Mississippi River adventures continued
By
Saul Landau Read Spanish Version
We
(Huck and Tom – Saul and Marvin) stopped in Vicksburg, population
26,000, the site of the biggest battles of the Civil War. Imagine
standing on the roof of the Cedar Grove Inn, a “preserved mansion.”
One hundred fifty-five years ago, General William T. Sherman
supposedly used the place to observe the River from where Union
gunboats pounded the city. General Grant ordered a siege to cut off
food supplies. It worked. On July 4, after a month- and a half-long
battle and faced with starvation, Rebel General John Pemberton
surrendered. Confederate diehards will never forgive him.
After
the battle of Vicksburg, Lincoln’s armies controlled the
Mississippi River. One day earlier, Robert E. Lee had conceded defeat
at Gettysburg. Not a drop of Civil War blood remains on the upscale
B&B (bed and breakfast), but popular myth asserts that a
cannonball is still lodged in the Inn’s interior.
The
mansion once belonged to John Alexander Klein, a banker, lumber and
cotton baron who bought marble fireplaces in Italy and shipped them
home to Mississippi, along with French gasoliers, Bohemian glass,
gold leaf mirrors and old fashioned clocks and paintings that hang
throughout the Inn.
Klein’s
wife was related to General Sherman. Family ties apparently persuaded
her to let the Union use their home as a hospital. The pro Dixie
elite shunned her ever after.
We
breathed in the trivia of southern history along with steamy June air
in Vicksburg’s sleepy neighborhoods. In 2007, the city’s official
unemployment rate was listed as almost 8.5%. 60% of Vicksburg’s
population is black where unemployment was higher than white. The
median family income was $28,000, $6,000 less than the state average.
But the old “preserved” houses sure looked stately.
We
continued south parallel to the gently flowing River. Iowa towns
suffered heavy flooding, but we saw no dead hogs or soggy ears of
corn floating downstream.
In
Port Gibson, MS, we stopped to film a gold-leaf hand atop the steeple
on the First Presbyterian Church. Inside the forbidding structure the
chandeliers that light the services were supposedly bought or stolen
from the Robert E. Lee steamboat — “it was never there on time,”
sang Tom Lehrer.
People
in passing cars stared at two seniors with one camera standing in
intense heat and humidity trying to capture the best light on the
shiny object high above.
How
to respond?
Hadn’t
they ever seen Yankee filmmakers?
“Historic”
Port Gibson has an even lower median family income than Vicksburg.
From there we drove down the Natchez Trace, the 400 mile road — once
trail — Indians utilized to go from what became Nashville to
Natchez, a road that also links the Cumberland, Tennessee and
Mississippi rivers. Supposedly, Indians also showed the route to the
“explorers” who converted it into a trade trail in the late 18th
Century.
A
bucolic highway has replaced the narrow horse path as the Mississippi
River has replaced the Trace as the efficient commercial route for
getting goods down river. We saw no trace of legendary criminal gangs
like those of John Murrell and Samuel Mason who once assaulted
travelers along the road.
Crossing
the Mississippi into Louisiana, we anxiously stared as if somehow the
River would tell us whether the flood inundating more northern states
was intending to move south. The battle against Nature — now called
Global Warming or Climate Change — did not begin this century.
In
1927, the Mississippi flood changed the demography of part of the
country, according to John M. Barry. (Rising
Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and how it Changed America,
1997)
In
the Fall and Winter of 1926, Midwestern states got drenched with
heavy rain and then snow storms. By April 1927, the Mississippi began
to rise with its new replenishment. The Mississippi River Commission
fortified existing levees and shut down the Mississippi’s natural
outlet, the Atchafalaya River. Just above Greenville, Mississippi,
where the levees had held previous rises in River level, 100 feet of
water submerged them and everything else around, even the tallest
trees.
The
flood on the Mississippi Delta forced people to evacuate — some of
them forever. Barry calculates that “by early 1928, the exodus of
blacks from Washington County, and likely the rest of the Delta, did
reach 50 percent.” A new planter class later emerged with its
concordant political power and white supremacy attitudes.
In
New Orleans, the banking elite — the best and brightest — decided
to dynamite their city’s levees, which they predicted would protect
the commerce of the city. After the 1922 flood, the Army Corps of
Engineers advised these Poo Bahs to blow a hole in the levee in order
to save the business center.
Boom
went the explosives. The ensuing floods covered the city and nearby
parishes as well. A few engineers had predicted such devastation, but
their voices went unheard.
The
aftermath of the floods produced not only black exodus, but a new
plantocracy in Mississippi. The
power of the old Louisiana banking clique waned and Huey Long rose.
Nature in the form of a major flood dictated changes in demographics
and politics.
By
1927, some engineers understood (remember Moby Dick?) that man cannot
rule the river. FEMA by its very name recognizes that obvious fact.
But its officials’ incompetence after the 2005 Hurricane Katrina
catastrophes also challenged the government’s ability to deal with
post disaster damages.
The
Corps of Engineers now “protect” the Mississippi Delta with
“Project Flood.” They built various exits for the raging river to
vent — like emergency truck lanes where semis with bad brakes can
choose an uphill path on a downhill section of highway.
The
Corps learned from the 1927 fiasco to split the flooding river
between the Atchafalaya and Mississippi. But they didn’t have
enough money to do the safety work; nor can they predict the behavior
of the Atchafalaya, which steers a more direct route to the Gulf than
the Mississippi.
We
explored the banks of the Atchafalaya and took note of the sign
indicating the location of The River Project, which the Corps credits
for diverting the Atchafalaya from joining Mississippi and thus
“saving” New Orleans during the 1948 flood.
We
stopped at a campground on the banks of the Atchaflaya outside of
Krotz Springs, and met Tony, his bloodhound and his friend Kyle, an
unemployed welder. Tony sneered at Bush’s “throwing away money on
Iraq” while the structures meant to hold back the raging rivers
went un-repaired. He told us of poorly publicized horrors surrounding
Katrina. We discovered — read about it next week — that
incompetence, ignorance, negligence and stupidity abounded, but even
worse behavior took place involving the New Orleans police — looting
and killing.
When
Tony left with his bloodhound, Kyle asked us to drive him to town to
buy some food — three 12 packs. He showed us the vast Valero
refinery on the edge of town where he suffered several accidents and
got laid off. We drove to Beaux Bridge, outside of Lafayette,
Louisiana, ate dinner at Prejean’s, listened to an inaudible Cajun
band while chewing boudin
(usually
pork, sausage and rice) of alligator, stuffed eggplant (with
crawfish) and crawfish etouffee – the sauce containing flour,
butter, onion, cayenne pepper, and lemon slices.
Our
stomachs coated with Tums, we headed for New Orleans, via St.
Martinville, where we gawked at the St. Martin de Tours Church, the
oldest parish in southwest Louisiana. Martin, a Hungarian knight, saw
a beggar, took pity on him and, according later that night had an
epiphany. The beggar was Jesus. Based on that “revelation,”
Martin switched careers from knight to priest, rose to bishop and got
sainted.
The
small statue on the pulpit, Jerry Dohmann Jr., the church handyman
told us, led to a New York City priest getting bounced from the
parish. He disliked the statuette and ordered it removed. “That New
Yorker didn’t last long down here,” Jerry smugly boasted.
Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow wrote about St. Martinville, a historic sign
marker informed us. We see the magnificent oak where Evangeline
waited in vain for her lover. In 1928, Huey Long delivered a major
campaign speech in St. Martinville, beneath that sad tree.
“Where
are the schools that you have waited for your children to have, that
have never come?” Long asked, “the roads…that are no nearer now
than ever before?
“Evangeline
wept bitter tears in her disappointment,” he concluded, “but it
lasted only through one lifetime. Your tears in this country, around
this oak, have lasted for generations.”
In
New Orleans, tens of thousands continue to weep
in disappointment. Like Evangeline’s lover, their government has
yet to appear — except as an adversary. (More on this next week.)
Saul
Landau is an Institute for Policy Studies Fellow. His films are on
DVD from roundworldmedia@gmail.com.
