"Please Send Us Boats"

On this date in 1927, most of the Mississippi River Delta was a huge inland sea, under six to ten feet of water from a broken levee at Mounds Landing, Mississippi. The levee failed on April 21, 1927, sending muddy water surging over an area 60 miles east and west and 90 miles north and south. Twelve miles south of the crevasse, or break, the town of Greenville, Mississippi was quickly besieged by the flood waters. The city was inundated with ten feet of water. Terrified refugees, most of them poor African-Americans took to the top of the town’s levee, the only spot protruding above the raging waters. Searchers can only find homes by following telephone wires in their boats.

Without food, safe water, and shelter, outbreak of disease was inevitable. But local leaders refused to evacuate the refugees, fearing that they would leave the area and remove a large part of the labor pool that the cotton industry depended upon. A sickening display of power and greed, indeed.

‘PLEASE SEND US BOATS,’ PLEADS MURPHREE screamed the headlines of the New Orleans Times Picayune. The craft were needed for the evacuation of Greenville. The Crescent City was on edge as the floodwaters surged southward, threatening to swamp the historic city’s levees.

An even more sickening exhibition of selfishness happened as New Orleans civic leaders convinced the Louisiana Governor to dynamite the St. Bernard levee near New Orleans. The intentional break relieved pressure on the levees at New Orleans, but flooded all of Plaquemines and St. Bernard Parish. Residents lost everything and never received the restitution they were promised. Another travesty of justice.