The levee broke near Scott, Mississippi and quickly resulted in the flooding of much of Staplcotn's 1927 acreage

ARMED GUARDS MOUNTED CONSTANT WATCH, lest men from Arkansas cross the river and dynamite the levees to relieve the pressure on their side. And, in Arkansas, guns were similarly raised against Mississippians. It was high water time. But the year was 1927, and all the lanterns on the levee would not prevail against these waters. Despite the danger which all river engineers in the 1920s knew existed because of caving river banks, there was a feeling of security among the people living behind the enlarged levees. Each flood was declared to be the last, and each one was followed in due season by another.

The Yazoo-Mississippi Delta had been developing rapidly since the turn of the century despite overflows in 1903, 1912 and 1913. Overflows had followed each other so closely that a crop planted after one flood was caught unharvested in the fields by the next overflow, as in the floods of 1912 and 1913.

However, many looked to future levee work as largely a matter of maintaining the standard engineering grade already reached. The Mississippi River Commission joined the optimism and predicted that the end of the flood control battle was at hand. After all, the levee line had cost 40 years of efforts and more than $20 million in local taxes.

In 1926, a congressional committee heard testimony that the levee enlargement was nearly completed and the valley was safe from another flood. Less than six months later the Mississippi River went on its worst rampage in recorded history.

In the early morning of April 21, 1927, after weeks of heart-breaking struggle, screaming sirens in Greenville announced the battle was over. A dozen miles upriver, the 1,500 men who risked their lives piling sacks against the ever-rising, wind-driven river had been bested. Trains leaving Greenville the morning of the break were trapped and remained engulfed in the waters. It would be 70 days before one would depart or enter.

View of Washington Avenue in downtown Greenville during the 1927 flood.

Within a week the water stood between four and 15 feet deep and extended over an area of the Delta thirty miles wide by a hundred miles long.

Mound Landing Crevasse, as the break near Scott was to be recorded, quickly became a 3,000 foot wide gap in the levee wall. The break spilled nearly 470,000 cubic feet of water per second into the Delta. More than 5,200,000 acres of the Mississippi valley flooded and its plantations became inland lakes. Over 600 acres of Delta and Pine Land Company's plantations near Scott were covered with sand.

Motorboats, skiffs, rafts and anything else that would float were sent to the rescue. But for the 246 people drowned and the estimated 165,000 head of livestock lost, the waters moved too swiftly, their locations were too inaccessible or there were too few boats. More than 330,000 persons were rescued from housetops and treetops and brought to long rows of army tents set up on levees to house refugees. Months later, a county by county tabulation by the Mississippi River Flood Control Association estimated that flood damage amounted to $436,334,414.

William Alexander Percy of Greenville was appointed chairman for flood relief for Greenville and Washington County. As head of the local committee of the Red Cross, he was charged with supervising the rescue and care of 60,000 people and 30,000 head of livestock in the immediate area. Three years later, Percy succeeded his father, Senator LeRoy Percy, as a member of Staplcotn's Board.

Looting broke out and the National Guard administered voluntary martial law complete with curfew. The Guard unit was headed by Major A. G. Paxton, who had opened Staplcotn' first office in Greenville in 1921, along with Hubert Crosby and S. 0. Gibbs.

The drainage waters of thirty-one states passed over Staplcotn vice president Alf Stone's plantation west of Indianola at an average depth of almost seven feet, leaving in their wake only the broken remnants of thirty-six years of constructive toil. 'As I look out across this inland sea, I marvel at the foolhardiness which kept me here, in response to the same subtle dream of wilderness conquest which wrought with my forefathers three centuries ago." Stone wrote.

When the Mississippi River Levee broke in 1927, Staplcotn had 33,000 bales involved in the flood, all covered by flood insurance. This cotton was stored in warehouses near the river at Greenville, Hollandale, and several other points.

When the time came for an agreement with the insurance company, Mr. Garrard had an understanding with the insurance adjusters that the cotton would be settled on the basis of Government standards for grade. During that year, Staplcotn had considerable cotton that was very blue in color but free of leaf, and the Government had a standard for Middling Blue, the value of which was much greater than if the bale of cotton had been classed Good Ordinary or Below Grade.

This cotton was all classed out and shown to the adjusters of the Insurance Company, who were experienced cotton men. Garrard said an Association member commented on this Middling Blue cotton, saying, "the cotton matches the Middling Blue box, but how anybody could ever think to call it that is beyond me. If the bale had been in stock, I would have called it Below Grade and thrown the sample away."

Staplcotn collected more than two million insurance dollars for its growers as a result of the 1927 flood.

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