Jamal Neff

When the Mississippi River broke its levees in 1927, thirteen thousand Black refugees were stranded on a strip of high ground at Greenville — and the National Guard would not let them leave. Boats came. Boats left. The boats were for white families. The Great Mississippi Flood covered an area the size of several states. In Greenville, Black flood victims were held in the open on the crown of the levee — a strip only a few feet wide in places — for weeks. They were kept there deliberately. Planters feared that if Black labor evacuated, it would never come back to the cotton fields. So the Guard sealed them in. Refugees were made to unload relief supplies at gunpoint. Food was distributed to Black families only in exchange for work, and in some camps only to those wearing labor tags. A man was shot dead by a guardsman for refusing to work. Herbert Hoover, running the relief effort and running for president, learned about the conditions. A Black commission he appointed documented them. He promised reforms — including land for Black farmers — in exchange for keeping it quiet through the election. He won. The promises were never kept. The Black South drew its own conclusion. The flood accelerated the Great Migration: hundreds of thousands left, and Black voters began the long shift away from the party of Lincoln that reshaped American politics. They dammed the water and dammed the people behind it. One of the largest forced-labor episodes of the American twentieth century, and it has no memorial. This is why we must keep documenting our stories that they try to erase. Get yours: savvypurchase.samcart.com/pr…