Mountain Blog

Pack Up All My Cares and Woes

Here's a little flood history lesson from http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/02/1419233

In the spring of 1927, after weeks of incessant rains, the Mississippi River flooded. Racing south from Cairo, Illinois, the river blew away levee after levee, inundating thousands of farms and hundreds of towns, killing as many as a thousand people and leaving nearly a million homeless. The disaster laid bare the feudal between whites and blacks in the South.

As New York Times columnist David Brooks writes, "Blacks were rounded up into work camps and held by armed guards. They were prevented from leaving as the waters rose. A steamer, the Capitol, played "Bye Bye Blackbird" as it sailed away." The racist violence that followed the floods helped persuade many blacks to move north."

posted by Dave Peyton @ 7:12 PM