I would like to invite the Miss-Lou community to drive out to Copiah-Lincoln Community College Library and look at a brand new photographic display from the Mississippi Department of Archives & History; it is the best exhibit that I have viewed from the museum to date.

“A River Unleashed: the 1927 Mississippi River Flood” details through photographs, maps, quotes and captions this catastrophic event.

The exhibit opened in January and closes March 3. Library hours are 7:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday and until 2:30 p.m. Fridays.

The flood began when heavy rains pounded the central basin of the Mississippi in the summer of 1926. By September, the Mississippi’s tributaries in Kansas and Iowa were swollen to capacity. On New Year’s Day of 1927, the Cumberland River at Nashville topped levees.

On April 15, 1927, 15 inches of rain fell in 18 hours. This rain caused flooding which overtook the levees, causing the Mounds Landing to break with more than double the water volume of Niagara Falls. The Mississippi River broke out of its levee system in 145 places and flooded 27,000 square miles.

This water flooded an area 50 miles wide and more than 100 miles long.

The area was inundated up to a depth of 30 feet. The flood caused more than $400 million in damages, affected seven states, displaced more than 700,000 people and killed hundreds.

Thousands of people had to rely on disaster relief provided by agencies such as the Red Cross; unfortunately, the quantity and quality of this aid were often determined along racial lines.

Out of this chaos would come the first comprehensive flood control plan for the lower Mississippi region, under the responsibility of the federal government.

“To put the Flood of 1927 in some sort of contemporary context, we might look at it as the Hurricane Katrina of its day,” said James Wiggins,  history instructor at Co-Lin -Natchez.

“I mean that in terms of the sheer scale of the event, but in other ways too. Like the trauma caused by so many natural disasters, they each laid bare many of the controversies that characterized the larger society.

“Contentious issues of class and race. Questions of political competence on the local, state, as well as national levels. Most prominently, the political careers of Huey Long and Herbert Hoover might have unfolded very differently if not for the ’27 Flood.”

The 15 panels contain powerful photographs, informative maps, drawings and insightful quotes from politicians and the U.S. Corps of Engineers as well as flood victims.

This display emphasizes the long-term effects of the disaster on Mississippi and the lower river valley.

If you are a history buff or just a citizen interested in the mighty Mississippi River, visit the Copiah-Lincoln Community College Library and get a glimpse into our past.

Nancy J. McLemore is director of the Willie Mae Dunn Library at Copiah-Lincoln Community College’s Natchez campus.