CHAPTER NINE
“the representatives”: W. E. B. Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk, edition contained in Three Negro Classics: Up From Slavery; The Souls of Black Folk; The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (New York: Avon, 1976), p. 329.
“of the most reckless”: William Hemphill, untitled ms., June 1905, Hemphill Family Papers, Special Collections, Duke University Library.
“The way these levee”: Ibid.
“Kill a mule”: For more details about levee conditions, see American Federation of Labor report of levee camp investigation, December 5, 1931; also Helen Boardman report on levee camps, August 1932, both in NAACP Papers, LC; Alan Lomax, The Land Where the Blues Began, pp. 212-255 passim.
“the negro to better”: Lomax, p. 256.
In 1900: Twelfth Census of the United States, vol. 5, Agriculture, pp. 96-97, quoted in Willis, “On the New South Frontier,” pp. 5, 9; interview with Willis, June 9, 1994.
Greenville had black policemen: Stone, “The Negro in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta,” p. 263.
“more firmly fixed”: Quoted in Brandfon, Cotton Kingdom, p. 130.
In 1901: Stone kept careful records to see if the better treatment led to higher retention rates of sharecroppers. It did not. See Cobb, p. 105.
There, whites: William Holmes, “Whitecapping in Mississippi,” pp. 165-185 passim.
“Today a Negro”: Charles Fenn, Ho Chi Minh, p. 26, quoted in Wyn Craig Wade, The Fiery Cross, p. 203.
“The blacks were forced”: Quoted in Cobb, p. 114.
“[t]he good [Negroes]”: Kirwan, pp. 144, 146; McMillen, p. 224.
“to inflame the passions”: LP to John Sharp Williams, no day, 1907, PFP.
“My dear Percy”: Vardaman to LP, May 19, 1905, PFP.
“I wish you would give”: John Sharp Williams to LP, April 20, 1919, Williams Collections, LC.
asked Percy to intervene: LP to Roosevelt, March 27, 1908, LP to Mrs. R. L. McLaurin, March 27, 1908, PFP; Baker, p. 35, p. 21on.
Despite opposition: LP to General J. Bell, November 2, 1909, PFP.
Once, at Percy’s request: See LP to Fish, November 25, 1905, PFP.
“You cannot conciliate”: William Holmes, “William Alexander Percy and the Bourbon Era in Mississippi Politics,” p. 76.
“a life and death struggle”: LP to Arthur Rice, June 18, 1910, Rice Papers, Mississippi State University Archives, quoted in Hester Ware, “A Study of the Life and Works of William Alexander Percy,” M.A. thesis, p. 38.
“timid and third-rate”: Percy, LL, p. 145.
“Crump”: Quoted in Bertram Wyatt-Brown, House of Percy, p. 181.
“black as the night”: Percy, LL, p. 146.
“Swinging perilously”: William Sallis, “The Life and Times of LeRoy Percy,” M.A. thesis, pp. 90-96.
“This is a contest”: Quote kindly supplied by Bertram Wyatt-Brown.
“the Secret Caucus”: Quoted in Kirwan, p. 197.
“suave and dignifiedly courteous”: NYT, April 17, 1910.
“They say I’m”: Sallis, “LeRoy Percy,” p. 133.
while the Percys considered themselves: For this insight I thank William Armstrong Percy, a professor at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, interviewed October 11, 1995.
“looked over the”: Percy, LL, p. 149.
“We are the low-brows”: Kirwan, p. 212.
“When Father rose”: Percy, LL, pp. 150-151.
“striped caterpillar”: Kirwan, pp. 220-221.
In a final mockery: Percy, LL, p. 152.
“My dear Senator”: Roosevelt to LP, November 11, 1911, PFP.
“will necessitate our killing”: Sullivan, Pre-War America, p. 136.
“ordered…several hundred negroes”: NYT, April 11, 1912.
“If I can keep”: LP to W. W. Cain, November 19, 1912, quoted in Percy, LL, pp. 152-153.
CHAPTER TEN
More than 60 percent: Willis, “On the New South Frontier,” p. 226; Ogden, p. 166.
The homicide rate: Hortense Powdermaker, After Freedom, p. 169.
More than 75 percent: Stone, “The Negro in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta”; Homicidal Deaths in Mississippi, MDAH.
“Shootings were”: Percy Bell, “Child of the Delta,” unpublished ms., chap. 2, p. 3.
in 1914: Interview with Leila Clark Wynn, March 17, 1993.
“You are going among”: Interview with Mrs. Pearl Pool Amos, January 27, 1993.
The biggest entertainers: Interview with Frank Hall, March 29, 1992; Washington County the Pride of the Delta, pamphlet, probably 1910, unpaginated, in Glen Allen (Mississippi) Public Library. LP to [illegible], November 22, 1906, PFP.
Enough Chinese lived: Interview with Frank Hall, March 29, 1992.
the two largest: Washington County the Pride of the Delta, pamphlet.
there was one club: Information kindly supplied by Bertram Wyatt-Brown.
“blacks tried to be”: Interview with John Wiley, October 22, 1993.
knives, razors, and pistols: History of Blacks in Greenville, 1863-1975; Oral history of Daisy Green, 1975, MDAH; interview with Sylvia Jackson, February 20, 1993; interview with David Cober, February 22, 1993.
“passion corner”: Powdermaker, p. 8; interview with Frank Hall; also, Washington County the Pride of the Delta.
In 1920 the city: “The Negro Common School, Mississippi,” Crisis, December 1926, p. 91.
The teachers and facilities: Interview with Shelby Foote, March 9, 1994.
The city spent $17: “The Negro Common School, Mississippi,” p. 91.
Greenville public schools: Interview with Leyser Holmes, March 2, 1993.
“I don’t believe”: Oral history of Daisy Green, 1975, p. 27.
“Our town has grown”: LP to Lawrence McMeekin, PFP.
In addition, before settling: Interview with Maurice Sisson, October 22, 1993.
in 1923: Ezra Bowen, ed., This Fabulous Century, 1920-1930, pp. 105, 244.
“The ultimate development”: Herbert Spencer, Social Statics (New York: D. Appleton, 1864), p. 79.
“flapper”: Ellis Hawley, The Great War and the Search for a Modern Order, p. 112.
skirts touched the knee: Sullivan, Pre-War America, p. 337.
In 1919: Ronald Davis, ed., The Social and Political Life of the 1920s, p. 16.
“Many an American”: Sullivan, The War Begins, p. 182.
150,000 people: Kenneth Harrell, “The Ku Klux Klan in Louisiana, 1920-1930,” Ph.D. thesis, p. 82.
“Government conscripted public opinion”: Robert Murray, Red Scare: A Study in National Hysteria (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1955), p. 12.
a nation of informers: Wade, p. 149.
“If this country”: LP to Dickinson, May 22, 1916, PFP.
“at the close”: LP to Bolton Smith, June 19, 1918, PFP.
in none of the cases: Walter White, A Man Called White, p. 48; Tindall, The Emergence of the New South, pp. 152-154; O. A. Roberts, “The Elaine Race Riots of 1919,” pp. 142-150.
“It is only a middling”: Murray, pp. 67, 74.
“Free speech has been”: Ibid.
“Silence the incendiary”: Ibid.
“To hell with”: Sullivan, The Twenties, p. 168.
the United States had two Communist parties: Murray, pp. 51-53.
“to maintain law and order”: Ibid., p. 89.
“He…jumped off”: Sullivan, The Twenties, see pp. 156-180 passim; Ralph Chaplin, The Centralia Conspiracy, p. 66.
“Palmer, do not let”: Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., The Crisis of the Old Order 1919-1933, p. 42.
Hoover had a card file: Murray, p. 193.
“I myself am an American”: William Katz, The Invisible Empire, p. 27; Murray, p. 219.
“fancied and certainly far distant”: LP to John Sharp Williams, July 11, 1919, and LP to Pat Harrison, August 4, 1919, both in PFP.
“all Gods dead”: F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise (New York: Scribners, 1920), p. 304.
“D
are to be Babbitt”: Ronald Davis, p. 47.
“Why I Never Hire”: Quoted in Ethan Morden, That Jazz, p. 103.
“the most average”: Bowen, p. 218.
nearly 25 million tickets: Katz, p. 87.
“The real big purpose”: Wade, p. 138.
“It is like”: Ibid., p. 124.
“I am a fraternalist”: Wade, p. 140; Chalmers, David, Hooded Americanism, p. 25.
he signed a contract: Stanley Coben, Rebellion Against Victorianism, p. 140; see also Tindall, George, The Emergence of the New South, p. 189.
“It is going to”: Ibid., p. 191.
at least 3 million Americans: Ibid., p. 194.
It had 300,000 members: Harrell, “The Ku Klux Klan in Louisiana, 1920-1930,” p. 66.
It seized control: Leonard Moore, “Historical Interpretations of the 1920s Klan,” p. 352.
“The world broke”: Quoted in Ronald Davis, p. 126.
CHAPTER 11
One night four: History of Blacks in Greenville, 1863-1975, pamphlet; also Irvin Mollison, “Negro Lawyers in Mississippi.”
“Percy would almost”: Interview with Gatewood Hamm, December 15, 1992; interview with Frank Hall, March 27, 1992.
“the inflammable, uneducated”: Percy, LL, p. 228.
he called to his office: Percy, LL, p. 232.
“A Ku Klux orator”: LP to Alfred Stone, February 27, 1922, PFP.
“Colonel Camp”: No transcript of Camp’s speech exists, but several newspaper reports, including the Vicksburg Herald of March 2, 1922, and the Houston Chronicle of March 19, 1922, paraphrased it. Percy also recounted portions of it in his speech and in letters he wrote in subsequent weeks, especially to H. H. Garwood, March 10, 1922, in PFP. So did the GD-T, LL, pp. 232-233, and Sallis, “The Life and Times of LeRoy Percy,” pp. 150-154.
“Percy!”: Sallis, p. 154.
“this eminent orator”: Houston Chronicle, March 19, 1922.
“Be it resolved”: Ibid.
“If we had Mr. Percy”: E. M. Weddington et al. to LP, March 4, 1992, PFP.
“much stronger effect”: For example, see B. McGee to LP, March 2, 1922; R. E. Montgomery to LP, March 9, 1922; William McGinley to LP, June 2, 1922; R. L. Tullis to LP, August 25, 1922; LP to Mattoon, Illinois, Knights of Columbus, August 23, 1922, all in PFP.
he contacted three newspaper: LP to Authors’ Clipping Bureau, LP to Albert Romeike & Co., LP to Henry Romeike, Inc., all on March 7, 1922, PFP.
“The eagerness with which”: LP to Miss A. D. Jenkins, July 21, 1922.
the night after being humiliated: LP to A. P. Wilkey, January 20, 1923.
“To all Flag”: Leland Enterprise, March 18, 1922, PFP.
The town epitomized: Schott, “John M. Parker of Louisiana,” p. 423.
more lynchings had occurred: William Hair, The Kingfish and His Realm, pp. 66, 130.
On August 24, 1992: Accounts of the Bastrop Klan come from Schott, “John M. Parker of Louisiana,” esp. pp. 423-443; John Rogers, The Murders of Mer Rouge; Baker, The Percys of Mississippi, pp. 99-111; and NOT-P passim from September 1922 to January 1923.
“Louisiana has issued”: NOT-P, April 29, 1922; NOI, May 2, 1922.
“a fight to the finish”: NOT-P, October 31, 1922; Schott, “John M. Parker of Louisiana,” p. 436.
Justice Department investigators: Schott, “John M. Parker of Louisiana,” p. 431.
the Louisiana Klan invited: Thomas Dabney, One Hundred Great Years, pp. 415-422.
“You have been”: Parker to LP, February 20, 1923, Parker Papers, Special Collections, Dupre Library, University of Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette.
“I am intensely uneasy”: LP to Dickinson, May 14, 1923; see also LP to R. Purdy, May 14, 1923, PFP.
“Nothing that is founded”: LP to Will McCoy, May 16, 1923.
“decade”: Nancy McLean, Behind the Mask of Chivalry (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 17.
“Senator Percy has never”: GD-T, June 21, 1923.
“All agree to stay”: Undated note in Percy’s handwriting, PFP.
“The day of kings”: See copy of speech at People’s Theater, April 23, 1923, PFP.
“[A] letter from you”: LP to Alfred Stone, July 6, 1923, PFP.
“Senator Percy has no”: Alfred Stone, As to Senator Percy, pamphlet, PFP.
One night in a rainstorm: Percy, LL, p. 236; GD-T, May 14, 1923.
his father likely suspected: Will Percy, “The Fifth Autumn,” ms. in PFP, particularly when Will reports that his mother warned his father not to speak of sexuality.
“If anything happens”: Percy, LL, p. 236.
“my personal injury”: GD-T, May 14, 1923.
“friends among the Jews”: GD-T, August 6, 1923.
Voter turnout: GD-T, August 8, 1923.
“A tremendous uproar”: Percy, LL, pp. 238-241.
“Adah and Charlie”: Ibid.
“I mourn the fact”: William Howard Taft to LP, August 30, 1923, PFP.
“You can scarcely understand”: LP to William Howard Taft, September 25, 1923.
“Biological laws show”: Katz, The Invisible Empire, p. 87.
“the Klan virus”: LP to Dickinson, May 14, 1923, PFP.
it elected the mayors: Wade, The Fiery Cross, p. 196.
the convention erupted in tumult: LP to WAP, June 16, 1924, PFP.
“mak[ing] it more difficult”: LP to Dickinson, June 17, 1924, PFP.
Pattangall himself lost: Mordden, That Jazz, p. 64.
“I really believe”: Lindsey to LP, April 25, 1925, PFP.
David Stephenson: John Braeman, Robert Bremner, and David Brody, eds., Change and Continuity in Twentieth Century America: The Twenties (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1968), pp. 240-41.
was routinely consulted: Mary Booze to John Overton, November 22, 1926, PFP.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“In physical and mental”: “Eisenhower’s General Lee,” Time, September 25, 1944, p. 21.
“Levees designed to limit”: E. F. Dawson, Notes on the Mississippi River, pp. 91-92.
“I was not accustomed”: Speech by James Kemper to Round Table Club, April 8, 1937, New Orleans, Kemper Collection, Louisiana State Museum, Historical Division, New Orleans.
“The alluvial stream”: Government Control with Cooperation of Riparian States and Cities, pamphlet (New Orleans, 1912), p. 17.
The New York Times: See NYT, March 28 through March 31, 1913.
“succeeded in getting”: LP to WAP, December 27, 1916, PFP.
“The question of absolute”: Quoted in Morgan, Dams and Other Disasters, pp. 260-261.
“[T]here is no doubt”: Clarke Smith, Survey for Spillways at or Near New Orleans, p. 14.
“Whether their fears”: J. A. Ockerson, Outlets for Reducing Flood Heights, pamphlet, reply to R. S. Taylor.
“are all contrary”: P&H, p. 186.
The 1916 Mississippi River: HFCCH, pp. 1789-1792; James Kemper, Floods in the Valley of the Mississippi, p. 35.
He insisted that: NOT, April 5, 1927.
“The art of dam”: Beach to Secretary of War, August 8, 1922, quoted in Morgan, p. 189.
“It is so much easier”: Speech by Kemper to New Orleans Round Table, April 8, 1937, Kemper Collection, Louisiana State Museum, Historical Division, New Orleans.
the river rose unexpectedly: NOT-P, April 10, 1922.
the gauge at the foot: NOT-P, April 11, 1922.
in Louisiana a call: NOT-P, April 17, 1922.
“Everything possible”: Wires to John Sharp Williams from Clearing House Association, J. D. Smythe, J. A. Hunt, and R. P. Crump, April 20, 1922, John Sharp Williams Papers, LC.
“People from Belzoni”: Wire from Greenwood Chamber of Commerce to John Sharp Williams, April 25, 1922, John Sharp Williams Papers, LC.
“At Octavia there”: John Klorer, “Report of the Inspection of the Levee Line to Mayor Andrew McShane,” April 21, 1922, NOCA.
Three thousand city workers: Ibid.
/> “We are in”: J. E. Weldon to John Parker, April 30, 1922; Parker to Weldon, May 2, 1922, Parker Papers, Special Collections, Dupre Library, University of Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette.
On Esplanade Street: Interview with Louis Claverie, February 10, 1993; interview with Walter Barnett, November 15, 1992.
The flooding of Arkansas City: Cf., for example, NOI, April 10, 1922; NOT-P, April 10 and 11, 1922.
“I cannot say”: Cf. NOI, April 14, 1922, to NOT-P, April 15, 1922.
he notified all city workers: NOT-P, April 18, 1922.
“Notify the barge line”: NOT-P, April 25, 1922.
“The levees are better”: NOI, April 19, 1922.
the levee abruptly caved: NOT-P, April 29, 1922.
“As for the high water”: NOT-P, April 27, 1922.
“the bight of”: Report of Board of [Louisiana] State Engineers, 1922 to 1924, pp. 58-59.
less than an hour: NOI, April 29, 1922.
By luck the Poydras crevasse: Testimony of John Klorer, 67th Cong., December 11, 12, 13, 14, 1922, at HFCCH; report of Board of Louisiana State Engineers, 1924, p. 58.
it had broken records: Kemper, Floods in the Valley, p. 36.
“A situation has”: Walter Sillers, Sr., to Col. C. H. West, October 20, 1925; Sillers to LP, May 31, 1927, Sillers Papers, Delta State University Library.
“The Mississippi River Commission”: Kemper testimony, HFCCH, p. 1710.
“[W]e are in reality”: W. L. Head to Mississippi River Commission, March 8, 1927, NA, RG 77, case 2620, entry 521.
twelve floods: Undated (probably 1923) engineering report of Safe River Committee, NOCA.
“Some one has apparently”: Beach to Harold Newman, May 12, 1922. copy in Edwin Broussard Papers, Special Collections, Dupre Library, University of Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette.
When the criticism did not stop: Transcript of comments by Beach at hearings in New Orleans, August 20 and 21, 1922, Corps of Engineers Papers, NA, RG 77, entry 521; see also summary of correspondence with New Orleans Association of Commerce, NA, RG 77, entry 521.
“If it were my property”: Ibid.
LeRoy Percy maneuvered: Wire from LP to Parker, August 19, 1922, Parker Papers, USL.
Engineers called each other: Quoted in House Flood Control Committee Hearings, 67th Cong., December 11-14, 1922, p. 164.
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