him,
Gooden on the way to the hospital however, would tell
him much different story before utimately dying from his wounds
after the doctor tried to save his life by amputating

(44:51):
his arm. Now, the news of the shooting death of
the prominent James Gooden by a white cop spread like
wildfire through the black community, and as it did, work
all across the city came to a halt. Unloading bargess,
transporting supplies, cleaning out white businesses all came to a
screeching halt. Greenville's black population, upon it, plainly was enraged
that the prominent, well respected member of their community had

(45:13):
just been murdered by a white cop. This then was
seemingly the final estraw that had been stacked upon all
the other injustices that they had been forced to endure.
As for Greenville's white population, while they were rightly terrified
at the anger and unity on display by the Blacks
in the city, As there were some ten thousand African
Americans in Greenville compared to just four thousand whites, things

(45:33):
and could get very ugly very fast. To try and
ease these tensions, the authorities arrested Officer mostly, but even
with that, not a single person in the city actually
believed he would be tried for the murder of a
black man, after all, the county prosecutor was the exalted
Cyclops of the local KKK chapter. Realizing that something needed
to be done to alleviate the situation, while Percy took

(45:55):
it upon himself to ease tensions by calling for a
meeting any black church where he would address this issue. Now,
he started off well enough as he addressed he gathered
cround by saying, quote, a good Negro has been killed
by a white policeman. Every white man in town regrets
this from his heart and is ashamed. The policeman is
in jail and will be tried. And that's about the

(46:16):
end of Will saying the right thing. As when Will
looked at at the crowd, he seemly could not believe
the anger and hatred on their faces, as if it
was his fault in his policies. Then it helped to
greet this entire situation and make it as toxic as
it had become. Will then seemed to grow progressively more
outraged in response to their lack of appreciation for all
he had done for them, as he now stated, quote,

(46:38):
for four months, I have struggled in word and done
without sleep in order to help you negroes, Every white
man in town has done the same thing, a statement
which may sound ludicrous to you and to everyone in
attendance that night, given the fact that, without fail, every
bit of hard labor done in the city sense to
flood had been done by African Americans. The thing is,
that's where you don't understand. As Will would explain, quote,

(47:02):
we white people could have left you to shift for yourselves. Instead,
we stayed with you and worked with you day and night.
During all this time, you negroes did nothing, nothing for
yourselves or for us, which was a bald faced lie,
as again, the black community had done everything from unloading
and transporting supplies to cleaning up and restoring the town,
all without being paid. In fact, they had basically been

(47:23):
and saved again because while the white population in Greenville
hadn't received the relief supplies for free with no strings
attached as intended, the black population, in contrast, had to
labor for free without pay, just so they could eat. Yet,
despite this reality that he himself had created, Will carried
on with his self right to speech, declaring that it
was quote because of your sinful, shameful laziness because you

(47:47):
refuse to work on your own behalf unless you were paid.
One of your race has been killed. As you see.
Will had apparently convinced himself that none of what happened
was his fault. Instead, it was all their own, an
idea which he doubled down upon as he stated angrily, quote,
I am not the murderer. The foolish young policeman is
not the murderer. The murterer is you. Your hands are

(48:09):
tripping with blood. Look into each other's faces and see
the shame and fear that God set upon them. Down
on your knees, murderers, and beg your God not to
punish you, as you deserve the choice to deliver such
a statement, especially during such a time of anger and grief.
Then assured that once and for all, any tisy black
people of Greenville thought they had with the Percys and

(48:30):
the town as a whole were now shattered. There had
been a time when they thought the Percys and the
city were different than the rest of the Danta and
the South Greenville, and the Percys, while not treating them
as equals, had seemed to treat them better than most
on their places and people in the South. That feeling though,
was now gone and with no loyalty whatsoever remaining for
the Percys or the white population of Greenville, there would

(48:52):
be no holding back. When the investigators came to town,
they would be told the whole, ugly truth of what
happened in Greenville. So more or various degrees of outrages
throughout the region, like for example, sharecroppers being prevented from leaving,
and would be Greenville that would draw the most attention
yet the story all the investigation, it's fallout and one
of any consequences come from and we'll have to wait

(49:13):
for our next and final episode in the series for
now though, that will have to remain a story for
another time. Thank you for listening to Distorted History. If
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(49:34):
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(49:55):
Once again, thank you for listening and until next time,

(50:22):
La