Wheel it back selecta....

This is a replay of my first ever blog post. I felt it was appropriate to rebroadcast it.

Peace



I seem to recall an incident involving the water, racism and people dying before. I can't remember if it was a movie, or a sit-com, or perhaps a PBS special... Hmmmm........Now I remember, it was around 1927 and Jim Crow was still around doing his "thang", you know disenfranchising the Negroes. Well, what seems to have happened was that a bunch of leaders in the Delta area(encompassing the southern Mississippi Valley), realizing that at some point in future they could potentially, which would possibly decimate the city of Greenville, MS, and a lot of the surrounding farm land. Well, these officials decided it would be necessary to take action, and immediately began construction on a series of levees that would safeguard the residence against any natural disasters. Being that this was going to be a large scale project, and very labor intensive, the powers that be felt Negroes would be best suited for the job. You know with their "laziness" and all. So they pulled together all the Negroes they could to handle the job, making them work long hours for little pay. On top of that all those opposing the hard labor practices, and considering leaving, were threatened with force... This is 1927, several years after the Emancipation Proclamation, but I digress.So we have Blacks working on the levee system, for low pay, and the threat of death. We have racism. All we need now is.... A Disaster, correct.In late 1926, early 1927, as Herbert Hoover sat in the White House, rain began to pound the Mid-West states. This was significant, because all the rain would eventually travel down to the Gulf of Mexico, via the Mississippi River. So, as this event began to take shape, residence on the Delta Valley were urged to leave the homes for higher ground. Some did, some didn't, what else is new... But some, couldn't. These people were called "Negroes." Well, what happened was, that some smart white people knowing that after the disaster was over, rebuilding would have to take place. So why let the "lazy" people go, when more than likely they wouldn't come back. So with the threat of force, and maybe killing a few of them just to show you mean it, the Negroes were told to stay.There's a lot more to the story but, there isn't a good ending. Negro = Disenfranchisement, is the moral of the story.And, sure this isn't exactly what happened in Louisiana, but it can give a lot of perspective on the mentality of both racial groups.