Rising Tide: Katrina and the Flood of 1927 · 382 words posted 09/01/2005 10:38 AM
Today’s New York Times compared the destruction left in Katrina’s wake to the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, but in terms of both the scope and nature of the disaster the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 is the closer match.
John M. Barry writes about the Flood and its effects in Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America. Then, as now, poor African-Americans bore the brunt of the flood’s punishment. According to Barry, the flood changed America in at least four notable ways:
- The Flood helped put Herbert Hoover in the White House. Hoover, who prior to the flood had been the Secretary of Commerce under Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge, was appointed head of the relief effort. He was able to parlay his heightened popularity to win the Republican nomination for the Presidency in 1928, and from there took the White House.
- The Flood marked the split between the Republican Party and African-Americans. According to Barry, Hoover exploited the trust of African-American leaders during his tenure as head of the relief effort and abandoned that constituency once he became President.
- The Flood set the stage for the New Deal. Prior to the flood, there was no national consensus that large public works and employment programs should be funded by the Federal government. But the government’s massive reconstruction and employment programs in the wake of the flood set a precedent for Roosevelt’s vastly larger programs a decade later.
- Finally, the Flood prompted the African-American exodus from the agrarian South to the industrial North. This migration is best documented in Nicholas Lemann’s excellent The Promised Land.
Barry’s book is as relevant today as when it was published in 1997, even if it’s a discouraging read.
Some commentators on the left have been quick to assign blame to the Bush administration for under-funding levee improvements in 2004. Likewise, Republicans have decried any mention of politics while the floodwaters linger in New Orleans. While calling on Americans to “rise above politics” when responding to disaster may seem noble, such calls are ahistorical and utterly naive. If history is any guide, politicians will scramble for gain at the expense of disadvantaged constituent groups: primarily the poor urban African-Americans and rural whites who suffered the most from both Katrina and the Flood of 1927.
Some things never change.
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2. On Sep 4, 09:07 PM subhero said:
“george bush doesn’t care about black people!”
to influence people’s perception and opinion by deliberately falsifying media coverage is called propaganda.
obeying governmental power by post-editing publicly stated opinions is called censorship.
a system administrating those means is called fascist.
the historic parallels to this are everywhere… #
1. On Sep 4, 02:08 AM smokeonit said:
what should the consequences be? to leave the south and go up north? what should the poor do??? #