Greenville Levee and the 1927 Flood

A grass-topped levee runs along Greenville's western edge, and on it the Mississippi Department of Archives and History has placed a marker that explains the notches cut for Main and Central Streets, which were the top of the levee in 1927. After that flood the levee was raised ten feet, and the Flood Control Act of 1928 set up the system of cutoffs that shortened the river by 170 miles.

The flood reached Greenville on 21 April 1927, when the levee gave way upriver at Mound Landing in Bolivar County and the fire whistle sounded. Within ten days water stood ten feet deep over nearly a million acres, and parts of town were under it to the rooftops. Thousands of people took refuge on this levee, and the camp grew to stretch seven miles. Most of them were Black. Local leaders told Black families to stay and work on the levees and on relief, unpaid, and workers were threatened with the loss of Red Cross food if they refused. When the treatment reached the white press, Herbert Hoover named an advisory committee under Robert Moton of Tuskegee. Its report was harsh, and Hoover took no action.

Many Black families left Washington County for the North afterward. The flood is in the blues, too: Charley Patton recorded "High Water Everywhere," and Memphis Minnie's "When the Levee Breaks" has the line about sitting on the levee and moaning. A second marker nearby gives the river's stages. Walk up in daylight and look at how far the water had to rise.