Notes

ABBREVIATIONS OF FREQUENTLY CITED SOURCES

AAH	Andrew Atkinson Humphreys
AAHP	Andrew Atkinson Humphreys Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
ACP	Association of Commerce Papers, Special Collections, Earl Long Library, University of New Orleans
ALP	James B. Eads, Addresses, Letters, and Papers of James B. Eads
CBP	Claude Barnett Papers, Chicago Historical Society
CP	Caplan Papers, Louisiana State Museum, History Division, New Orleans
D&PLCP	Delta & Pine Land Company Papers, Special Collections, Mitchell Library, Mississippi State University, Starkville
ECHPC	Emergency Clearing House Publicity Committee, in Caplan Papers, Louisiana State Museum, History Division, New Orleans
ECP	Elmer Corthell Papers, Special Collections, John Hay Library, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island
EP	Eads Papers, Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis
FC	Friends of the Cabildo Oral History Collection, Louisiana Room, New Orleans Public Library
GD-T	Greenville Democrat-Times
HFCCH	House Flood Control Committee Hearings, 70th Congress, 1st Session, November 1927 through January 1928
HHPL	Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, West Branch, Iowa
JBE	James Buchanan Eads
JC-L	Jackson Clarion-Ledger
LC	Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
LL	William Alexander Percy, Lanterns on the Levee: Recollections of a Planter’s Son
LP	LeRoy Percy
MC-A	Memphis Commercial-Appeal
MDAH	Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson
M&LP	Monroe & Lemann Papers, Offices of Monroe & Lemann, New Orleans
NA	National Archives, Washington, D.C.
NOCA	New Orleans City Archives, Louisiana Room, New Orleans Public Library
NOI	New Orleans Item
NOS	New Orleans States
NOT	New Orleans Tribune
NOT-P	New Orleans Times-Picayune
NYT	New York Times
P&H	Andrew Atkinson Humphreys and Henry Abbot, Report on the Physics and Hydraulics of the Mississippi River
PFP	Percy Family Papers, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson
RCP	Red Cross Papers, Record Group 200, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
RRMP	Robert Russa Moton Papers, Special Collections, Tuskegee University Library, Tuskegee, Alabama
SBV	St. Bernard Voice
TUL	Special Collections, Howard-Tilton Library, Tulane University, New Orleans
WAP	William Alexander Percy

PROLOGUE

“The roaring Mississippi”: MC-A, April 15, 1927.

“rainy”: Henry Waring Ball diaries, MDAH.

“at 12 it commenced”: Ibid.

from 6 to 15 inches: GD-T, April 16, 1927.

greatest rainfall ever: “Report of the Sewage and Water Board of New Orleans, July 1927”; GD-T, April 16, 1927; NYT, April 16, 1927; Ball diaries, MDAH, April 15 and 16, 1927.

put on their gun boots: Interview with Florence Sillers Ogden on Mississippi Public Television, “The Flood of 1927,” complete transcript of interview in MDAH; interview with Frank Hall, December 16, 1992.

“I saw a whole tree”: Interview with William Jones, March 2, 1993; interview with Moses Mason, March 1, 1993; GD-T, April 21, 1928.

3 million cubic feet of water: Bulletin of the American Railway Engineering Association 29, no. 297 (July 1927); report of Army engineers quoted in NOT-P, April 25, 1927.

CHAPTER ONE

“one of the most”: Quoted in Todd Shallat, Structures in the Stream, p. 175.

“commanding talents”: Quoted in David McCullough, The Great Bridge, p. 347.

five greatest engineers: Universal Engineer 55, no. 1 (1932), cited in Florence Dorsey, Road to the Sea: The Story of James B. Eads and the Mississippi River, p. 307n.

Washington Irving was impressed: Charles van Ravensway, St. Louis: An Informal History of the City and Its People, 1764-1865, p. 208.

“towering ambition”: Emerson Gould, Fifty Years on the Mississippi, p. 485.

“more dangerous than”: Quoted in Floyd Clay, A Century on the Mississippi, p. 11.

“The history of the world”: Mentor Williams, “The Background of the Chicago River and Harbor Convention,” p. 223.

credited as its inventor: See for example Webster’s Biographical Dictionary (Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam & Co., 1956), p. 460.

“From young manhood”: Louis How, James B. Eads, pp. 54-57.

“the personal magnetism”: Dorsey, p. 130.

Eads put on the bell: Dorsey, p. 16; How, pp. 3-8.

“I had occasion to descend”: Eads, ALP, p. 153.

need not join the gold rush: How, p. 19.

“It requires little”: Dorsey, p. 30.

“To an Absent Husband”: Published in Davenport Gazette, August 17, 1948, EP.

“I do hope and pray”: JBE to Martha Eads, August 16, 1852, Churchill Library.

“dangerous and exposed places”: Dorsey, pp. 32-33.

“whose previous pursuits”: Quoted in Joseph Gies, Bridges and Men, p. 150.

“iron muscles”: How, p. 55.

“Really he seems”: Ibid., pp. 54-57.

“Never let even a pawn”: How, p. 11.

“shut[ting] so emphatically”: Ibid., pp. 54-57.

“Fortune favors the brave”: Ibid., p. 57.

“Whatever credit is due”: Gould, p. 592.

Eads argued for building: L. U. Reavis, St. Louis: The Future Great City of the World, p. 177; Dorsey, p. 49.

“confidential”: Bates to JBE, April 16, 1861, EP.

“is greatly superior”: Quoted in Dorsey, p. 65.

“Only give me”: Ibid., p. 84.

possibly had access: John Kouwenhoven, “The Designing of the Eads Bridge,” p. 547.

devoted an entire chapter: James McCabe, Great Fortunes and How They Were Made, pp. 209-220.

CHAPTER TWO

“ran wild”: Henry Humphreys, Andrew Atkinson Humphreys, p. 26.

“a source of great”: Ibid., p. 35.

First he blocked a rival: AAH to C. Graham, November 21, 1858, AAHP; Gary Ryan, “War Department Topographical Bureau, 1831-1863,” Ph.D. diss., p. 201.

“serious irregularity…”: Abert to Secretary of War, quoted in Ryan, p. 188.

“capitoline guards”: Ryan, p. 199.

“I went to science”: Henry Humphreys, p. 190.

“very pleasant”: Catton, Grant Takes Command, p. 231.

“It is a work”: Henry Humphreys, p. 190.

“To sound knowledge”: Ibid., p. 57.

“the work of my life”: AAH to Charles Lyell, May 28, 1866, AAHP.

In 1835: The best brief discussion of early engineering is an essay by Terry Reynolds, “The Engineer in 19th Century America,” in Terry Reynolds, ed., The Engineer in America; see also Richard Kirby and Philip Laurson, Early Years of Modern Civil Engineering.

“not above 3”: Gene Lewis, Charles Ellet, Jr.: The Engineer as Individualist, p. 10.

“The wind was high”: Quoted in McCullough, The Great Bridge, p. 77.

he built a catwalk: Ibid., p. 77.

“At the mouth”: P&H, p. 94.

physicist Werner Heisenberg: James Gleick, Chaos, p. 121.

Engineering theories and techniques: Interview with James Tuttle, Mississippi River Commission, in Vicksburg, October 14, 1993.

“running upstream”: AAH to Lee, March 18, 1851, AAHP.

During floods: D. O. Elliott, The Improvement of the Lower Mississippi River for Flood Control and Navigation, vol. 1, p. 94.

for the last 450: Martin Reuss, Army Corps of Engineers, Humphreys Engineering Center, Springfield, Virginia, supplied these figures.

At least some geologists: Philip King, The Evolution of North America, p. 77.

Over thousands of years: Harold Fisk, Geological Investigation of the Alluvial Valley of the Lower Mississippi, p. 11.

this sedimentary deposit: Elliott, vol. 1, p. 17.

a book arguing: William Elam, Speeding Floods to the Sea.

“Concentration of force”: Report of the Louisiana Senate Standing Committee on Levees and Drainage, March 21, 1850.

“The public mind here”: AAH to Capt. J. J. Lee, March 18, 1851, HP.

“We have been to see”: Ellet to his mother, March 2, 1851, quoted in Lewis, p. 139.

“I cannot understand”: AAH to Lee, March [illegible day], 1851, AAHP; see also Todd Shallat, Structures in the Stream, p. 176.

“a most active partisan”: AAH to Lee, November 12, 1851, AAHP.

“What is the reason”: Undated note, AAHP.

“The clay itself”: P&H, p. 98.

“The opinions of Frisi”: AAH to Lee, March 18, 1851, AAHP.

“Facts of great interest”: Ibid.

“Never was there”: AAH to Lee, April 22, 1851, AAHP.

“You see how”: AAH to Lee, May 2, 1851, AAHP.

his superiors reprimanded him: See for example AAH to Lee, April 6, 1851, AAHP.

“a lesion of Enervation”: Certificate of Surgeon Randall, Mississippi Delta Survey records, NA, Record Group 77 (hereafter, RG).

Ellet began: Ibid., pp. 32-33.

“fail to give”: Charles Ellet, Report on the Overflows of the Delta of the Mississippi, 32nd Cong. 1st sess., 1852, Sen. Exec. Doc. 20; see also, House Doc., vol. 24, 63rd Cong., Doc. 918, which includes Ellet’s report reprinted, p. 27.

“a delusive hope”: Ibid., p. 28.

“The water is supplied”: Ibid., p. 28.

he proposed a comprehensive: Ibid., pp. 32-33.

“The continued illness”: Ibid., p. 24.

CHAPTER THREE

“desirous of taking”: AAH recounts this in a letter to Charles Lyell, May 28, 1866, AAHP.

“the work of my life”: Ibid.

“schooled”: Henry Humphreys, p. 324.

“an extremely neat man”: Harold Round, “A. A. Humphreys,” Civil War Times Illustrated 4 (February 1966).

“I do like”: Catton, Grant Takes Command, p. 231.

“Gentlemen”: Bruce Catton, Glory Road (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1952), pp. 72, 280.

“The charge of my”: AAH to his wife, December 14, 1862, AAHP.

“I felt like”: Quoted in Henry Humphreys, p. 190.

“In ten or fifteen”: Ibid., p. 179.

“The division has made”: Ibid.

“General Humphreys”: Round, “A. A. Humphreys.”

“It is acknowledged”: Henry Humphreys, p. 182.

“The space occupied”: Richard Wheeler, Witness to Gettysburg, p. 207.

“The newspaper correspondents”: Henry Humphreys, pp. 200-202.

“Why, anyone who”: Ibid., p. 190.

“I prefer infinitely”: Ibid., pp. 200-202.

“My mortification”: Ibid., p. 202.

“I know that”: AAH to his wife, February 26, 1865, AAHP.

“I have good reason”: AAH to his wife, November 25, 1864, AAHP.

“I do not believe”: Humphreys to J. de Peyster, June 1, 1883, AAHP.

“The reputation justly due”: Henry Humphreys, p. 219.

“Its publication constitutes”: New Orleans Daily Crescent, January 30, 1866.

Report upon the Physics: The complete title reads Report upon the Physics and Hydraulics of the Mississippi River; upon the Protection of the Alluvial Region Against Overflow; and upon the Deepening of the Mouths: Based upon Surveys and Investigations Made Under the Acts of Congress Directing the Topographical and Hydrographical Survey of the Delta of the Mississippi River, with Such Investigations as Might Lead to Determine the Most Practicable Plan for Securing It from Inundation, and the Best Mode of Deepening the Channels at the Mouths of the River.

“I am on the verge”: Quoted in Steve Rosenberg and John M. Barry, The Transformed Cell (New York: Putnam, 1992), p. 7.

“the crowning proof”: P&H, p. 324.

“‘I approve much’”: Ibid., title page.

“Every river phenomenon”: Ibid., p. 30.

“The investigations”: Ibid., pp. 404-407.

“The legitimate consequences”: Ibid., pp. 30, 186, 387.

“would, if executed”: Ibid., p. 381.

“The investigations of”: Ibid., p. 394.

“The task of criticism”: Ibid., p. 310.

“admirably executed”: Ibid., pp. 120, 199, 219.

“Mr. Ellet’s is”: Ibid., p. 219.

even today his data: Hunter Rouse and Simon Ince, History of Hydraulics, pp. 177-79.

“groundless”: Report of the Joint Committee on Levees, Louisiana State Legislature, 1850, Louisiana State Museum, History Division, New Orleans.

“It has been demonstrated”: P&H, p. 417.

CHAPTER FOUR

“far more onerous”: AAH to Senator Henry Wilson, January 26, 1869, AAHP.

“be relieved from duty”: AAH to Secretary of War John Schofield, March 9, 1869, and March 13, 1869, AAHP.

He sought to have: See AAH to Secretary of War, November 2, 1876, AAHP.

Humphreys relieved: For more on this incident, see Arthur Frazier, “Daniel Farrand Henry’s Cup Type ‘Telegraphic’ River Current Meter,” pp. 541-565.

“It may be properly”: Missouri Republican, June 25, 1854.

Chicagoans charged: Wyatt Belcher, The Economic Rivalry Between St. Louis and Chicago, 1850-1880, p. 23.

But as a result: A famous lawsuit funded by St. Louis steamboat interests sought the destruction of the bridge, which would have choked railroad and western development. Abraham Lincoln argued for the railroads and won a hung jury; the bridge stayed and others were built.

twenty-two Chicago firms: Belcher, p. 157.

His experience with: Howard Miller and Quinta Scott in The Eads Bridge suggest that Eads was simply lucky in his choice of steel, and in the development of chromium steel. More likely he knew the metal fairly well, chiefly from his European travels, a probable visit to the Krupp works, and artillery experience. See also John Kouwenhoven, “The Designing of the Eads Bridge,” passim.

“impossible…”: Dorsey, p. 96.

roughly one out of every: McCullough, The Great Bridge, p. 390.

“I cannot consent”: Calvin Woodward, History of the St. Louis Bridge, pp. 15-16.

“unqualified disapproval”: Dorsey, p. 105.

“It is absolutely certain”: Elmer Corthell, “Remarks to the Western Society of Engineers, June 4, 1890, Missouri Historical Society.

“Anyone who can”: Miller and Scott, pp. 78-85.

He charmed: Frederick Finley, letter to editor, St. Louis Globe-Democrat, July 9, 1950; Gies, pp. 165-166.

“have constant control”: How, p. 15.

“about our confidential”: Kouwenhoven, “The Designing of the Eads Bridge,” p. 535.

“The very machinery”: Dorsey, p. 130.

a product he helped develop: John Kouwenhoven, “James Buchanan Eads,” p. 86.

“It is necessary”: Walter Lowrey, “Navigational Problems at the Mouth of the Mississippi River, 1689-1880,” Ph.D. diss., p. 203.

“The solution of this problem”: NYT, May 15, 1873.

“We must get ready”: AAH to Cyrus Comstock, March 2, 1873, Comstock Papers, LC.

“a bitter and unrelenting”: Corthell, “Remarks.”

“the river interests”: Calvin Woodward, p. 265.

“as many hours”: Ibid.

“If a thousand”: Ibid.

“The Board”: Ibid., p. 270.

a secret agreement: See memo in Eads’ handwriting dated July 1, 1874, in EP.

received Eads warmly: For an account of this meeting, see William Taussig, “Personal Recollections of General Grant,” Missouri Historical Society Publications 2 (1903), pp. 1-13; also Dorsey, p. 152; Calvin Woodward, pp. 262-286.

“badly designed”: Woodward, p. 270.

“[One] of those”: Kirby and Laurson, p. 162.

“soul became immersed”: Carl Condit, “Sullivan’s Skyscrapers as the Expression of Nineteenth Century Technology,” pp. 78-93.

CHAPTER FIVE

“Whatever the Delta”: Robert Brandfon, The Cotton Kingdom of the New South (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), pp. 24-29.

“On the second”: U. S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, pp. 266-271.

“If we make”: Quoted in Benjamin G. Humphreys, Floods and Levees on the Mississippi River, p. 39.

“exhaustively treated”: Letter from Secretary of War, 43rd Cong., 1st sess., House Doc. 220, p. 109.

“my death blow”: Lowrey, “Navigational Problems at the Mouth of the Mississippi River, 1698-1880,” Ph.D. diss., p. 376.

“The canal is”: AAH letter, January 15, 1874, quoted in Corthell, A History of the Jetties at the Mouth of the Mississippi, p. 34.

“mud lumps”: Lowrey, “Navigational Problems,” p. 11.

“masses of tough clay”: P&H, p. 442.

“If a fleet”: De Bow’s Review 18 (April 1855), p. 512.

“only a scattering”: Capt. Fuller to Col. Stephen Long, January 24, 1859, NA, RG 77.

“a foolish attempt”: Lowrey, “Navigational Problems,” p. 201.

“improvement of”: Dorsey, p. 91.

“The West is”: Lowrey, “Navigational Problems,” p. 289.

“I am well satisfied”: McAlester to Payne, October 10, 1868, quoted in ibid., p. 276.

“It is idle”: New Orleans Picayune, March 6, 1869.

“[T]he Essayons”: Lowrey, “Navigational Problems,” p. 313.

“This is a tissue”: Ibid.

“told me yesterday”: Higby to Capt. Charles Howell, quoted in ibid., p. 313.

“to run us down”: Howell to AAH, July 20, 1871, NA, RG 77.

“Its construction”: Lowrey, “Navigational Problems,” p. 303.

“are not in condition”: New Orleans Daily Times, February 14, 1874.

“Can it be possible”: New Orleans Picayune, February 8, 1874.

“Never was an honest”: New Orleans Daily Times, February 15, 1874; New Orleans Picayune, February 15, 1874.

“In talking over”: Corthell, “Remarks.”

Stone’s reversal: Lowrey, “Navigational Problems,” p. 378.

“Socially Mr. Eads”: New Orleans Times-Democrat, March 18, 1887.

He also bought: See memorandum of understanding in Eads handwriting dated July 1, 1874; letter from James Wilson to JBE, July 6, 1876; memo by JBE, July 22, 1876, all in EP. The late John Kouwenhoven collected this and a vast store of additional material on Eads; thanks to John Brown of the University of Virginia for sharing it with me.

single most vital issue: Lowrey, “Navigational Problems,” p. 391.

“I need not say”: Barnard to Comstock, April 14, 18, 22, and July 5, 1874, Comstock Papers, LC.

West Point had been using: See a superb article by Martin Reuss, “Politics and Technology in the Army Corps of Engineers,” Technology and Culture 26, no. 1 (January 1985).

members of the American Society: Corthell, A History of the Jetties, p. 239.

“Every attempt”: Congressional Record, 43rd Cong., 1st sess., pp. 5367-5368.

“Thirty-seven years”: Quoted in Corthell, A History of the Jetties, p. 21.

“the real bed”: Ibid., p. 98.

“The annual advance”: Ibid., p. 21.

“absurd”: JBE to S. A. Hurlbut, U.S. House, May 29, 1874, attacking Humphreys’ report, in Eads, ALP, p. 153.

“We have laid”: Dorsey, p. 173.

“Disasters and”: Eads, ALP, p. 153.

he now claimed: Dorsey, p. 176.

The board estimated: Wright to AAH, November 30, 1874, House Exec. Doc. 25, 43rd Cong., 1st sess., pp. 1-2; and Report, Board of 1874, 43rd Cong., 1st sess., January 13, 1875, Exec. Doc. 114, quoted in Lowrey, “Navigational Problems, p. 404.

“The accompanying discussion”: R. E. McMath to AAH, May 7, 1874, NA, RG 77.

“If the profession”: JBE, address at a banquet in his honor at St. Louis, March 23, 1875, EP.

“undertake the work”: Ibid.

CHAPTER SIX

“The alluvial regions”: See Annual Report of the Chief of Engineers for 1875, pp. 540-550, esp. p. 542.

“By such correction”: Quoted in Corthell, A History of the Jetties, pp. 28-34.

Creoles: In New Orleans, a “Creole” was a descendant of French or Spanish settlers.

“Captain Eads has fought”: Quoted in New Orleans Picayune, May 12, 1875.

“The first indication”: Quoted in Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi (New York: Bantam, 1990), p. 134.

the deepest water: Corthell, A History of the Jetties, pp. 70-71.

“[T]ransfers of cargoes”: JBE to Leovy, June 11, 1875, and January 24, 1876, Henry P. Leovy Papers, Historic New Orleans Collection.

“Assurance of success”: New Orleans Picayune, June 13, 1875.

“any ‘bloated bondholder’”: Eads to Corthell, June 11, 1875, Kouwenhoven Collection.

Eads would pay: Lowrey, “Navigational Problems,” pp. 416-417.

The Dutch method: Corthell, A History of the Jetties, pp. 75-83.

a new sandbar: New Orleans Democrat, May 3, 5, and 10, 1876; New Orleans Picayune, May 10, 1876.

Howell pressed his attack: New Orleans Democrat, May 3, 5, 6, and 10, 1876; New Orleans Picayune, May 10, 1876.

“had no authority”: Comstock to Secretary of War George McCrary, May 2, 1877, Comstock Papers, LC.

“Please instruct General Comstock”: JBE to Taft, May 9, 1876, quoted in Corthell, A History of the Jetties, p. 100.

“General Comstock will”: Ibid.

oceangoing steamer Hudson: The account of this incident comes from Corthell, pp. 107-109.

“It is not too much”: Ibid., p. 108.

One such debate: for details see Lowrey, “Navigational Problems,” p. 460.

“Discharge the whole force”: Corthell, A History of the Jetties, p. 156.

“a marked scour”: Ibid., p. 137.

whom he paid $5,000: JBE to Beauregard, January 2, 1877, Beauregard Papers, Louisiana State University.

“The results actually attained”: AAH to Congressman E. W. Robertson, May 1, 1878, AAHP.

“The Laws of Gravity”: Review of Humphreys and Abbot Report,” pamphlet, Missouri Historical Society.

forty-three-page rebuttal: AAH to Abbot, October 20, 1877, AAHP.

“a reply might”: Abbot to AAH, November 21, 1878, and November 26, 1878, AAHP.

“The work is done”: New Orleans Daily Times, July 11, 1879.

453,681 tons were shipped: Corthell, A History of the Jetties, pp. 235-238; J. Thomas Scharf, History of St. Louis City and County, vol. 2, p. 1126; see also Kouwenhoven Collection.

the second-largest: Arthur Morgan, Dams and Other Disasters, p. 129.

“The present successful”: Quoted in Morgan, pp. 147, 172, 175.

“The plan did not”: Lansing Beach, “The Work of the Corps of Engineers on the Lower Mississippi,” in American Society of Chemical Engineers, Transactions, 1924.

the levees rose higher: HFCCH, p. 1710.

“is held in place”: Elliott, vol. 2, p. 44.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“a very cave”: Percy, LL, p. 272.

“It is not like most”: Twain, pp. 134-135.

“a jungle equal”: Quoted in John C. Willis, “On the New South Frontier,” Ph.D. diss., 1991, p. 18.

One pioneer reported: James Cobb, The Most Southern Place on Earth, p. 15.

“the fetid alligator”: Ibid., p. 44.

“almost worth a man’s life”: Ibid., p. 14.

“Nature knows not”: Alfred Stone, “The Negro in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta,” Publications of the American Economic Association 3, no. 3 (1902), p. 236.

A 1906 scientific assessment: Quoted in Brandfon, The Cotton Kingdom of the New South, pp. 24-29. Brandfon’s book is a classic, particularly strong on the role of railroads in the Delta’s development.

assessed values: De Bow’s Review, October 1858, pp. 438-440.

In 1861: Willie Halsell, “Migration into and Settlement of Leflore County, 1833-1876,” Journal of Mississippi History, 1947, p. 238.

“that great Swamp”: RP&H, p. 24.

“a seething lush hell”: Cobb, p. 6.

“a wilderness and a waste”: Willis, “On the New South Frontier,” Ph.D. diss., pp. 13-17; Florence Sillers, ed., History of Bolivar County, p. 156.

the most profitable: Willis, “On the New South Frontier,” p. 221n.

“more a king”: Memphis Daily Appeal, January 6, 1881.

“on the threshold”: Brandfon, p. 10.

“The foremost branch”: Quoted in Brandfon, p. 14.

a record harvest: Brandfon, p. 20.

“To facilitate trade”: Eads’ speech at the dedication of the grand hall of the St. Louis Merchants Exchange, December 5, 1875, EP.

“the salvation”: Brandfon, p. 76.

“I [am] only trying”: Fish to John Parker, May 31, 1922, quoted in Matthew Schott, “John M. Parker of Louisiana,” Ph.D. diss., Parker Papers at USLL, p. 60.

2,365,214 Delta acres: Brandfon, p. 46.

the state sold 706,000 acres: C. Vann Woodward, Origins of the New South, 1877-1913, p. 119; see also Brandfon, pp. 49-63.

“The coming of”: Sillers, pp. 272, 277, 321.

the Y&MV Railroad: Robert Harrison, Alluvial Empire, p. 117.

The Y&MV soon became: Brandfon, p. 80.

“Black Code”: For more on the Mississippi Black Code, see Cobb; and Eric Foner, Reconstruction.

One man even credited Percy: Percy, LL, pp. 275-276; Foner, p. 174.

initially whites resisted it: Foner, p. 174; Cobb, p. 70.

thousands of blacks came: Vernon Wharton, The Negro in Mississippi, 1865-1890, pp. 107-109; Cobb, p. 83.

More smoothly than elsewhere: Willis, “On the New South Frontier,” pp. 333-335.

“Public sentiment”: Greenville Times, March 24, 1877, quoted in Willis, “On the New South Frontier,” p. 335.

Outside the Delta: Quoted in Cobb, p. 82.

“with unceasing vigilance”: Wharton, p. 115; Cobb, p. 70.

When his sister-in-law: LP to Pullman Co., October 24, 1907. Also see, for example, LP to Rigo & Co., February 16, 1909; wire to I. Aiken, July 22, 1905, all in PFP.

“quote a lower rate”: See, for example, LP to Rigo & Co., February 16, 1909; wire to I. Aiken, July 22, 1905; to Pullman Co., October 24, 1907.

“While, if you should”: LP to his brother Walker Percy, October 11, 1927, PFP.

“it has a tendency”: LP to Judge George Ethridge, May 4, 1929, PFP.

“I think the”: LP to WAP, May 31, 1929, PFP.

except one Wall Street: LP to Walker Percy, November 18, 1907, PFP.

“He read Ivanhoe”: Percy, LL, p. 57.

“No one ever”: Ibid., p. 57.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“bull clique”: Brandfon, p. 114.

Probably a higher proportion: Twelfth Census of the United States, vol. 5, Agriculture, pp. 96-97, quoted in Willis, “On the New South Frontier,” pp. 5, 9; interview, June 9, 1994.

“The South must not”: Outlook, August 3, 1907, pp. 730-732.

“We are without”: Quoted in Robert Brandfon, “The End of Immigration to the Cotton Fields,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 50 (March 1964), p. 600.

these partners included: Brandfon, Cotton Kingdom, p. 93.

“leave no stone unturned”: Ibid., p. 153. Brandfon cites a series of letters between Fish, Percy, Percy’s law partner William Yerger Scott, and U.S. Immigration Commissioner Frank Sargent on the subject in the early 1900s.

“the Delta’s three”: Ibid.

“the Yazoo Valley”: Ibid., pp. 104-111; The Call of the Alluvial Empire, pamphlet, TUL.

over fifty in Greenville: Interview with Frank Hall, March 24, 1992; see also James Loewen, The Mississippi Chinese, 1971.

“eloquence on the subject”: Ernesto R. Milani, “Sunnyside and the Italian Government,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Summer 1991, p. 38; Schott, “John M. Parker of Louisiana,” pp. 132-133.

An asthmatic and weak: Schott, “John M. Parker of Louisiana,” p. 22.

“scarcely a genius”: WAP to Camille Percy, January 9, 1905, PFP.

Governor Andrew Longino: Lewis Baker, The Percys of Mississippi, p. 25.

Parker also disdained: JC-L, November 1902, passim; Parker to Jacob Dickinson, February 25, 1924, Parker Papers, USLL; Roosevelt to Philip Bathel Stewart, November 4, 1902, in Elting E. Morison, ed., Letters of Theodore Roosevelt (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1951), vol. 3, pp. 377-380.

“made any direct request”: Parker to Scott, May 30, 1904, quoted in Schott, p. 104; LP to Fish, November 25, 1905, PFP.

“in every way superior”: Manufacturer’s Record, April 7, 1904, p. 250.

forty-seven Delta: Randolph Boehm, “Mary Grace Quackenbos and the Federal Campaign Against Peonage: The Case of Sunnyside Plantation,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Summer 1991, p. 41.

“Every step taken”: Alfred Stone, “The Negro in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta,” pp. 236-278 passim.

“It is always difficult”: Quoted in Rowland Berthoff, “Southern Attitudes Toward Immigration, 1865-1914,” p. 346.

three Italians were lynched: Brandfon, “End of Immigration,” p. 611.

“a very dirty”: Report by Hall W. Sanders of Mississippi Justice Department, State Department peonage files, NA, RG 59, M862, reel 687, case 9500.

“I think we”: J. Holland to LP, November 11, 1907; LP to Holland, October 15, 1907, PFP.

“Don’t Go”: Don’t Go to the Mississippi, pamphlet, PFP.

a barn at Sunnyside: Boehm, “Mary Grace Quackenbos,” p. 42.

“an unfriendly attitude”: LP to Umberto Pierini, March 9, 1907, PFP.

he told other planters: LP to Will Dockery, March 8, 1907, PFP.

“Mr. Percy”: LP to Ambassador Des Planches, February 14, 1907, PFP.

“The Italian immigrant”: Quoted in Milani, “Sunnyside and the Italian Government,” p. 36.

the first female U.S. attorney: Boehm, “Mary Grace Quackenbos,” p. 45.

“endless and tedious”: LP to Scott, n.d.

“Mr. Percy appears”: Quackenbos to Attorney General, August 14, 1907, NA, RG 60, 100937.

“The whole future”: Mark Sullivan, Our Times: The United States 1900-1925, vol. 4, The War Begins, 1909-1914, p. 386.

Roosevelt then spent: Schott, “John M. Parker of Louisiana,” p. 125.

“at Sunnyside”: Quoted in Boehm, “Mary Grace Quackenbos,” p. 49.

“we have seen”: Charles Russell, “Report on Peonage,” 1908, Justice Department peonage file, NA, RG 60.

“I have a perfect”: Quackenbos to LP, October 16, 1907, NA, RG 60.

“O. B. Crittenden”: Ibid.

“rough with labor”: LP to J. B. Ray, December 26, 1906, PFP.

“I would be willing”: LP to H. B. Duncan, March 27, 1907, PFP.

“Those negroes”: LP to J. R. Taylor, May 20, 1907, PFP.

“If conditions were”: Sullivan, The War Begins, p. 384.

“see the South”: Mark Sullivan, Our Times: The United States, 1900-1925, vol. 3, Pre-War America, pp. 128, 133, 136.

“I am counting on you”: LP to H. Hawkings and LP to Lewis Levi, July 17, 1906.

“The fundamental trouble”: LP to J. S. McNeilly, March 9, 1906, PFP.

“a positive unkindness”: Albert K. Kirwan, Revolt of the Rednecks, pp. 144, 146.

“[t]hat man is a lover”: Outlook, August 3, 1907, pp. 730-732.

“an intense southerner”: LP to John Sharp Williams, November 30, 1907.

“Percy, by George”: LP to WAP, April 19, 1907.

“I hailed”: Roosevelt to LP, August 11, 1907, PFP.

“I believe he”: LP to J. S. McNeilly, November 19, 1907.

“social acquaintance”: LP to Lawrence Lewis, March 9, 1907, PFP.

Percy had urged Parker: LP to Parker, November 7, 1907, PFP.

Roosevelt did move: Schott, “John N. Parker of Louisiana,”: p. 125; NOT-P, January 7, 1919.

Now Percy called: The following account of this meeting comes chiefly from two letters: LP to J. S. McNeilly, November 19, 1907, and LP to Roosevelt, November 13, 1907, Justice Department peonage files, NA, RG 60, 100937.

He then made: LP to Roosevelt, November 13, 1907, Justice Department peonage files, NA, RG 60, 100937.

“very amusing”: Boehm, “Mary Grace Quackenbos,” p. 57.

he gave Percy the answers: LP to J. S. McNeilly, November 19, 1907, PFP; LP to Roosevelt, November 13, 1907, Justice Department peonage files, NA, RG 60, 10937.

Then the president: LP to J. S. McNeilly, November 20, 1907.

It was part: Ibid.

“Fish are biting”: LP to Dickinson, December 23, 1907, PFP.

“I am very uneasy”: Roosevelt to Hart, January 13, 1908, Albert Bushnell Hart Papers, Harvard University, quoted by Boehm, “Mary Grace Quackenbos,” p. 56.

Of 8 million: Brandfon, Cotton Kingdom, p. 104.

“Italian immigration has not”: LP to M. B. Trezvant, December 26, 1913, PFP.

“There is no labor”: LP to WAP, April 19, 1907, PFP.

CHAPTER NINE

“the representatives”: W. E. B. Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk, edition contained in Three Negro Classics: Up From Slavery; The Souls of Black Folk; The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (New York: Avon, 1976), p. 329.

“of the most reckless”: William Hemphill, untitled ms., June 1905, Hemphill Family Papers, Special Collections, Duke University Library.

“The way these levee”: Ibid.

“Kill a mule”: For more details about levee conditions, see American Federation of Labor report of levee camp investigation, December 5, 1931; also Helen Boardman report on levee camps, August 1932, both in NAACP Papers, LC; Alan Lomax, The Land Where the Blues Began, pp. 212-255 passim.

“the negro to better”: Lomax, p. 256.

In 1900: Twelfth Census of the United States, vol. 5, Agriculture, pp. 96-97, quoted in Willis, “On the New South Frontier,” pp. 5, 9; interview with Willis, June 9, 1994.

Greenville had black policemen: Stone, “The Negro in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta,” p. 263.

“more firmly fixed”: Quoted in Brandfon, Cotton Kingdom, p. 130.

In 1901: Stone kept careful records to see if the better treatment led to higher retention rates of sharecroppers. It did not. See Cobb, p. 105.

There, whites: William Holmes, “Whitecapping in Mississippi,” pp. 165-185 passim.

“Today a Negro”: Charles Fenn, Ho Chi Minh, p. 26, quoted in Wyn Craig Wade, The Fiery Cross, p. 203.

“The blacks were forced”: Quoted in Cobb, p. 114.

“[t]he good [Negroes]”: Kirwan, pp. 144, 146; McMillen, p. 224.

“to inflame the passions”: LP to John Sharp Williams, no day, 1907, PFP.

“My dear Percy”: Vardaman to LP, May 19, 1905, PFP.

“I wish you would give”: John Sharp Williams to LP, April 20, 1919, Williams Collections, LC.

asked Percy to intervene: LP to Roosevelt, March 27, 1908, LP to Mrs. R. L. McLaurin, March 27, 1908, PFP; Baker, p. 35, p. 21on.

Despite opposition: LP to General J. Bell, November 2, 1909, PFP.

Once, at Percy’s request: See LP to Fish, November 25, 1905, PFP.

“You cannot conciliate”: William Holmes, “William Alexander Percy and the Bourbon Era in Mississippi Politics,” p. 76.

“a life and death struggle”: LP to Arthur Rice, June 18, 1910, Rice Papers, Mississippi State University Archives, quoted in Hester Ware, “A Study of the Life and Works of William Alexander Percy,” M.A. thesis, p. 38.

“timid and third-rate”: Percy, LL, p. 145.

“Crump”: Quoted in Bertram Wyatt-Brown, House of Percy, p. 181.

“black as the night”: Percy, LL, p. 146.

“Swinging perilously”: William Sallis, “The Life and Times of LeRoy Percy,” M.A. thesis, pp. 90-96.

“This is a contest”: Quote kindly supplied by Bertram Wyatt-Brown.

“the Secret Caucus”: Quoted in Kirwan, p. 197.

“suave and dignifiedly courteous”: NYT, April 17, 1910.

“They say I’m”: Sallis, “LeRoy Percy,” p. 133.

while the Percys considered themselves: For this insight I thank William Armstrong Percy, a professor at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, interviewed October 11, 1995.

“looked over the”: Percy, LL, p. 149.

“We are the low-brows”: Kirwan, p. 212.

“When Father rose”: Percy, LL, pp. 150-151.

“striped caterpillar”: Kirwan, pp. 220-221.

In a final mockery: Percy, LL, p. 152.

“My dear Senator”: Roosevelt to LP, November 11, 1911, PFP.

“will necessitate our killing”: Sullivan, Pre-War America, p. 136.

“ordered…several hundred negroes”: NYT, April 11, 1912.

“If I can keep”: LP to W. W. Cain, November 19, 1912, quoted in Percy, LL, pp. 152-153.

CHAPTER TEN

More than 60 percent: Willis, “On the New South Frontier,” p. 226; Ogden, p. 166.

The homicide rate: Hortense Powdermaker, After Freedom, p. 169.

More than 75 percent: Stone, “The Negro in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta”; Homicidal Deaths in Mississippi, MDAH.

“Shootings were”: Percy Bell, “Child of the Delta,” unpublished ms., chap. 2, p. 3.

in 1914: Interview with Leila Clark Wynn, March 17, 1993.

“You are going among”: Interview with Mrs. Pearl Pool Amos, January 27, 1993.

The biggest entertainers: Interview with Frank Hall, March 29, 1992; Washington County the Pride of the Delta, pamphlet, probably 1910, unpaginated, in Glen Allen (Mississippi) Public Library. LP to [illegible], November 22, 1906, PFP.

Enough Chinese lived: Interview with Frank Hall, March 29, 1992.

the two largest: Washington County the Pride of the Delta, pamphlet.

there was one club: Information kindly supplied by Bertram Wyatt-Brown.

“blacks tried to be”: Interview with John Wiley, October 22, 1993.

knives, razors, and pistols: History of Blacks in Greenville, 1863-1975; Oral history of Daisy Green, 1975, MDAH; interview with Sylvia Jackson, February 20, 1993; interview with David Cober, February 22, 1993.

“passion corner”: Powdermaker, p. 8; interview with Frank Hall; also, Washington County the Pride of the Delta.

In 1920 the city: “The Negro Common School, Mississippi,” Crisis, December 1926, p. 91.

The teachers and facilities: Interview with Shelby Foote, March 9, 1994.

The city spent $17: “The Negro Common School, Mississippi,” p. 91.

Greenville public schools: Interview with Leyser Holmes, March 2, 1993.

“I don’t believe”: Oral history of Daisy Green, 1975, p. 27.

“Our town has grown”: LP to Lawrence McMeekin, PFP.

In addition, before settling: Interview with Maurice Sisson, October 22, 1993.

in 1923: Ezra Bowen, ed., This Fabulous Century, 1920-1930, pp. 105, 244.

“The ultimate development”: Herbert Spencer, Social Statics (New York: D. Appleton, 1864), p. 79.

“flapper”: Ellis Hawley, The Great War and the Search for a Modern Order, p. 112.

skirts touched the knee: Sullivan, Pre-War America, p. 337.

In 1919: Ronald Davis, ed., The Social and Political Life of the 1920s, p. 16.

“Many an American”: Sullivan, The War Begins, p. 182.

150,000 people: Kenneth Harrell, “The Ku Klux Klan in Louisiana, 1920-1930,” Ph.D. thesis, p. 82.

“Government conscripted public opinion”: Robert Murray, Red Scare: A Study in National Hysteria (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1955), p. 12.

a nation of informers: Wade, p. 149.

“If this country”: LP to Dickinson, May 22, 1916, PFP.

“at the close”: LP to Bolton Smith, June 19, 1918, PFP.

in none of the cases: Walter White, A Man Called White, p. 48; Tindall, The Emergence of the New South, pp. 152-154; O. A. Roberts, “The Elaine Race Riots of 1919,” pp. 142-150.

“It is only a middling”: Murray, pp. 67, 74.

“Free speech has been”: Ibid.

“Silence the incendiary”: Ibid.

“To hell with”: Sullivan, The Twenties, p. 168.

the United States had two Communist parties: Murray, pp. 51-53.

“to maintain law and order”: Ibid., p. 89.

“He…jumped off”: Sullivan, The Twenties, see pp. 156-180 passim; Ralph Chaplin, The Centralia Conspiracy, p. 66.

“Palmer, do not let”: Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., The Crisis of the Old Order 1919-1933, p. 42.

Hoover had a card file: Murray, p. 193.

“I myself am an American”: William Katz, The Invisible Empire, p. 27; Murray, p. 219.

“fancied and certainly far distant”: LP to John Sharp Williams, July 11, 1919, and LP to Pat Harrison, August 4, 1919, both in PFP.

“all Gods dead”: F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise (New York: Scribners, 1920), p. 304.

“Dare to be Babbitt”: Ronald Davis, p. 47.

“Why I Never Hire”: Quoted in Ethan Morden, That Jazz, p. 103.

“the most average”: Bowen, p. 218.

nearly 25 million tickets: Katz, p. 87.

“The real big purpose”: Wade, p. 138.

“It is like”: Ibid., p. 124.

“I am a fraternalist”: Wade, p. 140; Chalmers, David, Hooded Americanism, p. 25.

he signed a contract: Stanley Coben, Rebellion Against Victorianism, p. 140; see also Tindall, George, The Emergence of the New South, p. 189.

“It is going to”: Ibid., p. 191.

at least 3 million Americans: Ibid., p. 194.

It had 300,000 members: Harrell, “The Ku Klux Klan in Louisiana, 1920-1930,” p. 66.

It seized control: Leonard Moore, “Historical Interpretations of the 1920s Klan,” p. 352.

“The world broke”: Quoted in Ronald Davis, p. 126.

CHAPTER 11

One night four: History of Blacks in Greenville, 1863-1975, pamphlet; also Irvin Mollison, “Negro Lawyers in Mississippi.”

“Percy would almost”: Interview with Gatewood Hamm, December 15, 1992; interview with Frank Hall, March 27, 1992.

“the inflammable, uneducated”: Percy, LL, p. 228.

he called to his office: Percy, LL, p. 232.

“A Ku Klux orator”: LP to Alfred Stone, February 27, 1922, PFP.

“Colonel Camp”: No transcript of Camp’s speech exists, but several newspaper reports, including the Vicksburg Herald of March 2, 1922, and the Houston Chronicle of March 19, 1922, paraphrased it. Percy also recounted portions of it in his speech and in letters he wrote in subsequent weeks, especially to H. H. Garwood, March 10, 1922, in PFP. So did the GD-T, LL, pp. 232-233, and Sallis, “The Life and Times of LeRoy Percy,” pp. 150-154.

“Percy!”: Sallis, p. 154.

“this eminent orator”: Houston Chronicle, March 19, 1922.

“Be it resolved”: Ibid.

“If we had Mr. Percy”: E. M. Weddington et al. to LP, March 4, 1992, PFP.

“much stronger effect”: For example, see B. McGee to LP, March 2, 1922; R. E. Montgomery to LP, March 9, 1922; William McGinley to LP, June 2, 1922; R. L. Tullis to LP, August 25, 1922; LP to Mattoon, Illinois, Knights of Columbus, August 23, 1922, all in PFP.

he contacted three newspaper: LP to Authors’ Clipping Bureau, LP to Albert Romeike & Co., LP to Henry Romeike, Inc., all on March 7, 1922, PFP.

“The eagerness with which”: LP to Miss A. D. Jenkins, July 21, 1922.

the night after being humiliated: LP to A. P. Wilkey, January 20, 1923.

“To all Flag”: Leland Enterprise, March 18, 1922, PFP.

The town epitomized: Schott, “John M. Parker of Louisiana,” p. 423.

more lynchings had occurred: William Hair, The Kingfish and His Realm, pp. 66, 130.

On August 24, 1992: Accounts of the Bastrop Klan come from Schott, “John M. Parker of Louisiana,” esp. pp. 423-443; John Rogers, The Murders of Mer Rouge; Baker, The Percys of Mississippi, pp. 99-111; and NOT-P passim from September 1922 to January 1923.

“Louisiana has issued”: NOT-P, April 29, 1922; NOI, May 2, 1922.

“a fight to the finish”: NOT-P, October 31, 1922; Schott, “John M. Parker of Louisiana,” p. 436.

Justice Department investigators: Schott, “John M. Parker of Louisiana,” p. 431.

the Louisiana Klan invited: Thomas Dabney, One Hundred Great Years, pp. 415-422.

“You have been”: Parker to LP, February 20, 1923, Parker Papers, Special Collections, Dupre Library, University of Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette.

“I am intensely uneasy”: LP to Dickinson, May 14, 1923; see also LP to R. Purdy, May 14, 1923, PFP.

“Nothing that is founded”: LP to Will McCoy, May 16, 1923.

“decade”: Nancy McLean, Behind the Mask of Chivalry (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 17.

“Senator Percy has never”: GD-T, June 21, 1923.

“All agree to stay”: Undated note in Percy’s handwriting, PFP.

“The day of kings”: See copy of speech at People’s Theater, April 23, 1923, PFP.

“[A] letter from you”: LP to Alfred Stone, July 6, 1923, PFP.

“Senator Percy has no”: Alfred Stone, As to Senator Percy, pamphlet, PFP.

One night in a rainstorm: Percy, LL, p. 236; GD-T, May 14, 1923.

his father likely suspected: Will Percy, “The Fifth Autumn,” ms. in PFP, particularly when Will reports that his mother warned his father not to speak of sexuality.

“If anything happens”: Percy, LL, p. 236.

“my personal injury”: GD-T, May 14, 1923.

“friends among the Jews”: GD-T, August 6, 1923.

Voter turnout: GD-T, August 8, 1923.

“A tremendous uproar”: Percy, LL, pp. 238-241.

“Adah and Charlie”: Ibid.

“I mourn the fact”: William Howard Taft to LP, August 30, 1923, PFP.

“You can scarcely understand”: LP to William Howard Taft, September 25, 1923.

“Biological laws show”: Katz, The Invisible Empire, p. 87.

“the Klan virus”: LP to Dickinson, May 14, 1923, PFP.

it elected the mayors: Wade, The Fiery Cross, p. 196.

the convention erupted in tumult: LP to WAP, June 16, 1924, PFP.

“mak[ing] it more difficult”: LP to Dickinson, June 17, 1924, PFP.

Pattangall himself lost: Mordden, That Jazz, p. 64.

“I really believe”: Lindsey to LP, April 25, 1925, PFP.

David Stephenson: John Braeman, Robert Bremner, and David Brody, eds., Change and Continuity in Twentieth Century America: The Twenties (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1968), pp. 240-41.

was routinely consulted: Mary Booze to John Overton, November 22, 1926, PFP.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“In physical and mental”: “Eisenhower’s General Lee,” Time, September 25, 1944, p. 21.

“Levees designed to limit”: E. F. Dawson, Notes on the Mississippi River, pp. 91-92.

“I was not accustomed”: Speech by James Kemper to Round Table Club, April 8, 1937, New Orleans, Kemper Collection, Louisiana State Museum, Historical Division, New Orleans.

“The alluvial stream”: Government Control with Cooperation of Riparian States and Cities, pamphlet (New Orleans, 1912), p. 17.

The New York Times: See NYT, March 28 through March 31, 1913.

“succeeded in getting”: LP to WAP, December 27, 1916, PFP.

“The question of absolute”: Quoted in Morgan, Dams and Other Disasters, pp. 260-261.

“[T]here is no doubt”: Clarke Smith, Survey for Spillways at or Near New Orleans, p. 14.

“Whether their fears”: J. A. Ockerson, Outlets for Reducing Flood Heights, pamphlet, reply to R. S. Taylor.

“are all contrary”: P&H, p. 186.

The 1916 Mississippi River: HFCCH, pp. 1789-1792; James Kemper, Floods in the Valley of the Mississippi, p. 35.

He insisted that: NOT, April 5, 1927.

“The art of dam”: Beach to Secretary of War, August 8, 1922, quoted in Morgan, p. 189.

“It is so much easier”: Speech by Kemper to New Orleans Round Table, April 8, 1937, Kemper Collection, Louisiana State Museum, Historical Division, New Orleans.

the river rose unexpectedly: NOT-P, April 10, 1922.

the gauge at the foot: NOT-P, April 11, 1922.

in Louisiana a call: NOT-P, April 17, 1922.

“Everything possible”: Wires to John Sharp Williams from Clearing House Association, J. D. Smythe, J. A. Hunt, and R. P. Crump, April 20, 1922, John Sharp Williams Papers, LC.

“People from Belzoni”: Wire from Greenwood Chamber of Commerce to John Sharp Williams, April 25, 1922, John Sharp Williams Papers, LC.

“At Octavia there”: John Klorer, “Report of the Inspection of the Levee Line to Mayor Andrew McShane,” April 21, 1922, NOCA.

Three thousand city workers: Ibid.

“We are in”: J. E. Weldon to John Parker, April 30, 1922; Parker to Weldon, May 2, 1922, Parker Papers, Special Collections, Dupre Library, University of Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette.

On Esplanade Street: Interview with Louis Claverie, February 10, 1993; interview with Walter Barnett, November 15, 1992.

The flooding of Arkansas City: Cf., for example, NOI, April 10, 1922; NOT-P, April 10 and 11, 1922.

“I cannot say”: Cf. NOI, April 14, 1922, to NOT-P, April 15, 1922.

he notified all city workers: NOT-P, April 18, 1922.

“Notify the barge line”: NOT-P, April 25, 1922.

“The levees are better”: NOI, April 19, 1922.

the levee abruptly caved: NOT-P, April 29, 1922.

“As for the high water”: NOT-P, April 27, 1922.

“the bight of”: Report of Board of [Louisiana] State Engineers, 1922 to 1924, pp. 58-59.

less than an hour: NOI, April 29, 1922.

By luck the Poydras crevasse: Testimony of John Klorer, 67th Cong., December 11, 12, 13, 14, 1922, at HFCCH; report of Board of Louisiana State Engineers, 1924, p. 58.

it had broken records: Kemper, Floods in the Valley, p. 36.

“A situation has”: Walter Sillers, Sr., to Col. C. H. West, October 20, 1925; Sillers to LP, May 31, 1927, Sillers Papers, Delta State University Library.

“The Mississippi River Commission”: Kemper testimony, HFCCH, p. 1710.

“[W]e are in reality”: W. L. Head to Mississippi River Commission, March 8, 1927, NA, RG 77, case 2620, entry 521.

twelve floods: Undated (probably 1923) engineering report of Safe River Committee, NOCA.

“Some one has apparently”: Beach to Harold Newman, May 12, 1922. copy in Edwin Broussard Papers, Special Collections, Dupre Library, University of Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette.

When the criticism did not stop: Transcript of comments by Beach at hearings in New Orleans, August 20 and 21, 1922, Corps of Engineers Papers, NA, RG 77, entry 521; see also summary of correspondence with New Orleans Association of Commerce, NA, RG 77, entry 521.

“If it were my property”: Ibid.

LeRoy Percy maneuvered: Wire from LP to Parker, August 19, 1922, Parker Papers, USL.

Engineers called each other: Quoted in House Flood Control Committee Hearings, 67th Cong., December 11-14, 1922, p. 164.

Percy had the Greenville: See, for example, log of correspondence under title “Flood Protection Activities of the New Orleans Association of Commerce,” NA, RG 77, case 2891.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“Then God, our Lord”: Garcilaso de la Vega, The Florida of the Incas, quoted in H. C. Frankenfield, “The Floods of 1927 in the Mississippi Basin,” Monthly Weather Review, Supplement 29 (Washington, D.C., 1927), p. 10.

“to prevent the destructive”: Annual Report of the Chief of Engineers for 1926, p. 1793.

“There was needed”: Ibid., p. 16.

Only six times: John Lee, “A Flood Year on the Mississippi,” Military Engineer, July-August 1928.

In October 1926: Ibid.

“It is no unusual”: Report of Charles Ellet, reprinted in U.S. House of Representatives Documents, vol. 24, 63rd Cong., doc. 918, pp. 32-120.

the flood crest poured: D. O. Elliott, The Improvement of the Lower Mississippi River for Flood Control and Navigation, vol. 1, p. 91.

The new crest: Ibid.

This does not mean: Ibid., p. 92.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

In Fulton, Kentucky: MC-A, January 4, 1927.

“You haint’ got”: JC-L, February 2, 1927.

“The Local Klan”: JC-L, February 18, 1927.

Several farmers were indicted: JC-L, February 3, 1927.

Delta & Pine Land Company: MC-A, December 9, 1926.

“Cornets, trombones, bass horns”: NOT-P, March 1 and 2, 1927.

“From the Rockies”: Ibid.

That crest took: Frankenfield, “The Floods of 1927,” p. 28.

It would remain in flood: Ibid., p. 37.

the White and the Little Red: NOT, February 3, 1927; JC-L, February 4, 1927.

A week later: NOT, February 14, 1927; JC-L, February 19, 1927.

“Although river stages”: NOI, February 10, 1927.

March opened: MC-A, March 1 and 3, 1927.

“The virtual flood”: JC-L, March 15 and 16, 1927.

Between March 17: NOI, March 18 and 21, 1927.

In January: J. S. Allen to Walter Sillers, Sr., March 1, 1927, Walter Sillers, Jr., Papers, Delta State University Library, Clarksdale, Mississippi.

On March 23: Minutes of Board of Mississippi Levee Commissioners, March 23, 1927, Mississippi Levee Board, Greenville.

“If the river”: Associated Press wire report, March 24, 1927.

“all the water in sight”: Isaac Cline, Storms, Floods, and Sunshine, p. 124.

One camp operator: Lomax, The Land Where the Blues Began, pp. 225-229.

On April 1: Lee, “A Flood Year on the Mississippi”; Frankenfield, “The Floods of 1927,” p. 29.

“higher ups”: JC-L, February 5 and April 7, 1927; MC-A, February 5 and April 7, 1927.

“concentration camps”: Walter Sillers, Sr., to W. L. Thompson, September 20, 1927, Sillers Papers, Delta State University Library; Lee, “A Flood Year on the Mississippi.”

In New Orleans hundreds of men: Marcel Garsaud to James Thomson, March 16, 1927, NOCA.

Danger areas included: Klorer to Thomson, April 10, 1927, NOCA.

“It is apparent”: James Kemper to Walter Parker, February 1, 1927, NOCA.

Engineers sounding the bottom: MC-A, March 30, 1927.

Already the Yazoo: MC-A, March 28, 30, and 31, 1927.

“All levees are”: JC-L, April 5, 1927.

“No serious trouble”: SBV, March 26, 1927.

“report on relief”: John Lee to Adjutant General, April 18, 1927, NA, RG 94.

Mississippi Governor Dennis Murphree: Malin Craig to Adjutant General, April 6, 1927, NA, RG 200.

a storm March 31: MC-A, April 8, 1927.

“The outlook was gloomy”: MC-A, April 8, 1927.

“Eleven Killed Many Hurt”: NYT, April 9, 1927.

the Canadian River flood: NOI, April 10, 1927.

As of April 9, 1927: Frankenfield, “The Floods of 1927,” p. 28.

“We are in condition”: MC-A, April 12, 1927; JC-L, April 10, 1927.

“From the forecast”: Guy Deano to John Klorer, April 14, 1927, NOCA.

a levee in Arkansas was dynamited: GD-T, April 14, 1927; NYT, April 14, 1927.

“Great Flood Peril”: NYT, April 15, 1927.

“The roaring Mississippi”: MC-A, April 15, 1927.

“Every Available House”: T. H. Caraway to Dwight Davis, April 14, 1927, NA, RG 94.

In the ten years: “Report of the Superintendent of the Sewerage and Water Board on the April 15 Flood,” p. 10, NOCA.

Between 10 and 12: Ball diaries, April 15 and 16, 1927, MDAH; NYT, April 14-16, 1927.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

In 1882: HFCCH, Committee Doc. 1, p. 25.

The levee itself: “The Mississippi Valley Flood, 1927,” Bulletin of the American Railway Association 29, no. 297 (July 1927), pp. 9, 29.

“They gave me”: Interview with William Jones, March 2, 1993.

“An attempt to dynamite”: GD-T, April 6 and 16, 1927.

“Nothing could be”: LP to Sedgwick, April 27, 1922.

Bill Jones remembered: Interview with William Jones, March 2, 1993.

“They had a bunch”: Statement of Duncan Cope, “The Flood of 1927,” Mississippi Public Television, transcript in MDAH.

“There has never been”: For example, see House Flood Control Committee Hearings, 64th Cong., March 8, 1916, p. 26.

“We feel confident”: MC-A, April 17, 1927.

“At Forest City”: Caraway to Davis, April 18, 1927, NA, RG 94.

“absolutely without food”: Mississippi Flood Control Association to Davis, April 18, 1927, NA, RG 94.

“Seven more die”: NYT, April 17, 1927.

“the greatest flood in history”: Wire from T. R. Buchanan to James Fieser, April 16, 1927, RCP.

“This is the psychological”: LP to Dennis Murphree, March 24, 1927, PFP.

Murphree had sent: Kenneth McKellar to Dwight Davis, April 15, 1927, NA, RG 94.

“The levee board was”: Statement of Vivian Broom, “The Flood of 1927,” Mississippi Public Television, transcript in MDAH.

“They kept sending”: Statement of Florence Sillers Ogden, “The Flood of 1927,” Mississippi Public Television, transcript in MDAH.

If a black man refused: There are at least three confirmed incidents in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas in which blacks who refused to work on levees were killed. See Louisiana Weekly, March 14, 1927; GD-T, July 6, 1927.

“The first of April”: Interview with Wynn Davis, February 28, 1993.

“They gave me charge”: Statement of Frank Hall, “The Flood of 1927,” Mississippi Public Television, transcript in MDAH.

levees averaged eighteen inches: GD-T, April 20, 1927.

that same day, April 19: MC-A, April 19, 1927; NYT, April 19, 1927.

Thirty years earlier: MC-A, April 22, 1927.

“The apparent slope”: Report of Charles Ellet, reprinted in House Documents, vol. 24, 63rd Cong., doc. 918, p. 45.

Missouri Pacific Railroad bridge: MC-A, April 22, 1927.

In 1927 the Mississippi River: Testimony of Charles Potter, HFCCH, p. 1874; James Kemper, HFCCH, p. 2869; “The Mississippi Valley Flood, 1927,” Bulletin of the American Railway Engineering Association 29, no. 297 (July 1927).

one and a half feet higher: Interview with Frank Hall, March 27, 1992.

pumped billions of gallons: J. S. Allen to Major J. C. H. Lee, June 23, 1927; “High Water Report East Central Sector,” Mississippi Levee Board, Greenville, Mississippi.

On April 19: NYT, April 20, 1927.

“Stormy tonight”: Ball diaries, April 20, 1927, MDAH.

“I’d never seen”: Statement of Florence Sillers Ogden, “The Flood of 1927,” Mississippi Public Television, transcript in MDAH.

“Is it as bad”: Ibid.

“Forces were redoubled”: JC-L, April 21, 1927.

upriver from Mounds Landing: Lee, “A Flood Year on the Mississippi,” p. 112; MC-A, April 20 and 21, 1927.

“You get all”: Interview with M. L. Payne, March 4, 1993.

“felt like jelly”: Interview with William Jones, March 2, 1993.

“It was just boiling”: Interview with Moses Mason, March 1, 1993.

“From dark until dawn”: Lee, “A Flood Year on the Mississippi,” p. 112.

“All night long”: Statement of Florence Sillers Ogden, “The Flood of 1927,” Mississippi Public television, transcript in MDAH.

“to arouse the labor”: GD-T, April 21, 1927.

“The negroes ran”: E. C. Sanders, “Report of Activities at Camp Rex,” contained within Report of Flood Relief Expedition, Mississippi National Guard, Office of the Adjutant General, MDAH.

The river was overflowing: GD-T, April 21, 1927.

“You could see”: Interview with William Jones, March 2, 1993.

“We can’t hold it”: A. G. Paxton, Three Wars and a Flood, p. 24.

“just seemed to move”: Diary of Louise Henry Cowan, William Alexander Percy Library, Greenville, Mississippi.

“I took him”: John Hall, Jr., oral history project taped April 13, 1977, William Alexander Percy Library, Greenville, Mississippi.

“I was…”: Taped interview kindly shared by Pete Daniels with author.

“Levee broke”: Wire from John Lee to Edgar Jadwin, April 21, 1927, NA, RG 94.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“Thousands of workers”: MC-A, April 22, 1927.

“Refugees coming into Jackson”: JC-L, April 24, 1927.

Judge R. C. Trimble: JC-L, April 22, 1927.

“estimated that more”: JC-L, April 24, 1927.

“No lives were”: Paxton, “National Guard Activities in Connection with Levee Fight and Flood Relief Expedition, Greenville, Mississippi,” Report of Flood Relief Expedition, Mississippi National Guard, Office of the Adjutant General, MDAH; see Associated Press report in Washington Post, April 25, 1927; JC-L, April 22, 1927; Fred Chaney, “A Refugee’s Story,” unpublished ms., MDAH; interview with Frank Hall, March 27, 1992.

“We had a lead”: Interview with Frank Hall, March 27, 1992.

The water’s force: Oscar Johnston to H. W. Lee, Fine Cotton Spinners and Doublers Association, May 31, 1927, D&PLCP. The Delta & Pine Land Co., the largest cotton plantation in the world, operated the land at the site of the break. Johnston was its chief executive officer.

“Let’s put all”: Interview with William Jones, March 2, 1993.

“It was as if”: MC-A, April 22, 1927; see also article by Floyd Clay, MC-A, July 22, 1973.

“[T]he water was leaping”: Oral history of E. M. Barry, MDAH.

“An airplane kept”: Vicksburg Evening Post, September 15, 1985.

“the flood water approach”: Louise Henry Cowan, “Essay on Greenville, 1927,” WAPL.

“in waves five or six”: Statement of D. S. Flanagan, “The Flood of 1927,” Mississippi Public Television, transcript in MDAH.

“When that levee broke”: Statement of Sam Huggins, “The Flood of 1927,” Mississippi Public Television, transcript in MDAH.

the water moved: Interview with Newman Bolls, March 2, 1993.

animals by the hundreds: Chaney, “A Refugee’s Story.”

“23 white women”: JC-L, April 26, 1927.

“At 9:00, we could”: Chaney, “A Refugee’s Story.”

“The water just came”: Interview with L. T. Wade, “The Flood of 1927,” Mississippi Public Television, transcript in MDAH.

“The situation is”: MC-A, April 22, 1927.

“For God’s Sake”: NOT-P, April 23, 1927.

Mounds Landing was: American National Red Cross, The Mississippi Flood Disaster of 1927: Official Report of the Relief Operations, p. 47.

Within three hours: Chaney, “A Refugee’s Story.”

Levee board engineers: JC-L, April 26, 1927.

“The water was just rolling”: Interview with Frank Hall, March 27, 1992.

“Everybody run”: Oral history of Levye Chapple, transcript in MDAH.

“You could see waves”: Interview with Lamar Britton, March 1, 1993.

“The water was coming”: Statement of Mrs. Henry Ransom, “The Flood of 1927,” Mississippi Public Television, transcript in MDAH.

Up to ten feet: Connolly to Gen. Edgar Jadwin, April 23, 1927, NA, RG 77.

“Louisiana waits”: MC-A, April 23, 1927.

The guards: JC-L, April 18, 1927; NYT, April 19, 1927.

“Coolidge in Conference”: NOT, April 23, 1927.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

FRENCH DOMINATION: George Reynolds, Machine Politics in New Orleans, 1904-1926, p. 11.

faux stone fronts: S. Frederick Starr, Southern Comfort, p. 261.

Modern poker: S. Frederick Starr, New Orleans Unmasqued, pp. 79, 142.

their own symphony: Starr, New Orleans Unmasqued, p. 127.

Women lowered baskets: Oral history of Marc Antony, FC.

“delight”: Sherwood Anderson, “Certain Things Last,” reprinted in NYT, December 29, 1992.

Billy Cabildo’s: Oral history of Albert Goldstein, FC.

lavish parties: Oral history of Leon Mann, FC.

Well-dressed doormen: Oral history of Virginia Barnett, FC.

“Yeah, music”: Quotations from Louis Armstrong exhibit, New Orleans Museum of Art, January to April 1996.

“without a doubt”: David Cohn, Where I Was Born and Raised, pp. 61-62.

“Jazz is all”: Quotations from Louis Armstrong exhibit.

“It was only”: Quoted in Al Rose, Storyville, New Orleans (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1974), p. 94.

a drugstore sold cocaine: Ibid.

“Mardi Gras runs”: Interview with Mrs. Ford T. Hardy, February 11, 1993.

“There is perhaps”: Perry Young, The Mistick Krewe, pp. 212-213.

“[Carnival] queens are”: Walker Percy, “New Orleans, Mon Amour,” Harper’s Magazine, September 1968, p. 90.

“Yet he values”: Interview with Walter Barnett, January 28, 1993.

“Often the men”: Interview with Mrs. F. Evans Farwell, January 23, 1993.

Every Rex since 1888: Phyllis Raabe, “Status and Its Impact: New Orleans Carnival, the Social Upper Class, and Upper Class Power,” Ph.D. diss., p. 63.

the disease had killed: John R. Kemp, ed., Martin Behrman of New Orleans, Memoirs of a City Boss, p. 270.

“were largely formulated”: Quoted in Landry, History of the Boston Club, pp. 115, 211; Angelo Miceli, The Pickwick Club of New Orleans, p. 70.

“he spoke”: Interview with Ruth Dreyfous, January 5, 1993.

“Mother used”: Ibid.

Rex went right on by: Oral history of Charles Kahn, FC.

Baron de Rothschild: Robert Tallant, Mardi Gras as It Was, pp. 179-180.

“spirit of noblesse oblige”: Landry, p. 7.

“The aggregated amount”: LP to Charles Claiborne, April 9, 1917, PFP.

“there is a discrepancy”: M. Waterman to LP, January 9, 1923, PFP.

New Orleans had nearly: As measured by debits to individual accounts, cited in Association of Commerce News Bulletin, January 23, 1923, ACP.

“a compulsory reduction”: LP to L. M. Pool, October 12, 1926; LP to Fenner, October 14, 1926, PFP.

payments on bonds absorbed: Association of Commerce News Bulletin, January 9, 1923, ACP; Bureau of Governmental Research (a local group), 1936 report, Special Collections, Earl Long Library, University of New Orleans.

the city could issue: The Sewerage and Water Board had the legal authority to issue bonds, but members of the Board of Liquidation automatically sat on it also, so in practice their approval was needed even for these bonds.

Twenty-four of: Raabe, “Status and Its Impact,” pp. 140-141.

“ultra-exclusive”: Young, p. 208.

the photograph of the Mystic Club queen: NOT-P, February 27, 1927.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“Flood Water Is”: SBV, January 1, 1927.

“Thomson was an”: Interview with Charles Dufour, December 20, 1992.

a dinner was given: NOI, February 11, 1927.

The weakest levees: Memo from the Mississippi River Flood Control Association to Army Liaison Office and Red Cross, April 23, 1927, RC.

“it offers protection”: See undated report (probably late January or early February 1927) for the National Flood Commission, NOCA.

“was based on”: See Kemper to Walter Parker, February 1, 1927; Kemper to Thomson, February 4 and March 27, 1927, NOCA; report on levees, unsigned, March 16, 1927, NOCA; Kemper speech to Round Table Club, April 8, 1937, Kemper Collection, Louisiana State Museum, Historical Division, New Orleans.

“Serious settlements”: Report by S. Young, chief engineer of the Dock Board, to Garsaud, March 12, 1927, NOCA.

“decided improvement”: Klorer to Thomson, April 10, 1927, NOCA. The date is misleading; the report covers an earlier inspection.

twenty-four-hour patrols: SBV, April 9, 1927.

the Red Cross began: Henry Baker to Robert Bondy, May 3, 1927; two undated reports by Mrs. Charles Buck, General Chairman Women’s Division Emergency Flood Relief; Ben Beekman to W. P. Simpson, July 22, 1927; all in RCP.

“the most insatiable”: Schoot, “John M. Parker of Louisiana,” Ph.D. diss., p. 104; Dabney, One Hundred Great Years, p. 462.

“to refrain from publishing”: Reports of the Publicity Department, December 16, 1924; December 18, 1925; October 10, 1926; March 6, 1927; Charles Dunbar to three publishers, October 12, 1926; all in ACP.

“to avoid”: Thomson general letter to members of the Safe River Committee, April 8, 1927.

“River Warning”: See NOT, NOI, NOT-P, and NOS, April 9, 1927.

“The next boat”: NOT-P, April 23, 1927.

news, and fear, spread: Interview with Dufour.

Estimates of the number of dead: John Weems, A Weekend in September (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1993), pp. 114-115.

He had refused: Cline, p. 114.

“You’re jeopardizing lives”: Ibid., pp. 197-200.

“Heavy Rains Raise River”: NOI, April 14, 1927.

Thomson had talked: NOT, April 28, 1928.

“The Emergency Committee”: Guy Deano to John Klorer, April 14, [1927?], NOCA.

Albert Baldwin Wood: Sebastian Junger, “The Pumps of New Orleans,” Invention and Technology (Fall 1992), p. 47.

“I have been in”: Kemper to Garsaud, December 24, 1925, NOCA.

“If the levees up river”: Minutes of Orleans Levee Board, April 20, 1927.

the U.S. Surgeon General refused: Kemp, p. 143.

Dr. William Mercer: Landry, p. 105.

“You all make”: Pierce Butler, The Unhurried Years, p. 128, 162.

“really quite off”: Pierce Butler, Laurel Hill and Later, p. 102.

Butler almost never: Interview with Laura Bayon, February 10, 1993.

Butler’s wife: Ibid.

Butler grew tired: Interview with Harry Kelleher, December 1, 1992; Kelleher himself was both Rex and president of the Boston Club; his daughter was Queen of Comus.

“He was an unattractive”: Interview with Herman Kohlmeyer, December 10, 1992.

“I really want”: Ibid.

“elegant”: NOT-P, January 12, 1996.

Butler turned to the men: The account of this meeting comes from several interviews, including those with Pearl Pool Amos, January 27, 1993; Meyer Dressner, February 2, 1993; and Charles Dufour, November 26, 1992. Another account is found in a transcript of the Proceedings of the Mississippi River Commission for 1926-1928, pp. 4355-4411, at the Humphreys Engineering Center, Ft. Belvoir, Virginia. See also minutes of the meetings about the flood emergency and what became Jim Butler’s quasi-official role, kept by Harry Caplan, secretary to the president of the Canal Bank, in the Caplan Papers.

The Caplan Papers, hereafter CP, are careful minutes of the executive committee of the Citizens Flood Relief Committee. The papers also include minutes of the full committee and minutes of other related meetings, as well as documents, correspondence, and news clippings. Occasionally, the minutes provide actual stenographic transcripts of the most important meetings.

The Illinois Central: See ongoing fight between Hecht and Bernhard related in Association of Commerce minutes—for example, April 21, 1927, and July 20, 1927, ACP. Also Walter Parker to Alfred Danziger, July 27, 1927, NOCA.

“The people of New Orleans”: Interview with Pearl Pool Amos, January 27, 1993; see also Isaac Cline, Storms, Floods and Sunshine, pp. 197-200.

As a boy: Butler, The Unhurried Years, p. 73.

“I believe”: See above, note for p. 353 regarding account of this meeting.

“This is a wonderful”: Interview with Charles Dufour, April 1, 1993.

As soon as O’Keefe: John Legier to Arthur O’Keefe, May 12, 1926, NOCA.

the levee board had just: CP.

A large Pythian convention: Testimony of Leondard Kieffer, HFCCH, p. 255.

“more than five inches”: See NOT and NOT-P, April 16, 1927.

“Mr. and Mrs. James”: NOT, April 16, 1927.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

In St. Bernard: Background on St. Bernard comes chiefly from interviews with William Hyland, January 4, 1993; Matthew Reuter, February 11, 1993; Lena Torres and Manny Fernandez, December 10, 1992; and Herman Kohlmeyer, December 30, 1992.

544 were swamp or marsh: “Historical Sketch, Inventory of the Parish Archives,” 1938, p. 6, NOCA.

Louisiana produced more fur: Saxon, p. 331; SBV, August 21, 1926, cited in Glenn Jeansonne, Leander Perez, p. 32.

150 pelts a day: Description of trapping and Delacroix Island come chiefly from interviews with Joseph Campo, November 23, 1992; Lily Silvera Lopez Raiborn, November 18, 1992; William Hyland, January 4, 1993; and Matthew Reuter, February 11, 1993.

“Meraux had a studied”: Interview with William Hyland, January 4, 1993.

the 1905 yellow fever: NOT-P, October 7, 1938; NOI, October 7, 1938; SBV, October 9, 1938.

“I used to study”: Interview with a former Meraux employee who required anonymity, February 11, 1993.

the largest taxpayer: SBV, January 29, 1924.

Château des Fleurs: Interview with former St. Bernard Parish employee who desires anonymity, February 11, 1993.

“Every one of those”: Interview with Val Dauterive, February 16, 1993.

a caravan of three: SBV, April 21, 1923; testimony quoted in SBV, May 19, 1923.

“I heard you take”: Memo of agent A. Needham, May 29, 1925, Justice Department records, NA, RG 60, file reference 23-32-105.

Meraux promised him: Justice Department records, NA, RG 60, file reference 23-32-105; Ferdinand Estopinal to Assistant Attorney General, June 29, 1926; Estopinal to Attorney General, August 10 and September 13, 1926, Justice Department records, NA.

“He had absolutely no”: Interview with Kohlmeyer.

“Molero was very”: Interview with New Orleans attorney who prefers anonymity, December 29, 1992.

“the Trappers’ War”: For the best summary of the Trappers’ War, see Jeansonne.

until three conditions were met: testimony of Col. Charles Potter, president of the Mississippi River Commission, HFCCH, p. 2069.

“Residents had been warned”: NYT, April 19, 1927.

Butler would even be authorized: Irving Gumbel to Thomson, April 22, 1927, NOCA.

“Rumors!”: See NOI, NOT, and NOT-P, April 22, 1927.

“New Orleans is not affected”: NOT, April 21, 1927.

“We have never seen”: Owen testimony, HFCCH, p. 161.

“unless there were”: NOT, April 23, 1927.

Thomson met with Coolidge: Ibid.; CP, same date.

They increased to 500: NOT, April 22, 1927.

6 million sandbags: Quoted in Lyle Saxon, Father Mississippi, p. 317.

Business in New Orleans: Quoted in ibid.

“Maj. Allen said”: AP story as run in the Washington Post, April 25 and 26, 1927.

“Do you know”: Interview with Betty Carter, April 5, 1995.

A reporter and photographer: NOT-P, April 25, 1927.

report on Governor Simpson’s: NOS, NOT, both on April 25, 1927.

Their answers: NOT-P, January 9, 1928, and April 27, 1927; NOT, April 22 and 27, 1927.

Manuel Molero: NOT, April 27, 1927; Cline, p. 199.

O’Keefe, Pool, and Dufour: NOT, April 27, 1927; NOT-P, April 27, 1927.

“The possibility of danger”: NOS, April 24, 1927.

“Pool pleaded with me”: Cline, pp. 197-200.

“You may go”: Ibid.

it was “too confidential”: Memo from Mississippi Flood Control Association, Office of Adjutant General, April 23, 1927, NA, RG 94.

Meanwhile, Butler, Hecht, and Dufour: See narrative in CP for April 24 through April 27, 1927.

CHAPTER TWENTY

the river began seeping: Saxon, pp. 322, 324; interview with Harry Kelleher.

“hysterical”: Testimony of Col. Lewis, Mississippi River Commission hearing at New Orleans, July 8, 1927, NA, RG 77.

“for the psychological effect”: Testimony of Col. Charles Potter, president of the Mississippi River Commission, HFCCH, p. 2069.

“In order to avoid”: Copy in CP, also NOT, NOT-P, April 27, 1927.

Mayor O’Keefe and fifty: The Caplan Papers are the chief source for the account of this crucial meeting. See also lengthy stories in all four New Orleans papers over a period of several days, esp. NOT-P, NOT, NOS, and NOI, all April 27, 1927, for account of the events.

It stipulated three things: Ibid.

Of the fifty-one other: See list of Boston Club members as of December 1, 1927, available in TUL; see also Landry.

“I have before me”: See CP; also NOT-P, NOT, NOS, and NOI, all April 27, 1927.

“Where do they get”: SBV, April 30, 1927.

“Let’s sleep on our shotguns”: Ibid.

“get proper compensation”: NOT-P, NOT, NOI, NOS, April 27, 1927; MC-A, April 26, 1927; JC-L, April 27 and 28, 1927.

“They didn’t want”: CP; NOT-P, NOT, NOI, NOS, April 27, 1927; see also MC-A, April 26, 1927; JC-L, April 27 and 28, 1927.

“The citizens and taxpayers”: Perez and Nunez to Secretary of War, April 26, 1927, Adjutant General records, NA, RG 94.

“vigorously protest[ing]”: CP.

“The relief to be”: CP, April 26, 1927.

the representatives of St. Bernard: Account of these several discussions are most detailed in CP, in effect an abbreviated transcript, with other information in the NOT-P, NOT, NOI, NOS, all April 27, 1927; and SBV, April 20, 1927.

“What else can we do”: MC-A, April 28, 1927.

Inside the city: NOT, April 27, 1927.

a wire from the secretary of war: Davis to Simpson, Adjutant General records, NA, RG 94.

“Everything is set”: CP.

“I have nothing to do”: Oral history of Turner Catledge, HHPL.

The news was kept from Simpson: MC-A, April 27, 1927.

“The Mississippi River Commission”: NOT, April 27, 1927.

“He was on”: Interview with Leon Sarpy, February 18, 1993.

Molero was in Delacroix Island: NOT, April 28, 1927.

“We will not reveal”: MC-A, April 28, 1927.

The council adopted it: Pool to O’Keefe, April 27, 1928, NOCA.

“Trade Shows Flood”: NOT, April 28, 1927.

“Contrary to disquieting rumors”: Butler to long list of banks, April 28, 1927, copy in CP.

“I would suggest”: Ibid.

That night: Oral history of Mrs. Gordon Wilson, FC.

On the levee: AP story published widely—for example, in Dallas Morning News, April 29, 1927.

“That’s where”: MC-A, April 29, 1927.

The aerial photographs: Interview with Mrs. Rose Monroe, February 17, 1993.

“Only the privileged”: Saxon, p. 322.

no representative: SBV, May 7, 1927.

Emergency Clearing House: Minutes of Emergency Clearing House Publicity Committee, April 29, 1927, CP.

39 tons: Report by Garsaud, CP.

“We’re letting ’em”: Saxon, p. 339.

“Gentlemen, you have seen”: Ibid., p. 324.

“the greatest flood”: Isaac Cline, “Special Flood and Warning Bulletin,” May 1, 1927, Louisiana Collection, TUL.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

“is a strange mixture”: Calvin Coolidge, The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge, pp. 228-229.

“There is no right”: Donald McCoy, Calvin Coolidge, pp. 119-121; Mark Sullivan, The Twenties, pp. 65-66.

“The power and”: Coolidge, p. 190.

“Unprecedented floods”: Coolidge Papers, LC.

“a dreamer”: Richard Smith, An Uncommon Man, p. 107.

“the intense repression”: Craig Lloyd, Aggressive Introvert, p. 4.

“Leave me not”: George Nash, The Life of Herbert Hoover, p. 15.

“a kind of complex”: Quoted in Joan Hoff Wilson, Herbert Hoover, p. 11.

“lifetime ambition”: Smith, p. 30.

“I would rather”: Nash, p. 345.

“the highest paid man”: Quoted in Carol Wilson, Herbert Hoover, p. 52.

“a wizard of finance”: Nash, p. 411.

At forty he owned: Schlesinger, The Crisis of the Old Order 1919-1933, pp. 79-85 passim.

“run through his profession”: Joan Hoff Wilson, p. 23.

“The American is”: Hoover to George Bancroft, quoted in Nash, p. 504.

“as rich as”: Nash, pp. 504, 513.

“But you are trying”: Ibid., p. 482.

“Engineering is”: Ibid.

“exactness makes”: Smith, p. 80.

the number of engineers: Edwin Layton, The Revolt of the Engineers, p. 3.

“machinery is our”: Robert Wohl, A Passion for Wings (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), quoted in A. Alverez, “Lonely Passion,” New York Review of Books, February 2, 1995, p. 7.

Eads had played: Andrew Carnegie, The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie, p. 174.

“The same principles”: Layton, p. 143.

“[h]armony not discord”: Quoted in David McCullough, The Path Between the Seas, p. 563.

“[M]etaphysics has practically”: Ibid., p. 59.

“The golden rule”: Ibid., p. 67.

“a principle so full”: Eads, St. Louis dinner, March 23, 1875, ALP, p. 47.

“The Millennium”: Samuel Hays, Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency, p. 124.

“The shop”: Terry Reynolds, ed., The Engineer in America, p. 408.

“By some false”: Herman Bernstein, Herbert Hoover, pp. 40-41.

“the average politician’s”: Layton, p. 147.

“directorate”: See, for example, Thorstein Veblen, Engineers and the Price System (New York: Viking, 1921), p. 141.

“the engineering profession personified”: Joan Hoff Wilson, p. 43.

“the world lives”: Quoted in ibid., p. 59.

“the biggest figure”: Schlesinger, p. 85.

Polish soldiers had executed: Bernstein, Herbert Hoover, pp. 21-22.

“the only man”: Schlesinger, p. 83.

“abandonment of”: Joan Hoff Wilson, p. 37.

“the ruthlessness”: Smith, p. 93.

“ordered liberty”: Joan Hoff Wilson, p. 7.

“the social and economic”: William Appleman Williams, “What This Country Needs,” New York Review of Books, November 5, 1970, p. 8.

“No civilization could”: Hoover, American Individualism, pp. 19, 22-23.

“[T]he real need”: Ibid., p. 58.

“precise and efficient”: Quoted in Layton, pp. 189-190; Hoover, American Individualism, pp. 22, 58.

“abnormally shy”: Henry Pringle, “Hoover: An Enigma Easily Misunderstood,” World’s Work 56 (June 1928), pp. 131-143.

“the pneumatic drill”: Smith, p. 53.

“those strong men”: Lloyd, p. 82.

“He is certainly”: Schlesinger, pp. 79-85.

“I am 100 percent”: Schlesinger, pp. 79-85; Gary Best, “The Hoover-for-President Boom,” pp. 228, 244.

Old Guard GOP senators: Joan Hoff Wilson, p. 80.

“I should prefer”: See Robert Murray, “Herbert Hoover and the Harding Cabinet” in Ellis Hawley, Herbert Hoover as Secretary of Commerce, p. 20.

“Hoover sees”: Lloyd, p. 92

“organized”: Ellis Hawley, “Herbert Hoover and Economic Stabilization 1921-22,” in Hawley, Herbert Hoover as Secretary of Commerce, p. 65.

Hoover then had the Federation: Layton, p. 203.

the Better Homes of America Association: Joan Hoff Wilson, p. 111.

This group advocated: Ibid.; also, Ellis Hawley, The Great War and the Search for a Modern Order, p. 114.

He helped make second mortgages: Rosenwald to Hoover, n.d., HHPL.

“We are passing”: Joan Hoff Wilson, p. 68.

“the most powerful”: Michael Parrish, Anxious Decades: America in Prosperity and Depression (New York: Norton 1992), pp. 74-80.

“not marked as coming”: Lloyd, p. 66.

“among the few”: NYT, December 17, 1922.

Literary Digest ran a story: Literary Digest, May 14, 1927; note that the magazine dated its issues far in advance of actual publication.

“Capital Mystified”: NYT, April 16, 1927.

“That man has offered”: Joan Hoff Wilson, p. 124.

“consumed with ambition”: Quoted in Richard Smith, An Uncommon Man, p. 144.

“I felt”: Joan Hoff Wilson, p. 121.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“The Army Engineers”: Unsigned Red Cross memorandum, “Conference Presidents Red Cross Committee,” April 22, 1927; statement by Dwight Davis following conference, April 22, 1927; both in RCP.

“to use such government”: Henry Baker to J. D. Cremer, August 1, 1928, RCP.

“In the course of”: Quoted in Bruce Lohof, “Hoover and the 1927 Mississippi Flood,” Ph.D. diss., p. 106.

“Essential push”: Fieser to James McClintock, May 5, 1927; Fieser to Henry Baker, May 6, 1927; Fieser to T. R. Buchanan, May 9, 1927, all in RCP.

Hoover himself: Oral history of Turner Catledge, HHPL.

wire daily reports: F. D. Beneke to Edgar Jadwin, April 30, 1927, Office of the Adjutant General central files, NA, RG 94.

“squarely on”: See memo from Henry Baker to Fieser, May 2, 1927, Box 741, RCP.

Hoover streamlined things more: Henry Baker to J. D. Cremer, August 1, 1928, RCP.

The Memphis mayor had assigned: Oral history of Turner Catledge, HHPL.

he was bankrolling: William McCain, “The Life and Labor of Dennis Murphree,” unpublished ms., 1950, MDAH.

Crosby would soon become: Wire from Simpson to Hoover, April 27, 1927, HHPL.

Only six people: Interview with Frank Hall, March 24 and December 18, 1992.

professional fisherman came: Foster Davis to Robert Bondy, May 4, 1927, RCP.

“I made myself”: Interview recorded by historian Pete Daniel, who kindly shared tapes of interviews he conducted for his book Deep’n as It Come.

The Clearing House Association: Interview with Hunter Kimbrough, November 27, 1992.

“I go into Jim’s Café”: Daniel’s interview tape.

“I searched”: Ibid.

“He found one family”: Daniel’s interview with Virginia Pullen in Vicksburg, May 13, 1975.

“We could hear”: Tape of panel discussion at Second Levee Break Celebration, Greenville, Miss., April 1990, loaned by Jack Gannon.

“I come here”: Quoted in Daniel, p. 17; Oscar Johnston to H. W. Lee, Fine Cotton Spinners and Doublers Assoc., May 2, 1927, D&PLCP.

“For thirty-six hours”: Percy, LL, p. 250.

“The Mississippi Delta”: Van de Waltman to Commerce Department, April 29, 1927, RCP.

“just swelled up”: Oral history of Henry Mascagni, August 8, 1977, MDAH.

“fully two hundred bodies”: Fieser to A. L. Shafer, May 7, 1927, HHPL.

they took soundings: Interview with Frank Hall, December 23, 1992; also Daniel’s 1975 interview with Caillouet.

“[e]very relief boat”: See, for example, Spalding to District Engineer, Louisville, Kentucky, April 26, 1927, RC, RG 2, box 740.

“I am speaking”: Radio address, May 1, 1927, HHPL.

“The swiftly moving current”: NYT, May 6, 1927.

“Today it is possible”: MC-A, May 5, 1927.

“For mile after mile”: NYT, May 6, 1927.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

“First in Cairo”: NYT, May 9, 1927.

“[Failure would] increase”: Ibid.; NYT, May 10, 1927.

“We wish that”: Quoted in Bruce Lohof, “Herbert Hoover, Spokesman for Human Efficiency,” p. 694.

The flood, hemmed in: Report of Board of [Louisiana] State Engineers, 1929, pp. 98-99.

“of tremendous proportions”: Isaac Cline, “Daily Flood Bulletin,” May 12, 1927, Louisiana Collection, TUL.

“immense deposits”: Paul Dettmer, “Final Melville Report,” May 15, 1928, RCP, box 737.

“a veritable wall”: NYT, May 19, 1927.

“Their bodies were found”: NYT, May 17, 1927.

“A wall of water”: AP story appearing in MC-A, May 24, 1927.

“All population”: Hoover to Coolidge, May 24, 1927, HHPL.

“Imperative that refugees”: Hoover to Jadwin, May 13, 1927, RCP.

The War Department: See Jadwin to Hoover, May 17, 1927; Hoover to Jadwin, June 5, 1927, RCP.

the flood put as much: See American Red Cross, The Mississippi Valley Flood Disaster of 1927: Official Report of Operations (Washington, D.C., 1928), pp. 39-46.

“concentration camps”: Ibid.

“not necessarily reliable”: DeWitt Smith to Hoover, January 21, 1928, RCP.

estimated deaths: H. C. Frankenfield, “The Floods of 1927 in the Mississippi Basin,” Monthly Weather Review, Supplement 29 (Washington, D.C., 1927), p. 35; MC-A, May 30, 1927.

economic losses: American Red Cross, The Mississippi Valley Flood Disaster; Frankenfield, “The Floods of 1927 in the Mississippi Basin,” p. 35.

The river itself: Report of Board of [Louisiana] State Engineers, p. 101.

one could cross the head: B. B. Simms to General Jeff Thompson, chief Louisiana state engineer, January 12, 1874, NA, RG 77, entry 522.

“I urgently request”: Murphree to Coolidge, April 29, 1927, Coolidge Papers, microfilm, reel 181, LC.

“that a visit”: Richard Edmonds to Coolidge, April 30, 1927, Coolidge Papers, microfilm, reel 181, LC.

“that you go”: Thomas Ridgeway to Coolidge, April 25, 1927, Coolidge Papers, microfilm, reel 181, LC.

“Big Bill” Thompson: O’Keefe to Coolidge, April 27, 1927, Coolidge Papers, microfilm, reel 181, LC.

“Earnestly urge”: L. O. Crosby to Coolidge, April 29, 1927, Coolidge Papers, microfilm, reel 181, LC.

Eight senators and four: NYT, May 1, 1927.

“More than ever”: Murphree to Coolidge, May 3, 1927, Coolidge Papers, microfilm, reel 181, LC.

“send me a telegram”: Rogers to Everett Sanders, April 30, 1927, Coolidge Papers, microfilm, reel 181, LC.

every single day: NYT, April 18 through May 10, 1927.

references to him: NYT had sixty-four nonflood references to him from April through June 1927, compared to twenty-two from January through March.

“Since the last report”: “The Mississippi Flood and Mr. Hoover’s Part in Relief Work,” news summaries for May 14, 1927, HHPL.

“The Magazine section”: “The Mississippi Flood and Mr. Hoover’s Part in Relief Work,” news summaries for May 17, 1927, HHPL.

“‘There is no honor’”: “The Mississippi Flood and Mr. Hoover’s Part in Relief Work,” news summaries for May 23, 1927, HHPL.

“I can state”: Quoted in NYT, May 29, 1927.

“Only three lives”: Hoover to White, June 21, 1927, HHPL.

“Unstinted praise”: Ibid., June 17, 1927.

“the world lives”: Joan Hoff Wilson, p. 82.

“I shall be”: Lloyd, p. 84.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“the best”: Interview with Bertram Wyatt-Brown, March 1993; also, Wyatt-Brown, The House of Percy, pp. 192-193.

“Will Percy was”: Interview with Betty Carter, January 16, 1996.

“quick as a youth”: Walker Percy, Introduction to LL, p. viii.

“in a way that”: Oral history of Shelby Foote, MDAH.

“He could get”: Ibid.

“beautiful and terrible”: Walker Percy, Introduction to LL, p. viii.

“the loneliest man”: Quoted in Richard King, A Southern Renaissance, p. 82; David Cohn, “Eighteenth Century Chevalier,” pp. 562-563.

“overjoyed no one”: Percy, LL, p. 26.

“even more lacerating”: Ibid., pp. 58, 95.

“I had not loved”: Ibid., pp. 57, 141.

“the most gentle”: Ibid., p. 58.

“I must have been”: Ibid., p. 141.

“was anguish”: Ibid., p. 79.

Will had a brother: Hester Ware, “A Study of the Life and Works of William Alexander Percy,” M.A. thesis, p. 17.

“all boy”: Percy, LL, p. 126.

“perpetuating the name”: Percy, LL, p. 346.

Crowds overflowed the house: Ware, “A Study,” p. 17.

“I am your son”: William Alexander Percy, “A Legend of Lacedcaemon,” in Selected Poems (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1943), p. 380.

“this one-sided correspondence”: WAP to Camille Percy, October 6, no year, PFP.

“Mother Dear—it”: WAP to Camille Percy, August 15, no year, PFP.

“Mother Dear, Things”: WAP to Camille Percy, July 24, 1922, PFP.

“was always happening”: Percy, LL, pp. 110-111.

“sick for a home”: Ibid., p. 112.

“[L]et your writing”: WAP to Audrey Bunch, September 4, 1927, PFP.

“first requirement”: WAP to DuBose Heyward, July 14, 1923, PFP.

“‘How many trees’”: Ibid., “L.P.,” p. 235; “Enzio’s Kingdom,” p. 171.

“Father was”: Percy, LL, p. 270.

“Sappho in Levkas”: WAP to DuBose Heyward, July 14, 1923, PFP.

To think nobility: William Alexander Percy, “Sappho in Levkas,” in Selected Poems, pp. 40-56.

“some young god”: Ibid., “To Lucrezia,” p. 15.

“the best place”: LP to C. B. Adams, August 17, 1917, PFP.

“I am considerably”: LP to his brother Walker Percy, July 8, 1908, PFP.

“I had attacks”: Percy, LL, p. 126.

“My father and mother”: William Alexander Percy, “The Fifth Autumn,” PFP.

“Will moved in their”: For a summary of Will’s involvement with this community, see Wyatt-Brown, pp. 208, 218-222.

“I’m about convinced”: WAP to Janet Dana Longcope, n.d., Special Collections, Louisiana State University Library.

“the center of”: WAP to Janet Dana Longcope, n.d., Special Collections, Louisiana State University Library.

“That boy of mine”: LP to John Sharp Williams, November 14, 1916, John Sharp Williams Papers, LC.

“There were patches”: WAP to LP, August, 31, 1918, PFP.

“Dear Father”: WAP to LP, October 4, 1918, PFP.

“honor I deserved”: WAP to Camille Percy, November 11, 1918, PFP.

“The negroes”: LP to John Sharp Williams, August 4, 1919, John Sharp Williams Papers, LC.

“I can’t see”: See WAP to John Sharp Williams, February 16, 1921, John Sharp Williams Papers, LC.

“slaveholders began”: Percy, LL, p. 5.

“[W]hat can a white”: Ibid., p. 22.

“their obliterating genius”: Ibid., p. 309.

Some, it was rumored: Interview with David Cober, February 25, 1993.

“my only tie”: Percy, LL, p. 296.

“turn[ing] to stone”: William Alexander Percy, “Medusa,” in Selected Poems, p. 244.

“I understand”: WAP to Brick Row Book Shop, February 25 and March 7, 1922, PFP.

Fellow alumnus Monte Lemann: See Lemann to WAP, October 21, 1926; WAP to Lemann, October 26, 1926, PFP.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Will returned home: Percy, LL, p. 247.

“We heard this storm”: Interview with David Cober, February 25, 1993.

“like zero made audible”: Percy, LL, p. 250.

“Water was”: Interview with Jesse Pollard, March 3, 1993.

“Guess you better”: Percy, LL, p. 251.

“Senator Percy”: Interview with Hunter Kimbrough, January 5, 1993; interview with Frank Hall, December 18, 1992; see also Paxton, Three Wars and a Flood, p. 24.

“All citizens”: Mississippi National Guard, Report of Flood Relief Expedition, MDAH; Paxton, p. 25.

“Flood conditions”: GD-T, April 23, 1927.

Rumors began to spread: JC-L, April 24, 1927.

“Conditions Greenville”: Gen. Malin Craig to A.G., April 23, 1927, NA, RG 94, Office of the Adjutant General.

the city water supply: Mississippi National Guard, Report of Flood Relief Expedition, MDAH.

“The situation here”: NOT, April 25, 1927.

“Whatever Senator Percy”: Interview with M. L. Payne, March 4, 1993.

“The city will”: GD-T, April 23, 1927.

“It is the plan”: NOS, April 23, 1927.

the government steamer Control: NOT, GD-T, and NOT-P, all April 25, 1927.

“[N]one of us”: Percy, LL, p. 258.

Will responded bitingly: Ibid., p. 257.

he found Will: The following account comes chiefly from Percy, LL, p. 257; the GD-T, April 23 through April 29, 1927; and Oral history of Joe Rice Dockery, December 13, 1979, MDAH.

Finally, Will capitulated: Percy, LL, pp. 257-258.

The Wabash: GD-T, April 26, 1927.

“breakdown”: WAP to Gerstle Mack, May 15, 1927, PFP.

“We are urging”: GD-T, April 26, 1927.

the first refugee death: Percy Bell to “Dear Folks,” April 30, 1927, kindly supplied by Charles Greenleaf Bell.

Rumors spread that Taggart: Interview with David Cober, February 25, 1993; Oral history of Salvador Signa, December 1, 1976, MDAH.

Approximately 4,000 whites: Mississippi National Guard, Report of Relief Expedition, MDAH.

Paperboys delivered: Oral history of Reed Dunn, Mississippi Oral History Program, University of Southern Mississippi.

peddlers set up stands: Oral history of Frank Ciolino, August 22, 1978, MDAH.

Rowboats were ordered: Memphis Courier-Appeal, April 29, 1927.

people constantly played: Oral history of Theodore Pountain, MDAH.

a thriving black market: Oral history of Salvador Signa, MDAH.

“The town is”: Percy Bell to “Dear Folks,” April 30, 1927.

Roughly 5,000 blacks: Mississippi National Guard, Report of Flood Relief Expedition, MDAH.

Up to 13,000: Memo of C. P. Doe to DeWitt Smith, January 6, 1928, RCP.

“Bye Bye Blackbird”: Oral history of Ernest Waldauer, MDAH.

“groups of negroes”: GD-T, April 28, 1927.

“all the negroes”: Percy Bell to “Dear Folks,” April 30, 1927.

The food blacks received: Interview with Frank Carlton, February 24, 1993; Oral history of Ernest Bueller, March 17, 1977, MDAH.

“It is our duty”: MC-A, April 28, 1927.

“[I]n no case will”: JC-L, April 30, 1927.

“Plantation owners”: Undated memo of A. L. Shafer, titled “Return of Refugees,” to national Red Cross representative in Mississippi, RCP.

“furnish a list”: JC-L, Memphis Courier-Appeal, May 18, 1927.

“I have seen nothing”: “Statement to Shareholders,” April 1, 1928, D&PLCP; Johnston to Hicks & Co., May 9, 1927, D&PLCP.

In an effort: Johnston to H. Lee, April 26, 1927, D&PLCP.

a special train: Johnston to H. Lee, May 2, 1927, D&PLCP.

“‘Don’t give ’em’”: Oral history of Salvador Signa, MDAH.

“Here 440,000 acres”: MC-A, May 12, 1927.

Unloading barges: Oral history of Ernest Waldauer, MDAH.

“Imperative to increase”: Paxton to Green, April 27, 1927, quoted in JC-L, April 28, 1927.

“No able-bodied negro”: GD-T, May 9, 1927.

all Red Cross work: In his autobiography Will justifies his position by claiming the Red Cross prohibited payment to recipients of its bounty. This was not the case. See Percy, LL, pp. 258-269.

“Me and Horace”: Oral history of Salvador Signa, MDAH.

“They wasn’t given”: Oral history of John Johnston, MDAH.

“The Guard would”: Oral history of Mrs. Henry Ransom, MDAH.

“The colored people”: Oral history of Percy McRaney, MDAH.

“On the levee”: Interview with Joe Thomas Reilly, December 16, 1992.

“just like dogs”: Oral history of Addie Oliver, MDAH.

“caught”: Mississippi National Guard, Report of Flood Relief Expedition, MDAH.

Two particular companies: Interview with David Cober, February 25, 1993; interview with Lamar Britton, March 1, 1993; draft report of Colored Advisory Commission, June 4, 1927, HHPL; “Final Report,” April 6, 1928, NA, RC, box 744.

“guilty of acts”: WAP to Johnston, February 11, 1937, D&PLCP.

continued food shortages: GD-T, May 9, 1927.

“the Argonne”: WAP to Gerstle Mack, May 15, 1927, PFP.

“To falter or fail”: MC-A, May 12, 1927.

“rotten”: GD-T, May 16, 1927.

“We will stand”: Ibid.

“The negroes in town”: GD-T, May 24, 1927; note, orders containing a misprint appeared on May 23.

employers were paying: See, for example, Oscar Johnston to V. E. Cartledge, June 30, 1927, D&PLCP.

“Refugees Herded”: Chicago Defender, May 6, 1927.

“Conscript Labor”: Pittsburgh Courier, May 14, 1927.

“W. A. Percy…”: Chicago Defender, June 4, 1927.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

77 percent of blacks: Henry Lee Moon, Balance of Power: The Negro Vote (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1948), pp. 48-50.

94 percent support: Ibid.

the 1924 presidential election: Harold Gosnell, Negro Politicians, pp. 28-30; see also Harold Gosnell, Champion Campaigner, p. 212; and Nancy Weiss, Farewell to the Party of Lincoln, pp. 11, 31.

black Republicans: See, for example, GOP National Committee-woman Mary Booze to John Overton, GOP State Committee, and Perry Howard, January 22, 1926, PFP.

Only in Memphis: Moon, p. 176.

“injustice”: Barnett to Hoover, May 4, 1927, HHPL.

“being made to work”: Anonymous letter to Coolidge, May 9, 1927, RCP, box 743.

“voice the protest”: Capper to Hoover, May 10, 1927, HHPL.

“charges of race”: Jane Addams to Hoover, May 16, 1927, quoted in wire from Lawrence Richey to George Akerson, May 18, 1927, HHPL.

“It is said”: Sidney Redmond to Coolidge, April 30, 1927, Coolidge Papers, LC.

Even professional Red Cross: Ruth Thomas to Earl Kilpatrick, May 20, 1927, RCP, box 743.

“Chicago Defender”: Wire from Fieser to Henry McClintock, May 14, 1927, RCP; see also William Baxter to Henry Baker, May 19, 1927, RCP, box 743.

“colored people”: Hoover to Baker, May 13, 1927, HHPL.

“The American Red Cross”: Baker to William Pickens, May 13, 1927, RCP, box 743.

“Never before”: Mrs. L. M. Moore, Treasurer of Pine Bluff branch of NAACP, to NAACP Headquarters, May 18, 1927, NAACP Papers, LC.

“request [for] source”: see Baker to McClintock, summary of responses, May 14, 1927, RCP, box 743.

“Charges that colored”: See, for example, responses from N. R. Bancroft, Deeson, Mississippi, and Monticello, Arkansas (unsigned), to Baker, May 13, 1927, RCP, box 743.

“It is the desire”: Monticello, Arkansas (unsigned), to Baker; Camp Commander, Yazoo City, to Baker, both May 13, 1927, RCP, box 743.

the NAACP began publicly: See, for example, wires from White to Bolton Smith and to John Clark, both on May 12, 1927; NAACP Papers, LC.

“I have managed”: Irwin’s letter was quoted in a telegram from Hoover’s aide Lawrence Richey to George Akerson, June 9, 1927, HHPL.

northern papers ran articles: NYT and New York Herald Tribune, May 28, 1927.

“With view to”: Hoover to R. R. Moulton [Moton], May 24, 1927, HHPL; memoir written by Henry Baker, RCP, box 743; Hoover to Robert Bondy, May 21, 1927, HHPL.

“some of the most”: Sidney Redmond to Attorney General John Sargent, July 5, 1927, U.S. Dept. of Justice records, peonage file, NA.

he failed to inform Redmond: Redmond to Hoover, January 5, 1928, HHPL.

“[A]fter the first”: Hoover to Will Irwin, June 10, 1927, HHPL.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

“By July 18”: GD-T, May 25, 1927.

“Worry is not”: Margaret Wells Wood, Social Hygiene Lecturer, to Valeria Park, M.D., “Special Report,” July 10, 1927, RCP, box 740; see also “Social Hygiene and the Mississippi Flood Disaster,” Journal of Social Hygiene 13, no. 8, pp. 455-457.

“for the purpose”: GD-T, May 31, 1927.

“We propose”: Ibid.

“The guns are”: Interview with Maurice Sisson, October 22, 1993; interview with John Jackson, March 9, 1993.

Levye Chapple: Interview with Chapple’s granddaughter, Katherine Bradbury Thompson, March 9, 1993.

“We are citizens”: Draft report of Colored Advisory Committee, June 1927, RCP, box 744; interview with Maurice Sisson, October 22, 1993; interview with John Wiley, October 22, 1993.

Chapple, McMiller, and others: GD-T, June 1, 1927; interview with John Wiley, October 22, 1993; interview with Maurice Sisson, October 22, 1993; interview with John Jackson, March 9, 1993; draft report of Colored Advisory Committee, June 1927, RCP, box 744; interview with Mildred Commodore, McMiller’s daughter, August 3, 1995.

The question was: Interview with John Wiley, October 22, 1993; interview with Maurice Sisson, October 22, 1993; interview with John Jackson, March 9, 1993; draft report of Colored Advisory Committee, June 1927, RCP, box 744.

“I don’t mind”: LP to J. B. Ray, December 28, 1906, PFP; see also Willis, “On the New South Frontier,” pp. 147-149.

Emanuel Smith: Interview with John Wiley, October 22, 1993; interview with Maurice Sisson, October 22, 1993.

J. D. Fowler: Ibid.

“500 Colored Men Wanted”: Draft report of Colored Advisory Committee, June 1927, RC, box 744.

“I kept my”: Interview with Mildred Commodore.

On the eighth day: JC-L, June 17, 1927.

“our colored citizens”: City Council minutes of June 7, 1927.

“You have”: GD-T, June 13, 1927.

“all colored citizens”: Ibid.

“Believe food”: Crosby to Hoover, June 15, 1927, HHPL.

He vetoed cutting: Ibid.; Hoover to Crosby, June 16, 1927, HHPL.

spent an average of 21 cents: “Report of the Special Committee,” June 22, 1927, RCP, box 735.

“simply teach”: Memo from C. P. Doe to DeWitt Smith, January 6, 1928; Percy Bell to “Dear Folks,” April 30, 1927.

“still a wreck”: WAP to L. P. Soule, June 22 and 27, 1927, PFP.

“We were tired”: Percy, LL, p. 26.

“Every store”: Percy Bell to Bessie Bell, May 15, 1927, supplied by Charles Greenleaf Bell.

The boat: Crosby to Hoover, November 10, 1927, HHPL; also, MC-A, June 30, 1927.

“The meeting was”: A. L. Shafer, “Narrative Report of Flood Conditions,” July 2, 1927, RCP.

“Outside of the great”: Ibid.; JC-L, June 14, 1927.

the same black Greenville minister: See the anonymous letter to Hoover dated July 2, 1927, HHLP. Compare it to the anonymous letter to Coolidge, May 14, 1927, RCP, box 743. In both letters the writer describes himself similarly; the typewriter, misspellings, and grammatical constructions appear identical.

In Little Rock a black man: MC-A, May 5, 1927.

The mayor of Lake Providence: Louisiana Weekly, May 14, 1927.

two blacks were accused: GD-T, June 13, 1927.

“crazed negro”: JC-L, June 18, 1927.

In Jackson, the governor: See JC-L, June 18 to June 22, 1927.

In Yazoo City: JC-L, July 8, 1927.

“a striking example”: Louisiana Weekly, April 23 1927.

“the seat of”: Undated Barnett speech in fall 1927 in Chicago, CBP.

“could not secure”: Draft report of Colored Advisory Commission, June 4, 1927, HHLP; “Final Report,” April 6, 1928, RCP, box 744.

Washington County: “Statistical Summary of Losses,” RCP, box 735.

“as they demonstrate”: Baker to Fieser, June 16, 1927, RCP, box 735.

internal political bickering: Report of Malinde Havey, Directory of Nursing, Mississippi Valley Flood Disaster, July 13, 1927, RCP, box 735.

“or else take”: LP to L. A. Downs, September 10, 1927, PFP.

The national Red Cross: George Stricklin to Red Cross Headquarters, Memphis, May 25, 1927, RCP, box 738.

“I bitterly resent”: WAP to Crosby, July 15, 1927, NA, RG 2, box 738.

Will asked for and received: WAP to L. P. Soule of Yale University Press, May 19, June 22, and June 27, 1927, PFP.

“giving the entire”: MC-A, July 8, 1927.

Gooden told a different version: Interview with Frank Hall; interview with Rev. R. T. Strong, February 26, 1993; GD-T, July 9, 1927; draft report of Colored Advisory Commission presented to Hoover, December 12, 1927, RCP.

two white doctors: Greenville City Council minutes, September 6, 1927.

“We prepared”: Interview with Rhodes Wasson, December 16, 1992; Margaret Wells Wood, Social Hygiene Lecturer, to Valeria Parker, M.D., “Special Report,” July 10, 1927, NA, RG 2, box 740; see also “Social Hygiene and the Mississippi Flood Disaster,” Journal of Social Hygiene 13, no. 8, pp. 455-457.

“I told my informant”: Percy, LL, p. 267.

Chapple’s father: Interview with Sylvia Jackson, March 7, 1993.

“said starkly”: Ibid., pp. 267-268.

“When put upon”: Percy, LL, p. 126.

“A good Negro”: Ibid., pp. 267-268.

“My dear Percy”: Hoover to WAP, July 5, 1927, HHPL.

“a strong relief”: Summary report by A. Shafer and R. Thrush, September 8, 1928, RCP, box 737.

“No one can”: Ibid.

“passing the buck”: WAP to George Day, August 31, 1927, PFP.

“Our people here”: LP to Judge Horace Oakly, August 22, 1927, PFP.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

“my sincere appreciation”: Minutes of Emergency Clearing House Publicity Committee meeting, May 11, 1927, CP.

the Association of Commerce: Minutes of Association of Commerce board meeting, March 16, 1927, ACP.

“we have decided”: See exchange of letters between Emergency Clearing House Publicity Committee and Otis Mahogany Co., May 13, 1927, CP.

Walter Parker: Minutes of Emergency Clearing House Publicity Committee meeting, May 13, 1927, CP (hereafter, ECHPC minutes).

“[A]ny announcements”: Minutes of Association of Commerce board meeting, May 3, 1927, ACP.

forced Moody’s Investors Service: ECHPC minutes, May 16, 1927, CP.

the committee contacted 265: See Association of Commerce papers, esp. News Bulletin, May 10, 1927.

“New Orleans is”: Ibid.

editorials from Springfield: See ECHPC minutes, May 19, 1927, CP.

“New Orleans ‘Babbitry’”: MC-A, May 2, 1927.

It got corrections printed: ECHPC minutes, May 11, 1927, CP.

“a citizens committee”: Copy in ECHPC minutes, May 11, 1927, CP.

a budget of $130,000: Figures come from Finance Committee report, December 31, 1927, ACP.

“Superintendent of Police Healy”: Civic Bureau of Association of Commerce report, August 1, 1927, ACP.

“the noble and unselfish”: Undated editorial, probably mid-June 1927, from New Iberia Enterprise, ACP.

“in the mind of a great”: Minutes of the executive committee of the Association of Commerce board meeting, October 5, 1927, ACP.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

“You’re talking”: interview with Harry Kelleher, December 10, 1992.

“Into the fiercely contested”: Graduation speech, 1899, clipping in Williams, Monroe, and Blanc Family Papers, HNOC.

publicly rebuked his partner: Interview with Stephen Lemann, November 7, 1992.

“a wholly-owned subsidiary”: Interview with Stephen Lemann, April 6, 1995.

He worked ferociously: Interview with Harry Kelleher, December 10, 1992.

“I’ve never seen”: Interview with Stephen Lemann, April 6, 1995.

“tres ordinaire”: Interview with Marianne Patton Atkinson, February 20, 1993.

“doing business exactly”: Andy Zipser, “Hidden Value in the Bayou,” Barron’s, October 4, 1993.

Meraux was given $5,000: St. Bernard Policy Jury minutes, April 27, 1927; “Summary of Claims,” M&LP. Thanks to Robert Harvey, president of Orleans Levee Board and Stephen Lemann for access to these papers.

“The words of”: Reported in the minutes of the meeting of the executive committee of the Citizens Flood Relief Committee, n.d., CP. (Hereafter, these minutes will be referred to as “executive committee minutes.”)

decided to use: See, for example, executive committee minutes, May 13, 1927, CP.

“The business interests”: Orleans Levee Board minutes, May 10, 1927, Orleans Levee Board.

“as objects of charity”: Executive committee minutes, May 11, 1927, CP.

“relief be granted”: Ibid.

“to deduct from personal”: Ibid.

the governor’s appointees: Reported in executive committee minutes, May 17, 1927, CP.

the rules stated: Executive committee minutes, May 14, 1927, CP.

“[v]olunteer legal services”: Clipping of unidentified newspaper, probably NOI, May 8, 1927, in CP.

“unethical”: See executive committee minutes, May 11, 1927, CP.

“state the legal objections”: Executive committee minutes, June 14, 1927, CP.

“a man may file”: Reported in executive committee minutes, n.d., CP.

Only a complete settlement: Ibid., July 25, 1927.

Butler estimated that claims: Ibid., May 17 and 18, 1927.

Claims would exceed $30 million: SBV, August 15, 1929.

“There may possibly be”: Lemann to Monroe, June 11, 1927.

“[I]f the case is”: Undated memo in Orleans Organization Caernarvon Reparations files, M&LP.

One of the first trappers audited: Executive committee minutes, June 27 and 29, 1927, CP.

“illustrated [by] an aged negress”: John Wegman to Executive Committee, June 21, 1927, CP.

they decided to feed: Wegman to Executive Committee, July 20, 1927; executive committee minutes, August 1, 1927, CP.

“As long as we continue”: Wegman to Butler, August 13, 1927, CP.

Monroe had approved a payment: Orleans Levee Board minutes, May 23, 1927, Orleans Levee Board.

CHAPTER THIRTY

“I have requested”: Simpson’s statement and the subsequent account of and quotations from this meeting are all from detailed minutes of the meeting in executive committee minutes, July 25, 1927, CP.

“It is manifestly impossible”: In addition to minutes of the meeting (July 25, 1927) in CP, see memo dictated by Monroe re his conversations with Wilkinson, June 3, 1927, M&LP.

The banks would continue: Executive committee minutes, June 29, 1927, CP.

“did not want to give”: Orleans Levee Board minutes, July 20, 1927, and May 26, 1928, Orleans Levee Board.

it would give Butler $340,000: Orleans Levee Board minutes, May 26, 1928, Orleans Levee Board.

the railroad did not file: Executive committee minutes, August 3, 1927, CP.

“The City of New Orleans”: SBV, September 3, 1927.

“Orleans to Make”: NOI and NOT, September 4, 1927.

“New Orleans Makes Good”: NOS, September 4, 1927.

“City Keeps Faith”: NOT-P, September 4, 1927.

“shall be prima facie”: Executive committee minutes, September 7 and 8, 1927, CP; see also memo dictated by Monroe re his earlier conversations with Wilkinson, June 3, 1927, M&LP.

“justly, fairly and fully”: Executive committee minutes, September 7 and 8, 1927, CP; see also minutes of the Delacroix Corporation, formerly Acme Fur Company (thanks to Dorothy Benge, granddaughter of Manuel Molero, for opening them to me), November 11, 1927, to December 12, 1928; interview with Hugh Wilkinson, Jr., December 30, 1992; NOT, NOT-P, September 7 through September 11, 1927.

“That statement”: NOT, NOT-P, September 8, 1927.

Molero’s Acme Fur Company: Executive committee minutes, September 8-10, 1927, CP.

“The owner or lesse”: SBV, September 24, 1927, and July 7, 1928.

Those he did allow to be filed: Figures are from “Summary of Claims Filed, Dec. 31, 1928,” M&LP; also Monroe to Levee Board, June 1929; both in ML. NOT-P, December 30, 1928.

an average of $284 each: “Summary of Claims Filed,” M&LP.

they were lucky to collect six: NOT, January 14, 1929, and SBV, January 14, 1929.

“a very good feature”: Lou Wylie to Association of Commerce, January 22 and 30, 1929, ACP.

“The disastrous floods”: Monroe to Wylie, January 25, 1929, M&LP.

“We have viewed”: Case 175,097, Mumphrey Bros. v. Orleans Levee Board, transcript of argument and finding in M&LP.

“no cause of action”: Test cases included Herman Burkhardt v. Board of Orleans Levee Commissioners, no. 178,420, Civil District Court, Division F; Charles Aduler v. Board of Levee Commissioners, no. 175,991, ODC; and John Williams v. Levee Board, no. 175,463, ODC. Also, Alfred Oliver v. Board of Orleans Levee Commissioners, no. 30,134, 169 La 438; Foret v. Board of Orleans Levee Commissioners, no. 30,063, La 427; and Fabre v. Levee Board, no. 30,088, 170 La 210.

“‘I am impressed’”: See Monroe to Lou Wylie, January 25, 1929, M&LP; Burkhardt v. Board of Orleans Levee Commissioners; Oliver v. Board of Orleans Levee Commissioners; Foret v. Board of Orleans Levee Commissioners.

“irrelevant to this case”: Burkhardt v. Board of Orleans Levee Commissioners.

“the act of creating”: See opinion, Foret v. Board of Orleans Levee Commissioners, M&LP.

“The judgment is affirmed”: Ibid.

“due to the painstaking”: Resolution of Orleans Levee Board, January 7, 1930, M&LP.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

50 percent of all animals: “Economic Effects of the Mississippi Flood,” Editorial Research Reports, quoted in Arthur Frank, The Development of the Federal Program of Flood Control on the Mississippi River, p. 194.

“We shall weather”: Stone to Crosby, September 1, 1927, RCP.

“Sometimes you find”: LP to Judge D. H. Minor, May 31, 1927, PFP.

“Whether we are going”: Percy Bell to Bessie Bell, May 12, 1927, courtesy of Charles Greenleaf Bell.

“[n]o real concerted effort”: Memo from McCarty to Hoover and Fieser, September 1, 1927, RCP.

“Yesterday I went to Arkansas City”: C. C. Neal to Mrs. Monroe, October 7, 1927, RRMP.

“The Boston Club was”: LP to L. L. Myles, October 11, 1927, PFP.

“The civic authorities”: Memo from McCarty to Robert Bondy, February 28, 1928, RCP.

“The public is insisting”: See memo from Henry Baker to Fieser, May 2, 1927, RCP, box 741.

“organized”: Ellis Hawley, Herbert Hoover as Secretary of Commerce, p. 65.

“We have before us”: “Summary of Secretary Hoover’s Statement at the First Meeting of the Louisiana Reconstruction Commission,” May 23, 1927, HHPL.

“a blessing in disguise”: NOS, September 7, 1927.

He personally ordered the Red Cross: Robert Bondy to John Cremer, May 24, 1927, RCP.

home economists and agricultural extension agents: Robert Bondy to John Cremer, May 24, 1927, RCP; see also several reports by T. M. Campbell, an African-American agricultural extension worker, Department of Agriculture files, NA, RG 16, entry 17.

“definite program of agriculture”: “Inter-office Memorandum,” typed with Hoover’s handwritten notes, June 10, 1927, HHPL.

“positively contrary”: R. S. Wilson to C. W. Warburton, June 25, 1927, NA, RG 16, Secretary of Agriculture records, entry 17.

“undertake to loan money”: Hoover to Christie Benet, June 13, 1927, HHPL; Benet to Hoover, June 14, 1927, HHPL; Hoover to DeWitt Smith, June 14, 1927, HHPL.

“Am more impressed than ever”: Hoover to Meyer, May 8, 1927, HHPL.

Meyer immediately arranged: Wire from George Scott to Hoover, May 8, 1927, HHPL.

quadruple its capital: Hoover, “Memorandum for Credit Arrangement for Mississippi Flood Region,” May 5, 1927, HHPL.

“You are not called upon to donate”: JC-L, May 10 and 11, 1927.

“You are upon the firing line!”: See handwritten notes by Hoover for June 13, 1927, meeting in Jackson, Mississippi, HHPL.

only 115: JC-L, May 19, 1927.

Less than half the quota: The final total raised in Mississippi was $315,000, including the $100,000 from Memphis. See Memorandum from John Cremer to H. Stuart Crawford, secretary to Coolidge, September 17, 1927, RCP.

In Arkansas, the numbers: Cremer to Hoover, September 17, 1927, RCP. Cremer states the total raised in Arkansas was $672,000, but this figure includes $100,000 from Memphis bankers and $500,000 from national sources. See below.

“If not”: Oral history of Turner Catledge, HHPL. Note: Catledge incorrectly stated the amount. Hoover wired that the total was $200,000; see Hoover to Coolidge, May 24, 1927, HHPL.

“Have talked with Memphis”: R. E. Kennington to Hoover, May 12, 1927, and undated reply handwritten by Hoover, HHPL.

By five o’clock: MC-A, May 27 and 30, 1927.

“This telegram for yourself”: Pierson to Robert Ellis, May 26, 1927, HHPL.

“the business interests”: Coolidge to Pierson, May 30, 1927, HHPL.

Pierson brought together: Ibid.

Hoover assured them: Hoover to W. H. Sullivan, May 30, 1927; Hoover to Crosby, May 30, 1927; both in HHPL.

“We cannot afford nationally”: See Hoover to Pierson, May 28, 1927, HHPL.

“[L]arge planters who”: Fieser to H. C. Couch, May 26, 1927, HHPL.

“warrant in”: Quoted in Bruce Lohof, “Herbert Hoover and the 1927 Mississippi Flood Disaster,” Ph.D. diss., p. 160.

“any economic or”: Hoover, American Individualism, p. 19.

“The most potent force”: Ibid.

“in the midst”: quoted in Joan Hoff Wilson, Herbert Hoover, p. 68.

government could “best serve”: Quoted in William Appleman Williams, “What This Country Needs,” New York Review of Books, November 5, 1970, pp. 7-8.

“I made ninety-one”: quoted in Lohof, “Herbert Hoover, Spokesman for Human Efficiency,” p. 693.

“[Radio’s] possibilities have”: NYT, May 15, 1927.

They were also given: DeWitt Smith memo, September 3, 1927, RCP.

a detailed nine-page inventory: Johnston to Robert Bondy, May 9, 1927, D&PLCP.

the total value of goods: DeWitt Smith memo, September 3, 1927, RCP.

a record surplus: Associated Press report, June 1, 1927, appearing in MC-A.

the War Department dunned the Red Cross: See, for example, C. P. Summerall, acting secretary of war, to John Barton Payne, July 12, 1927, Adjutant General files, NA, RG 94.

“The supplies and services”: Hoover to John Barton Payne, forwarded to Gen. E. E. Booth, June 7, 1927, NA, RG 94.

“He felt that”: “Lower Mississippi River Flood, May-July 1927,” U.S. Department of Agriculture records, NA, RG 16, entry 16; memo from E. Douglas to Henry Baker, May 20, 1927, RCP.

“I feel warranted”: Reed to Coolidge, May 14, 1927, Coolidge Papers, LC.

Coolidge illegally ordered: NOT-P, June 23, 1927; memo from Lawrence Richey to Akerson, same date, HHPL.

“Fortunately, there are still”: NYT, May 31, 1927.

“Frequent demands”: San Antonio Express, June 5, 1927.

“The new spirit”: Fall River (Massachusetts) Globe, June 1, 1927.

“If the federal government”: Enclosed in memo from John Barton Payne of Red Cross to Everett Sanders, May 4, 1927, Coolidge Papers, LC.

“The total amount”: Ames (Iowa) Tribune & Times, May 31, 1927.

“[Hoover’s plan] is good”: Camden Courier, June 6, 1927.

“is a worthy one”: Virginian Pilot (Norfolk), May 31, 1927.

“The indifference of”: Providence Tribune, June 5, 1927.

“Why make a charity”: JC-L, May 31, 1927.

“without delay”: Sacramento Bee, May 19, 1927.

“Why should we ask”: Houston Chronicle, May 31, 1927.

“It is hardly possible”: Paducah (Kentucky) News-Democrat, June 8, 1927.

“With due deference”: Quoted in May 17 press summary, HHPL.

“At least four-fifths”: Press summary, undated, also June 7 and June 17, 1927, HHPL.

“We regard as settled”: AP story appearing in JC-L, May 19, 1927; see also two wires from Mississippi Senator Pat Harrison to Hoover, May 18, 1927, HHPL.

“send us collect”: NYT to John Klorer, May 20, 1927, NOCA.

“Since Senator Percy has”: Crosby to Hoover, May 20, 1927, HHPL.

“[I] seem to have”: Hoover to Coolidge, July 5, 1927, HHPL.

“We rescued Main Street”: NOS, September 7, 1927.

he wrote identical: See, for example, Hoover to Benjamin Marsh, June 15, 1927; letters to newspapers went out over a period of time; a large number were sent out on July 12, 1927, copies in HHPL.

“I have thought”: Hoover to the editor of the Journal-Press, Blaine, Washington, July 12, 1927, HHPL.

“Bert’s just resting”: Quoted in Richard Norton Smith, An Uncommon Man, p. 17.

“We challenge the statement”: MC-A, June 22, 1927.

“There is, in fact”: W. H. Negus to R. E. Kennington, May 24, 1927, HHPL.

he convinced the St. Louis: Hoover to Crosby, May 31, 1927, HHPL.

he also had the Red Cross: Hoover to R. E. Kennington, May 24, 1927, HHPL.

they convinced Percy’s: Stone to Hoover, September 23, 1927, HHPL.

He said the Mississippi: MC-A, June 23, 1927.

months after his assertion: Memo from John Cremer to H. Stuart Crawford, secretary to Coolidge, September 17, 1927, RCP.

“It has been a source”: Crosby to Hoover, July 2, 1927, HHPL.

“I have the feeling”: Hoover to Butler, July 5, 1927, HHPL.

the Mississippi corporation: Ibid. See also “Report of Mississippi Rehabilitation Corporation,” 1929, RCP.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

“to pull out”: Carol Fennelly, “History of the National Red Cross,” unpublished ms., p. 6, American Red Cross Archives, Wash., D.C.

Red Cross headquarters: Ibid., p. 33.

“unwise to become”: DeWitt Smith to Fieser, June 17, 1927; Fieser to DeWitt Smith, June 20, 1927, RCP.

“he had given his”: Robert Russa Moton, Finding a Way Out, p. 12.

“with all the deference”: Ibid., p. 128.

“Negroes have always met”: Robert Russa Moton, What the Negro Thinks, pp. 1, 9, 67.

“the wholesome advice”: Quoted in Moton, Finding a Way Out, p. 265.

“Whatever might be said”: William Hughes and Frederick Patterson, eds., Robert Russa Moton, p. 182.

“be pleased to see”: George Akerson to Moton, September 21, 1926, RRMP.

“to save an embarrassing”: C. C. Spaulding to Moton, November 26, 1928, RRMP.

Moton promised its leader: Moton to Booze, February 20, 1930, RRMP.

“the proper approach”: Booze to Moton, July 2, 1929, RRMP.

“Our train took six”: Undated draft report of first Colored Advisory Commission, RRMP.

One investigator separately sent: Sidney Redmond to John Sargent, July 5, 1927, Justice Department records, peonage file, NA RG 60.

“You may feel free”: Moton to Hoover, June 14, 1927, RCP.

“the truth must”: Barnett to Hoover, June 14, 1927, HHPL.

“constructive”: Barnett to Albion Holsey, June 17, 1927, RRMP.

“The [Chicago] Defender demands”: Barnett to Moton, June 18, 1927; Barnett to Albion Holsey, June 17, 1927; both in RRMP.

“something substantial”: Ibid.

“I am of the opinion”: Clark to Moton, June 14, 1927, RRMP.

“It is my frank”: Moton to Lester Walton, July 13, 1927, RRMP.

“We were face to face”: Draft report by Moton, June 13, 1927, RRMP.

Moton had prepared only three: Jesse Thomas to Holsey, July 9, 1927; Holsey to Thomas, July 23, 1927; both in RRMP.

he also asked about rehabilitation: For background on this meeting, see “Memorandum of Conference Between Officials of the Red Cross and Members of Colored Commission,” July 8, 1927, RCP. See also Hoover to Crosby, July 8 and 12, 1927, HHPL; Moton to Clark, July 2, 1927, and Holsey to Thomas, July 23, 1927, both in RRMP.

“Underground Forces”: Consolidated Press story, July 23, 1927, as it appears in MC-A.

“background of bankrupt economics”: Memorandum, typed, with changes in Hoover’s handwriting, July 9, 1927, HHPL.

Hoover estimated: Ibid.; also note in the memorandum that Hoover used a figure of $1-$2 million, with each million dollars enough for 1,500 families. In a letter to Crosby on July 12 (copy in HHPL) he called for initial capital of $4.5 million.

“If it were possible”: Memorandum, July 9, 1927, HHPL.

Now many of the same men: Consolidated Press story, July 23, 1927, as it appears in MC-A; see also NYT, August 4, 5, and 16, 1927.

“I am not at liberty”: Fieser to Hoover, August 27, 1927, HHPL.

“newspaper publicity”: Ibid.

Moton never learned: There is no reference to Fieser’s position in any Moton correspondence either with Hoover, with any member of the Colored Advisory Commission, or with his assistants.

“A great many people”: Arthur Kellogg to Hoover, July 13, 1927, HHPL.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Only 20 to 25 percent: LP to L. A. Downs, September 10, 1927; WAP to LP, February 9, 1928, both in PFP.

tons of yeast: July 16, 1927, report, U.S. Public Health Service, NA, RG 90, Mississippi Flood, box 3, p. 9; Wesselius to Baker and Smith, July 23, 1927; Drs. Hugh Cumming and William DeKleine to local health officials, August 12, 1927; DeKleine to DeWitt Smith, September 23, 1927; all letters in RCP, boxes 735 and 740.

“[A]ny attempt to remove”: July 16, 1927, report, U.S. Public Health Service, NA, RG 90, Mississippi Flood, box 3, p. 34.

the black camp closed: Camps for blacks in Vicksburg closed July 1; the white camp stayed open until August 22. See Crisis, February 1928, p. 42.

county Red Cross chairmen: Moton to Robert Bondy, June 18, 1927, RCP; draft report of Colored Advisory Commission, December 1927, RRMP; for a specific example, see flood sufferer to Hoover, July 25, 1927, HHPL.

official Red Cross policy: See June 26, 1927, memo signed by Hoover and Fieser, which states, “Cabins to only be erected upon properties of resident ownership,” RCP.

“We have grave suspicions”: Crisis, November 1927.

“Next month we shall”: Ibid.

“The Crisis had a white”: Barnett to Moton, November 19, 1927, RRMP.

“Suggest that Red Cross”: Moton to Hoover, November 16, 1927, RCP, box 734.

“the colored complex”: See Moton to Hoover, October 1, 1927, RRMP; Hoover, DeWitt Smith to Robert Thrush, October 13, 1927, RCP; Hoover to Smith, November 3, 1927, RCP; November 7, 1927, memo by Smith, RCP, box 734.

“frequently nullified”: Untitled summary addressed to Hoover, signed by Moton, December 12, 1927, RRMP; another copy in RCP.

“I think we beat”: Barnett to Thomas, January 6, 1928, CBP.

“vigorously investigated”: Hoover to Moton, December 17, 1927, HHPL.

“I felt Secretary Hoover”: Barnett to Moton, January 6, 1928 (incorrectly dated), CBP.

“The presence of”: Moton to Hoover, January 4, 1928, RRMP.

“laid Dr. Moton out”: Fieser to DeWitt Smith, December 19, 1927, RCP.

“another element”: Hoover to Fieser, December 22, 1927, RCP.

“I have received”: Moton to Hoover, January 9 and 12, 1928; Hoover to Moton, January 13, 1928; both in HHPL.

“I feel very strongly”: Barnett to Fieser, March 20, 1928, CBP.

“Neither Dr. Moton nor I”: Clark to Fieser, January 11, 1928, RCP.

“outline the plan”: William Schieffelin to Hoover, January 9, 1928, HHPL.

“I feel it would”: Hoover to Schieffelin, January 12, 1928, HHPL.

“a great experiment”: Hoover to Rosenwald, February 13, 1928, HHPL.

“Mr. Rosenwald’s reaction”: Edwin Embree to Hoover, March 1, 1928, HHPL.

“A word from you”: Moton to Hoover, January 18, 1928, RRMP.

“could finance the scheme”: Moton to Hoover, February 27, 1928, RRMP.

Hoover sent him a copy: Hoover to Moton, March 11, 1928, HHPL.

“You are the kind”: Moton to John D. Rockefeller, Jr., June 16, 1928, RRMP.

“plan to deadlock”: NYT, March 31, 1928.

“popularity grows by contact”: LP to Pat Harrison, August 30, 1928, PFP.

“I don’t believe”: LP to Will Stimmel, September 15, 1927, PFP.

“No man in public life”: LP to “Willie,” probably his nephew William Armstrong Percy, June 30, 1928, PFP.

people acting for Hoover: See, for example, correspondence between Fletcher Chenault, Arkansas Gazette reporter, and Akerson, from October 6, 1927, to May 6, 1928, in HHPL, which detail Chenault’s spying for the Hoover campaign and manipulating his stories to help Hoover. After the election Chenault asked Akerson for a job. Regarding illegal payoffs, especially in the South, see Donald Lisio, Hoover, Blacks and Lily-Whites, passim.

“Would it be possible”: Akerson to Harvey Couch, March 22, 1928; see also Neale to Couch, February 22, 1928, both in Akerson Papers, HHPL.

a campaign aide: Barnett to Akerson, January 17, 1928, CBP.

“Both Secretary Hoover”: Akerson to Barnett, May 15, 1928, HHPL.

“just what you”: J. M. Lee to Moton, February 11, 1928, RRMP.

“regarding Mr. Hoover”: Bernie mentions to Moton, August 29, 1928, RRMP.

Akerson instructed Moton: Holsey to Akerson, June 6, 1928, HHPL.

“Mr. J. C. Mitchell”: Akerson to Moton, May 1, 1928, HHPL.

“and find out exactly”: Akerson to Moton, March 27, 1928, HHPL.

“a statement to”: Akerson to Moton, September 24, 1928, HHPL.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

“[i]t remained for”: Clipping quoted in undated report of Mississippi River Flood Control Association, PFP.

Present were Hoover, Percy, Martineau, Butler: All information about this meeting and quotes from it below come from a stenographic transcript of the meeting in CP.

“No relief to flood”: This statement is dated September 30, 1927, HHPL.

40 percent had gone unspent: Arthur Frank, The Development of the Federal Program of Flood Control on the Mississippi River, p. 195.

The governor of Mississippi: LP to Governor Murphree, December 21, 1927, PFP.

Repeatedly, they saw: October 25, 1927, executive committee minutes, CP.

“following what I interpret”: Thomson memo, October 22, 1927, included in CP.

“The first three days”: Mississippi River Flood Control Association confidential bulletin of October 24, 1927, included in CP.

the chief engineer of every single: Governor-elect Huey Long to Edwin Broussard, February 22, 1928, Edwin Broussard Papers, Dupre Library, Special Collections, University of Southwestern Louisiana; Frank, p. 229.

In his own House testimony: HFCCH, January 1928, p. 3723.

“Coming from the Imperial”: Ibid., p. 25.

“the greatest expenditure”: NYT, February 22 and March 29, 1928.

“President Coolidge has”: NYT, February 22, 1928.

“The White House has”: Wall Street Journal, April 24, 1928.

Levee boards owed: Frank, p. 237.

“The disastrous flood”: Resolution of American Bankers Association, April 18, 1928, copy in CP.

the real cost would run: NYT, February 22 and March 29, 1928.

“The bill changes the policy”: NOS, May 15, 1928.

“the viciousness of Army engineers”: L. T. Berthe to John Klorer, February 22, 1929, NOCA.

“I did not expect this”: Minutes of the board of Canal Bank, May 16, 1928, CP.

an evening banquet in his honor: see NOT-P, NOI, and NOT, May 20 through May 24, 1927.

25,216 votes to none: See Glen Jeansonne, Leander Perez: Boss of the Delta, pp. 71-72; T. Harry Williams, Huey Long, pp. 539-540, 589-590.

Once the Board of Liquidation: Interview with Otis Alexander, secretary of the Board of Liquidation, January 25, 1996.

“I’d never have come”: Interview with Betty Carter, November 25, 1993.

“merged”: NOT-P, June 24, 1928.

the flood killed him: interview with Pearl Amos, February 12, 1993.

its board reelected Butler: NOT-P, January 22 and February 20, 1931.

“I know absolutely nothing”: NOI, May 11, 1939.

A Mississippi grand jury declined: NOT-P, NOI, and NOT, May 11 and 12, 1939.

Russell Long, Huey’s son: Interview with Russell Long, April 4, 1996.

“[The] social system excludes”: Task Force on the Economy, “The Economy,” Framework for the Future, vol. 2 (New Orleans: Goals to Grow, 1971), p. 207, quoted in Raabe, “Status and Its Impact,” Ph.D. diss., p. 189.

“The long-established New Orleans”: Raabe, p. 162.

not a single bank president: Interview with Francis Doyle, former president of First National Bank of Commerce, December 23, 1992.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

“as a form of contribution”: Moton to Hoover, August, 7, 1928, HHPL.

“Hoover said that”: Quoted in Lisio, p. 98.

“that the right type”: Moton to Hoover, June 22, 1928, RRMP.

a deal known to Hoover: For details on Howard, see Lisio, esp. pp. 50-71.

“uncertainty in many sections”: Barnett and Holsey, “Report of Survey of Sentiment Among Negro Voters,” July 18, 1928, CBP.

“You, more than any”: Barnett to George Brennan, July 20, 1928, CBP.

“I am out-and-out”: Prattis to Barnett, July 18, 1928, CBP.

Hoover lost an estimated 15 percent: Harold Gosnell, Negro Politicians, pp. 28-30.

“Democrats made deeper inroads”: Henry Moon, Balance of Power: The Negro Vote, p. 49.

“a competent woman”: See memo of July 3, 1929, filed under Moton and “Farm Matters,” HHPL; memo of January 15, 1930, Moton and Colored Question file, HHPL; see also January 1, 1930, to April 30, 1930, Moton file, HHPL.

“your personal concern”: Moton to Hoover, March 9, 1931, RRMP.

“repugnant to all”: Quoted in Lisio, p. 248.

if Roosevelt “has done anything”: Quoted in Lisio, p. 269.

the Red Cross was still feeding: GD-T, March 1, 1928.

Every Saturday night: Interview with Sylvia Jackson.

“A great deal of labor”: Alex Scott to Johnston, July 4, 1927, D&PLCP.

“The most serious thing”: LP to L. A. Downs, September 10, 1927, PFP. Percy routinely provided such information to senior executives of banks, brokerage houses, and the like; his assessments represented cold business judgments, not rhetoric.

“Labor was completely”: Report to shareholders, April 1, 1928, D&PLCP.

“the Great Migration”: E. Marvin Goodwin, Black Migration in America from 1915-1960, p. 10; see also C. Horace Hamilton, “The Negro Leaves the South,” pp. 273-295; Carter Woodson, A Century of Negro Migration.

In the 1930s the exodus: Simon Kuznets et al., Population Redistribution and Economic Growth, United States, 1870-1950: Demographic Analysis and Interrelations (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1964), vol. 1, pp. 88-99; vol. 3, p. 106.

“I never expected”: Quoted in Wyatt-Brown, p. 256.

“I am happy”: Hoover to LP, November 12, 1929, PFP.

“even if only on”: John Sharp Williams to LP, December 21, 1929, PFP.

“No matter what”: Interview with Moses Mason, March 1, 1993.

“One of the pleasantest”: Percy, LL, pp. 344-345.

at a cost of $25,000: Wyatt-Brown, p. 258.

his personal checkbook balance: See checkbook ledger in PFP.

“Hypocrisy is the pet”: LP to Pat Harrison, August 24, 1928, PFP.

“he had to leave often”: Percy, LL, p. ix.

“the most ideologically”: Oral history of Walker Percy, MDAH.

“To furnish [Japan]”: WAP to Oscar Bledsoe, June 7, 1940; WAP to Billy Wynn, June 22, 1940, D&PLCP.

Will offered to help: Cohn, Where I Was Born and Raised, pp. 270-293 passim.

“Their virtues”: Oral history of Shelby Foote, MDAH.

“If the negroes”: WAP to Johnston, February 22, 1937, D&PLCP.

he fired her: Wyatt-Brown, pp. 265-267; see also Percy, LL, pp. 285-297 passim.

“I got to take”: Interview with David Cober, February 23, 1993; Cober, a black man, drove for Billy Wynn. Mrs. Millie Commodore, the daughter of John McMiller, spoke of constant rumors of Will having affairs with black drivers. Four other people in separate interviews reported rumors of an affair Will had with Ford Atkins, but they insisted upon anonymity.

“My country is”: Percy, LL, p. 3.

“The old Southern way”: Ibid., pp. 312, 343.

“I wish a few others”: Ibid., p. 346.

“I know that”: Ibid., p. 347.

APPENDIX

Hoover refused to nominate: Arthur Morgan, Dams and Other Disasters, p. 211.

The cutoffs worked: William Elam, Speeding Floods to the Sea, p. 83; interview with Newman Bolls, for more than twenty years engineer for the Mississippi Levee Board, February 22, 1993.

measured the flow there: HFCCH, p. 2869; Association of Railway Engineers, The Flood of 1927, pamphlet, NOCA.

304 miles of those levees: Interview with Stan McAlpin, Army Corps of Engineers, Vicksburg office, July 25, 1996.

“the inevitable consequence”: HFCCH, p. 2881.