Remembering the Rising Tide

ED AYERS: In 1927, just 10 years after the federal government took on the task of flood control, the Mississippi River flooded to an extent never seen before or since. The high waters left behind hundreds of millions of dollars in damage, and left 246 people dead.

PETER ONUF: Jennifer Abraham-Cramer is director of the T. Harry William Center for Oral History at Louisiana State University. She and a team of interviewers have been collecting stories about the 1927 flood from those who lived through it as children. She’s going to walk us through a few of those stories now.

TUPE HENRY: Oh, there was some talk about the levees wasn’t going to be able to hold it, because it was a pretty big flood, you know. But it just kept coming, not fast. The next morning, you’d get up, it was little bit deeper.

JENNIFER ABRAHAM-CRAMER: Tupe Henry was interviewed by Hans Rasmussen in 2007. And Tupe was five years old at the time of the flood. And he was 85 years old at the time of his interview.

In 1927, he was living in the Louisiana Delta in a place called Lickskillet, which no longer exists, but which saw heavy flooding.

TUPE HENRY: You could watch it rise.

JENNIFER ABRAHAM-CRAMER: He and his sister were playing in the water. He was pushing her on a tricycle in a lap around the house.

TUPE HENRY: And through that water, in the next round, it might be a half inch deeper. The next round, another half inch.

JENNIFER ABRAHAM-CRAMER: Just a little bit higher.

TUPE HENRY: And eventually, they made us quit riding there, because they felt the water was too deep. And Mama stayed home scared that the water was going to take us. She was afraid of water, you know.

JOSEPH DUPONT: I remember a lot about the 1927 flood. My grandmother’s house was two blocks from the levee.

JENNIFER ABRAHAM-CRAMER: Actually, I’ve got to tell you Joseph Dupont is one of my favorite interviewees. I interviewed him back in 2001 and 2002. And he was living in Plaquemines, Louisiana, which is in Iberville parish. And again, he, like Tupe Henry, was five years old during the flood. And he was 80 years old when I interviewed him.

JOSEPH DUPONT: And when the flood came, I remember the National Guard unit was brought here. And it camped. They put tents on the courthouse lawn. And they were there to patrol the levee.

Now as a kid, I couldn’t understand why they had to have soldiers walking up and down the levee. And they told me, well, they’re afraid somebody’s going to blow a hole in the levee. I said, well, why would they do that? They’d flood all themselves out. I couldn’t understand it. But what would happen is the people down river would come up river and plan an explosion to blow the levee to reduce the pressure of the water on them.

JENNIFER ABRAHAM-CRAMER: Prior to the arrival of the Louisiana National Guard unit patrols, the townsmen in Plaquemines took turns patrolling the levees to prevent people from coming from the lower river parishes to blow their levees as the water continued to rise.

JOSEPH DUPONT: And my daddy had to go up there. The men took turns, and had to bring a pistol with them. Of course Daddy didn’t know much about pistols. But I remember he had his pistol. And they’d go up there on the levee. And they would do two hours at a time or something, to prevent people from coming up. They didn’t know where they would do it.

JENNIFER ABRAHAM-CRAMER: Did they ever catch anybody?

JOSEPH DUPONT: No. No, they didn’t. But people were afraid they were going to come do it up here, because the water was so high.

JENNIFER ABRAHAM-CRAMER: And eventually that exact thing did happen in order to try and save New Orleans in a place called Caernarvon. And it became known as the Carenarvon Crevasse. And it flooded much of just south of New Orleans, about 13 miles south of New Orleans, in fact. And this incident did make people fear for generations that it could happen again.

And you hear stories in Hurricane Betsy about the levees being blown, and people hearing explosions, especially in the Lower Ninth Ward area. And you hear it in Katrina as well.

VICTOR CRAWFORD: When the refugees started moving in, we’d pass right by the refugee tents on our way home from school.

JENNIFER ABRAHAM-CRAMER: So Victor Crawford, one of the really interesting things about his story is that he is recalling the aftermath of the flood, and how the community responds, and relief efforts, and just sort of helping each other go on with their lives and to rebuild. So Vic Crawford’s memories center on, for example, his walks on his way home from school. He would pass the hundreds of Red Cross refugee tents.

VICTOR CRAWFORD: I think they said it was some 500 tents in that area at one time. I just looked like an army camped out. It was just right on the banks of the river.

JENNIFER ABRAHAM-CRAMER: He also talks about how the community pitched in and helped the neighbors.

VICTOR CRAWFORD: Well, there was people that was in need, or they were hungry. My mama always had something cooked for everybody. I never knew when I went to eat dinner whether there was going to be 2 or 22 sitting at the table.

JENNIFER ABRAHAM-CRAMER: They would share meals with the refugees who often paddled a boat out to their house.

VICTOR CRAWFORD: Anybody that came by was welcome to a meal at my house. Those people were having hard times.

JENNIFER ABRAHAM-CRAMER: Psychologists who study the way that people remember things point out that the brain has integrated causal relationships for distant happenings, but is more focused on the rich details of how and what when it comes to more recent memories. So when you hear stories that have been integrated into the person’s whole life story, they have been able to process the why, the cause and effect relationships, how experiences have shaped their lives, their identity in relation to that experience, so who they are and who they see themselves in the broader perspective.

And what sticks out is this sense of resiliency that starts early in the education of so many Louisiana residents. Lots of interviewees talk about drying off their furniture from the flood and starting their lives all over again. So you get this set of values that includes a sense of community cooperation and hardiness. And this continues through the upcoming difficult decades. It becomes part of this collective narrative about Louisiana toughness and resiliency that you’ll see all the way up through hurricanes Rita and Katrina.

PETER ONUF: Jennifer Abraham-Cramer is director of the T. Harry Williams Center for Oral History at Louisiana State University. You can find more of these interviews at our website, backstoryradio.org.