Backwater Blues: The Mississippi Flood of 1927 in the African American Imagination

5 Every Day Seems Like Murder Here: The Mississippi Flood Control Project in New Deal–Era America

5 Every Day Seems Like Murder Here The Mississippi Flood Control Project in New Deal–Era America Images of what I had seen in Mississippi—the grim little river towns, rain-soaked levees, suspicious white faces, poverty-beaten Negroes— stayed fresh in my mind for a long time. —Roy Wilkins in his autobiography, Standing Fast In early January 1933, Roy Wilkins and George Schuyler emerged in front of a packed house at the historic Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York City’s Harlem. The NAACP was holding its annual celebration gala and the crowd waited in eager anticipation for what the two men had to say about theirrecenttripsouth,whentheyhadposedaslaborersinvestigatingcharges of debt peonage and violence in Mississippi Delta levee camps. A native Missourian, Roy Wilkins had been editor of the black-owned Kansas City Call newspaper before his appointment as assistant secretary of the NAACP in 1931.1 George Schuyler was a New Yorker and known in black circles as a conservative poet and freelance writer. A month earlier, in December 1932, on the heels of a pending federal investigation of levee camps, the two men volunteered for the extremely dangerous mission. Schuyler was familiar with the South’s social and cultural terrain but midwesterner Roy Wilkins had little experience with the region.2 Wilkins later recalled in his autobiography , Standing Fast, that he had only been to the Deep South once in his life and was perhaps a bit naive about the risk he was taking. In the chapter “Up in Harlem, Down in the Delta,” he recalled the danger of disclosing 123 124 every day seems like murder here their identity even to black levee camp workers who might betray their trust. The entire task would prove more daunting for Wilkins, whose northern accent and upper-middle-class demeanor always threatened to blow his cover.3 After placing a tight lid on the project, Wilkins and Schuyler traveled from New York City to Memphis and the home of black millionaire Robert R. Church, who directed the men to Beale Street for work pants, boots, and bags for their mission; Wilkins and Schuyler wanted to transform their physical appearance and demeanor into that of southern laborers. With fifty dollars apiece and aliases for safety, RoyWilkins changed his name to Roy Jones and Schuyler to George Smith. The two men then boarded the Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad from Memphis en route to the Delta.4 Reluctantly they decided to split up to cover more territory even though they were much safer together. Wilkins rode the train to Greenville, Mississippi, where he bid farewell to his partner, who traveled another ninety miles to Vicksburg . Both men were alone now, and as Wilkins would later recall, he felt like “a spy deep within enemy lines.”5 Hoping to secure work, Wilkins found a vacancy at a local boarding house on the outskirts of a Greenville levee camp. It was an unusually cold and blustery December night in the Delta and the landlady who rented the room watched the suspicious stranger closely. It was hard to fool those black southerners who had seen so much, and he felt uncomfortable from the looks of curiosity. When he stuck his hands over a stove in the front room, the landlady noticed his smooth and uncalloused hands and made a point of commenting so the other men could hear that he didn’t look like a workingman . Wilkins had to respond swiftly and assertively, explaining his hands and northern accent by telling the woman he had been an elevator operator in St. Louis before losing his job during the Depression.6 Although his assertive response temporarily satisfied the landlady, he had to explain his behavior again the next morning. Temperatures had dipped below freezing overnight and in an unconscious act he naively asked the landlady where he could get some heat before work. She told him a bucket of coal could be purchased for twenty-five cents but immediately followed with the admonishment that the workingmen she knew didn’t need such luxuries as heat in the morning. They simply got up, put on their work clothes or overalls without complaint, every day seems like murder here 125 and went to work. Wilkins realized, “[My] greenness was showing through dangerously, and I warned myself to be more careful.”7 Wilkins and Schuyler spent a total of three weeks undercover in several levee camps, gathering...