The Great Mississippi Flood | Media Storm | 4

American History Tellers

Wondery

Society & Culture, Kids & Family, History, Education For Kids

4.7 • 18.3K Ratings

🗓️ 1 June 2022

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 1927, a slow-moving catastrophe like the Great Mississippi Flood was perfect material for a relatively new medium: radio. Over the airwaves, the flood became the first natural disaster that Americans could follow almost in real time, day by day, as the rising river waters swept away one town after another.

In this episode, Lindsay talks with Susan Scott Parrish, author of The Flood Year 1927: A Cultural History, about the ways Americans far from the Mississippi River experienced the disaster in newspapers, on the radio, and in popular culture. They'll also discuss how entertainers of the time rallied the public to raise funds for recovery, while federal relief efforts only enforced existing socioeconomic and racial divides in the South.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to American History Tellers add free on Amazon Music,
0:05.6	download the app today.
0:07.0	Imagine it's April 26th, 1927.
0:19.1	You're sitting in the stands of a baseball field in Braythwaite, a small village in St. Bernard
0:26.4	Parish, Louisiana. You're a muskrat trapper. You've lived here your whole life, making
0:31.4	your living selling fur. You and your neighbors are furious at the news that your local
0:36.0	levees going to be dynamited. They're saying it's the only way to save New Orleans from rising
0:40.7	floodwaters on the Mississippi River, but they want to divert those floodwaters into your
0:45.1	community, washing away everything you've ever known.
0:48.8	You're sitting among 600 local men. Many of them trappers like you, others are oyster
0:53.5	farmers and fishermen, but all are hoping to commence local authorities not to go through
0:58.1	with the plan.
0:59.6	Sheriff LA Maraud rules your parish with an iron fist. He stands on the field and looks
1:04.6	up into the bleachers.
1:06.2	All right, everyone, settle down. Sure you've heard the news. 50 of the most powerful
1:12.3	men in New Orleans have gotten approval to dynamite our levee.
1:16.1	Raw anger bubbles up inside you as your rise from the stands to speak.
1:20.2	Sheriff, what gives these fat cat bankers the right to drown us out of our homes?
1:24.1	And what will this do to the wetlands where we make our living?
1:27.2	I don't think there's anything for us to do here. They're backed by the state of Louisiana.
1:37.8	Governor himself authorized the plan.
1:40.1	Well, we won't stand for it. We'll go to the levee and guard it. We'll sleep on our
	...

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