Clarendon AR: Where We've Been: 1927 Flood

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The Red Cross played a large role in the flood of 1927. J.H. Stack served as the chairman of the committee in Monroe County that distributed aid from the Red Cross. The Red Cross cared for 1,160 people at Clarendon in their camp and another 824 refugees at Brinkley. The Red Cross also provided relief to the rest of the state and nation. In Arkansas alone, the Red Cross cared for 143,213 in their camps, which accounted for over a third of those throughout the nation. The Red Cross provided relief in 43 of the 56 flooded counties in Arkansas. Over 325,000 people received care in Red Cross camps throughout the Mississippi River valley. Without the Red Cross, thousands of people would have gone without food and shelter.

Following the flood, citizens fixed the levee at Clarendon, but people lived with the fear of another flood.

On Oct. 5, 1935, construction began on a new and bigger levee funded by the Flood Control Act of 1928. J.F. Hawkins, U.S. Government engineer out of Memphis, supervised all of the labor, and J.K. Prother, a Civil Service Clerk, ran the office. Sirens blasted to celebrate the beginning of the work. Mayor W.F. King turned the first shovel of dirt. A crew of 70 worked to clear the right of way. The government completed construction of the levee in 1937.

The levee continues to be maintained through tax money. It is under the jurisdiction of the Clarendon Levee Board and is maintained by the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers. Since the construction of the new levee, the water has never risen high enough to break or top the levee.

Could Clarendon have been spared some of the damage that was inflicted? Yes, they could have prevented some of it by cutting the levee like the mayor had wanted and allowing the water to back into the town. Much of the damage resulted from the force of the rushing water and the debris that slammed against the buildings. However, had they cut the levee, and the river had not risen high enough to break the levee, then they would have allowed the town to be flooded for nothing. Most people would have done the same thing if they had been in that position. It is not human nature to give in to Mother Nature, and as usual Mother Nature smashed man's frantic effort to control the elements.

It is hard to believe that anything good could come from an incident as tragic as the flood of 1927.

However, there were some positive results of the flood. The flood brought the problem of the high poverty rate in the Delta region to national attention. President Calvin Coolidge created a special Mississippi Flood Committee and appointed Herbert Hoover to be its chairman. Hoover's job brought him to the state where he saw the problems first hand, and he reported those back to Washington.

Also, the flood exposed the weakness of the levee system along the Mississippi River Valley. This brought about reforms to the levee systems. On May 15, 1928, Congress passed a new flood control act to replace the old Mississippi River Commission. The act appropriated $325 million for the construction of a new flood control system. The plan placed the cost of construction on the federal government; however, it allowed the local residents to retain the right of ways and to do the maintenance work once the levee construction was finished.

The "Great Flood of 1927" was a great tragedy on the local, state, and national levels. The United States has seen few natural disasters that affected so many people over such a large area. The flood caused millions of dollars in damage, left hundreds of thousands homeless and killed a couple of hundred people. Thousands of people in the Mississippi River Valley fought desperately to save their homes - many times without success. If it had not been for the efforts of the Red Cross the disaster could have been much worse.

Written by Jerry Hayes

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