The year 1927 would never be considered ordinary even without the record-breaking river flood that displaced over 700,000 Southerners.  That year saw Charles Lindbergh fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, the invention of television, Al Jolson starred in “The Jazz Singer“, the world's first “talkie“.  The greatest baseball team in history, the 1927 New York Yankees won more games than any team in history while their star Babe Ruth hit more home runs (sixty) than any man in history.  Meanwhile the Mississippi River was swelling in a way that made most Southerners nervous.

The South was still basically in the era of “Reconstruction“.  The Civil War had left the South destitute in many ways.  The Emancipation Proclamation only abolished slavery.  Little or nothing was done to protect the rights of African-Americans or to protect the rights of Southern whites to “the pursuit of happiness“.  Indeed, most of the wealth of the South was still in the hands of a minority, although it was not now exclusively a minority of race.

The stock market crash and ensuing global depression did little to mark the lives of rural blacks and poor immigrants.  It was insult added to injury.  The injury of the Great Flood was first anticipated during the rainy Summer of 1926.  What follows is a modern NASA description of conditions leading to the flood.

In the autumn of 1926, heavy rains plagued America's heartland. The precipitation didn't let up much during the winter, and by early spring, the soil was soaked from Minnesota to Missouri. The rains persisted into April, setting the stage for one of the most devastating, widespread floods in the history of the US.

Across the northern tier of states, snow steadily accumulated from December through February. When this snow melted in early spring, some of it was absorbed by the soil, but because the soil layers were already close to being saturated, most of the meltwater was flushed into streams and waterways leading to the Mississippi River.