The Thousand-Year Flood: The Ohio-Mississippi Disaster of 1937

In this solid narrative, Welky (Everything Was Better in America: Print Culture in the Great Depression) leads the reader though the history of the 1937 Ohio River flood, discussing both the manmade and natural causes for the extreme flood. By the time the crest passed, the flood had killed hundreds of people, buried thousands of towns, and left a million people homeless.” Yet the devastation is identified by the author as a “catastrophe lost to historians” as it probably is to most Americans. Welky, a history professor at the University of Central Arkansas, examines the role of those involved in relief efforts and the politics of flood control: President Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal reformers, the Red Cross, WPA, Army Corps of Engineers, and the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union. He delves into the troublesome race relations and problems encountered by African-Americans during the flood and deftly traces the flood’s lasting legacy upon the cities and towns in its path—some, like Paducah, Ky., rebuilt and prospered; others, like Shawneetown, Ill., a town that once laughed at a “request for credit from someplace called Chicago,” never regained its population or vibrancy. Welky’s remarkable narrative will be of particular interest to students of the New Deal and 1930s America as well as the general reader. (Oct.)