MORE: 4,500 added to flood zones in Lafayette Parish. Despite the valiant effort,levees in northeast Louisiana began to fail. Public Schools in Evangeline Parish are operated by the Evangeline Parish School Board. I have, you know, only speculative answers. How? Mr. BARRY: Well, it's a good question. The Red Cross, he said, had chartered a steam boat from Standard Oil Company, where he worked, to evacuate people along with convicts from the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. Their intention, apparently, was to lower the level of the river and to save the city of New Orleans. "A third current struck from the south. She would feed the cow and milk her and we would all come back by boat.". (See Napoleon's Soldiers In America, by Simone de la Souchere-Delery, 1999). Greenvilles William Alexander Percy, son of LeRoy Percy, headed the Relief Committee in Greenville. Nearly a million people were homeless. Some people got away all right. 337. Nearly a million people were. Mr. BARRY: Well, Coolidge chose not to run for re-election, but that was independent of a flood decision. Residents raced to the railroad embankment, the only remaining high ground, the rescue train stranded and of no help. Eventually, Bayou Teche overflowed its banks, flooding communities like Breaux Bridgge, St. Martinville and New Iberia, though not to the extent that communities to the north suffered. In some places, great mounds of sand covered fields and streets. Herbert Hoover, Spokesman of Humane Efficiency - JSTOR And they didn't write about it. The Louisiana Digital Library (LDL) is the front door to Louisiana's digital cultural heritage. Lucy Somerville [Howorth], The Mississippi Flood of 1927 published in June 1927 edition of Womens Press. Louisiana, Louisiana. The laborers were not paid and resented being threatened that if they did not participate in the levee repair, or other work such as unloading the food sent on barges by the Red Cross, that they would not be allowed to have the food that the Red Cross was handing out. I said there were almost 700,000 people being fed by the Red Cross. Evangeline Parish is also served by the Diocese of Lafayette with one school: Additionally, Evangeline Parish is served by one unaffiliated private school: Evangeline Parish is served by one institutions of higher education: The 1086th Transportation Company of the 165th CSS (Combat Service Support) Battalion resides in Ville Platte, Louisiana. Arkansas Flood of 1937 rivaled Mississippi River flood of 1927 The Evangeline Oak during the 1927 flood - 64 Parishes The song also appeared in an episode (S03E7) of HBO's show Treme, sung again by Aaron Neville. 46, Flood refugees in Yazoo City, Mississippi, on May 13, 1927. Also touched upon is the callous response of the federal government, depicted here via a fictional visit from President Calvin Coolidge and "a little fat man," where Coolidge's reaction to the devastation is a detached statement that, "isn't it a shame what the river has done to this poor cracker's land. You know, tens of thousands of whom were living on tops of levees, some of which were only eight feet across with the river on one side and the flood on the other. A black and white reproduction of a photograph of a boat with a barber chair in Melville, Louisiana, during the great flood of 1927. The Red Cross and local relief organizations set up tent cities and makeshift housing in Marksville, Mansura, Baton Rouge, Opelousas, Crowley, New Iberia, and elsewhere. B.H. 1.04% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. Thus, the people struggling to live on a sliver of ground above water, became aggravated about their circumstances. Evangeline Parish is mentioned in the Randy Newman song "Louisiana 1927", in which he described the Great Mississippi Flood which covered it with six feet of water. And that was because of the elite, aristocratic planter class, who did feel a certain noblesse oblige toward their sharecroppers, but they didn't let that interfere with a fairly ruthless sense of dollars. 'Organization Mississippi Flood 1927, May 16, 1927, Hoover Papers. : PI/1992.0002.007, The Flood of 1927 and Its Impact in Greenville, Mississippi, The Flood of 1927 And Its Impact In Greenville, Mississippi Lesson Plan. You know, the Greenville public schools actually--while other Mississippi counties seriously debated whether they wanted to teach African-Americans to read--in Greenville African-Americans were being taught Latin. On May 20, just before the levee break at McCrea, Louisiana, 35,000 people fled from the fragile levee . The Mississippi River Flood of 1927 Album is a visual record of selected Louisiana losses from the 1927 Mississippi Basin flood. The community is located at the junction of Louisiana Highways 97 and 100, 5.9 miles (9.5 km) east-northeast of Jennings. The steady rainfall filled streams, bayous, creeks, and ditches in the Delta region and saturated the farmland. During that fall, record rainfalls continued throughout the Mississippi River valley. Irma Yarborough, a native of Columbia in Caldwell Parish,recalled in the 1981 News-Star-World that on May 7, a dam on a tributary of the Ouachita in Arkansas sent water rising rapidly in Columbia. As the water rose on the levee, it was the levee guards duty to fill sandbags and place them on top of the levee in order to stay ahead of the water height. She wrote, There was a low protection levee north of town. PHOTOS: Flood damage at Lafayette Parish schools, USA's infamous 'Tornado Alley' may be shifting east. Most settled for pennies on the dollar, and practically all of them remembered that it was a man-made catastrophe that put them where they were. In 2007, the song was covered by Ray Stevens on his tribute album to New Orleans and Louisiana culture, New Orleans Moon. Why don't more people know about this? Adding to the excitement was a man on horseback going pell-mell down the street yelling, Go to the levee!