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Hurricane Camille and the New Politics of Federal Disaster Relief, 1965–1970

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2014

Andrew Morris
Andrew Morris*
Affiliation:
Union College
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Journal of Policy History , Volume 26 , Issue 3: American Disaster Politics Gareth Davies, Editor , July 2014 , pp. 406 - 426
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Copyright © Donald Critchlow and Cambridge University Press 2014 

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References

NOTES

1. “Stewart E. McClure: Chief Clerk, Senate Committee on Labor, Education, and Public Welfare (1949–1973),” Oral History Interviews, Senate Historical Office, Washington, D.C., 233; Kenneth Dean interview with author, 8 February 2013, in author’s possession.

2. “The Storm They Still Don’t Believe,” Popular Mechanics, (September 1970), 95; Philip Hearn, Hurricane Camille: Monster Storm of the Gulf Coast (Jackson, Miss., 2004), 129–30. The Broadwater wouldn’t be so lucky next time around. Four weeks before Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the resort shut its doors, having failed to keep pace with the new resorts of the casino-era Gulf Coast. Katrina then finished the job, destroying the resort, its landmark sign, and golf course. “Pleasure Domes Past . . . Biloxi’s Broadwater Beach,” Preservation in Mississippi, http://misspreservation.com/2010/05/19/pleasure-domes-past-biloxis-broadwater-beach/ (accessed 2 February 2013).

3. Senate Committee on Public Works, Special Subcommittee on Disaster Relief, Federal Response to Hurricane Camille, 91st Cong., 2nd sess., 9 January 1970, parts 1 and 2 (Washington, D.C., 1970); “Hurricane Camille: Subcommittee,” NBC Evening News, 8 January 1970, Vanderbilt Television News Archive (hereafter VTNA); “Civil Rights Workers Critical of Relief,” Spartanburg Herald-Journal, 10 January 1970, 8.

4. Peter May, Recovering from Catastrophes: Federal Disaster Relief Policy and Politics (Westport, Conn., 1985), 22–27; Thomas Birkland, After Disaster: Agenda Setting, Public Policy, and Focusing Events (Washington, D.C., 1997); Rutherford H. Platt, Disasters and Democracy: The Politics of Extreme Natural Events (Washington, D.C., 1999); 11–46; Theodore Steinberg, Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America, rev. ed. (New York, 2006), 174–78.

5. Stefan Bechtel, Roar of the Heavens (New York, 2006); Hearn, Hurricane Camille; Ernest Zebrowski and Judith Howard, Category 5: The Story of Camille; Lessons Unlearned from America’s Most Violent Hurricane (Ann Arbor, 2005); Mark Smith, Camille, 1969: Histories of a Hurricane (Athens, Ga., 2011). The latter two provide the best overview of the relief effort.

6. On the affinity between rights claims and national policies in the 1960s, see Hugh Heclo, “The Sixties’ False Dawn,” in Integrating the Sixties: The Origins, Structures, and Legitimacy of Public Policy, ed. Brian Balogh (University Park, Pa., 1996), 50–51.

7. Martha Derthick, “Crossing Thresholds: Federalism in the 1960s,” in Balogh, Integrating the Sixties, 64–80.

8. On the desegregation battles in Mississippi in 1969, see Charles C. Bolton, The Hardest Deal of All: The Battle Over School Integration in Mississippi, 1870–1980 (Jackson, Miss., 2005), chap. 7; Gareth Davies, See Government Grow: Education Politics from Johnson to Reagan (Lawrence, Kans., 2007), chap. 5; Smith, Camille, 1969, chap. 2.

9. May, Recovering from Catastrophes, 18–22; Karen Sawislak, Smoldering City: Chicagoans and the Great Fire, 1871–1874 (Chicago, 1995); Michele Landis Dauber, The Sympathetic State: Disaster Relief and the Origins of the American Welfare State (Chicago, 2013), chaps. 2, 3; Davies, Gareth, “Dealing with Disaster: The Politics of Catastrophe in the United States, 1789–1861,” American Nineteenth-Century History 14, no. 1 (2013): 1–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10. May, Recovering from Catastrophes, 21–51.

11. Douglas Dacy and Howard Kunreuther, The Economics of Natural Disasters: Implications for Federal Policy (New York, 1969), 53; Jones, Douglas, “What We Thought We Were Doing in Alaska, 1965–1972,” Journal of Policy History 22, no. 2 (2010): 227.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12. Sen. Birch Bayh interview with author, 28 August 2012.

13. Charles Mohrs, “Johnson Stunned by Midwest Havoc,” New York Times, 15 April 1965; “Misty Eyed President Pledges Aid,” Eugene-Register Guard, 15 April 1965. On Bayh and Johnson’s relationship, see Eve Lubalin, “Presidential Ambition and Senatorial Behavior: The Impact of Ambition on the Behavior of Incumbent Politicians” (Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1981), 420, and Bayh interview.

14. On Johnson’s place in the chronology and typology of the presidential responses to disaster, see Gareth Davies, “The Changing Presidential Politics of Disaster: From Coolidge to Obama,” paper presented at Conference on Recasting Presidential History, Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, 26–27 October 2012.

15. “Bayh to Seek Quake-Type Aid in Tornado Repairs,” Indianapolis Times, 15 April 1965; “Bayh to Push for Broader Tornado Aid,” Indianapolis Times, 20 April 1965; “Tornado Relief Plans Shaped: Bayh Talks with Senator’s Aids,” Indianapolis News, 21 April 1965.

16. Bayh interview.

17. “Notes on Meeting on Proposed Disaster Legislation,” 20 April 1965, Folder S. 1861 Staff File (1), Box 1, Legislative Files: Disaster Relief, Birch Bayh Senatorial Papers, Modern Political Papers Collection, Indiana University, Bloomington (hereafter Bayh Papers); Congressional Record, 30 April 1965, 8784.

18. Congressional Record, 22 July 1965, 17213.

19. See U.S. Senate, Committee on Banking and Currency, Additional Assistance for Disaster Victims, 89th Cong., 1st sess., 27 April 1965 (Washington, D.C., 1965), 30.Google Scholar

20. Kent Germany, “LBJ and the Response to Hurricane Betsy,” Miller Center Presidential Recordings Program, http://www.whitehousetapes.net/exhibit/lbj-and-response-hurricane-betsy; Todd Shallat, “In the Wake of Hurricane Betsy,” in Transforming New Orleans and Its Environs: Centuries of Change, ed. Craig Colten (Pittsburgh, 2000): 121–38; “Hurricane Betsy Relief,” CQ Almanac (Washington, D.C., 1965), 678–79.

21. Davies, “The Changing Presidential Politics of Disasters.”

22. Bayh interview; McClure Oral History, 231–32.

23. Martha Derthick, Policymaking for Social Security (Washington, D.C., 1979), 280; R. Kent Weaver, Automatic Government: The Politics of Indexation (Washington, D.C., 1988), 68–69; Julian Zelizer, Taxing America: Wilbur D. Mills, Congress, and the State, 1945–1975 (New York, 1998), 313, 319–21.

24. U.S. Senate Committee on Public Works, Subcommittee on Roads, Disaster Relief Act of 1967, 90th Cong., 2nd sess., 9 June and 27 July 1967 (Washington, D.C., 1967), 60–61.Google Scholar

25. Dauber, The Sympathetic State, chaps. 1, 7.

26. Heclo, “The Sixties’ False Dawn,” 51.

27. May, Recovering from Catastrophes, 31–38; Clark Norton to Birch Bayh, 25 July 1967, Folder S. 438 Hearings, Washington, D.C.; “Memorandum on S. 438,” 7 June 1968, Folder S. 438 Memos; both in Box 2, Legislative Files: Disaster Relief, Bayh Papers; Disaster Relief Act of 1967, 94–100.

28. Congressional Record, 26 March 1969, 7645; Congressional Record, 8 July 1969, 7669–71; Norton, “Conference Committee on Disaster Relief,” 11 August 1969; Norton to Bayh, 28 August 1969, both in Folder S. 1685 Staff File 8/1–9/15, Box 3, Legislative Files: Disaster Relief, Bayh Papers; Ernie Hernandez, “Maneuver on Bayh Disaster Measure,” Gary Post-Tribune, 18 August 1969.

29. Office of Emergency Preparedness, A Year of Rebuilding: The Federal Response to Hurricane Camille (Washington, D.C., August 1970).

30. Zebrowski and Howard, Category 5, 44–51.

31. Bechtel, Roar of the Heavens, 76–80, 107–10; Hearn, Hurricane Camille, 125–26; Zebrowski and Howard, Category 5, 79–81.

32. Francis Tobin, “Hurricane Camille,” 10 September 1969, Folder Housing and Urban Development, Box 3, Series 1079, RG 396 (Office of Emergency Preparedness), National Archives, College Park, Md. The OEP at the time was an independent executive-branch agency tasked with coordinating the federal response to national disasters.

33. Jerry Delaughter, “Miss. Hurricane Refugees Moved to Guard Camp; Blacks Distressed,” Washington Post, 26 August 1969.

34. Mark Smith, Camille, 1969, 31–32. See also Bolton, The Hardest Deal of All; Davies, See Government Grow.

35. Combined Community Organizations Disaster Committee, “Report and Recommendations . . . Regarding Conditions of the Refugees and Hurricane Camille Victims at Camp Shelby and the Mississippi Gulf Coast,” 18 September 1969, Folder Miss., Box 4, Entry 1079, RG 396; Dean interview with author, 16 May 2013; Ed Nakawatase e-mail to author, 9 July 2013; Mark Newman, Divine Agitators: The Delta Ministry and Civil Rights in Mississippi (Athens, Ga., 2004), 172.

36. Foster Rhea Dulles, The American Red Cross: A History (New York, 1950); Marian Moser Jones, The American Red Cross from Clara Barton to the New Deal (Baltimore, 2013).

37. Fred Demetz and Dorothy Niolet Oral History, vol. 226, by R. Wayne Pyle, 1979, 50–51; Ronnie Caire Oral History, vol. 314, by R. Wayne Pyle, 1979, 23–24; Albert Easterling Oral History, vol. 234 by R. Wayne Pyle, 34, all Mississippi Oral History Project, McCain Library and Archives, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg.

38. James Lewis, “American Red Cross Disaster Assistance,” 15 September 1969, Folder Red Cross, Box 3, Entry 1079 (OEP), RG 396; “Impressions Following Visit to Hurricane Camille Disaster Area”; Donald Stout, “Critique of Red Cross Disaster Operations in General, Utilizing Recent Experiences in Hurricane Camille,” 5 February 1970, Folder 800.08, Box 22, RG 200 (American National Red Cross), National Archives, College Park, Md.; Mason and Smith, Beaches, Blood, and Ballots, 176–79; and Smith, Camille, 1969, 39–41.

39. T. Casey, “Camille Study Trip Report,” 22–26 September 1969, Folder Region 3, Box 3 (2), Entry 1079, RG 396.

40. Federal Response to Hurricane Camille, 379–400; Zebrowski and Howard, Category 5, 143–47; Joseph Crespino, In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution (Princeton, 2007), 185–221; Richard Nixon, “Memorandum for Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies,” 16 September 1969, Folder 8, Box 660, Colmer Papers.

41. Davies, See Government Grow, 124–25; Smith, Camille, 1969, 31–32.

42. “Subject: Temporary Housing,” 3 January 1970, Folder Subject Files, Disaster Assistance, Camille, 3 of 3, 1970, Box 36, Entry 2A, RG 396. For more on the history and travails of the trailer program, see Andrew Morris, “The Origins of the FEMA Trailer: Emergency Housing and Federal Disaster Relief,” Policy History Conference, Richmond, Virginia, June 2012.

43. Robert Phillips, “Availability of Surplus Federally Owned Trailers,” 20 August 1969, Folder Subject Files, Disaster Assistance, Camille, 3 of 3, 1970, Box 36, Entry 2A; C. H. Beal, “Mississippi—Camille—Temporary Housing,” 6 September 1969, Folder Housing and Urban Development, Box 2, Series 1079, both in RG 396.

44. Gilbert Mason to Clarence Mitchell, 23 August 1969; Memo to Trent Lott, 26 August 1969; George Lincoln to William Colmer, 29 August 1969; Colmer to George Romney, 25 September 1969, all Folder 16, Box 660, Colmer Papers; “Hurricane Camille: Mississippi Trailers,” ABC Evening News, 16 September 1969, VTNA. Internally, OEP sources were also critical of HUD, though they also blamed it on delays by local officials in approving sites for trailers; John Coleman, “Mobile Trailers for Camille Victims,” 17 September 1969, Folder 4041: Camille Housing, Box 5, Entry 1079, RG 396.

45. Norton to Bayh, 28 August 1969, Folder S. 1685 Staff File 8/1–9/15, Box 3, Legislative Files: Disaster Relief, Bayh Papers.

46. Norton, “Recent Disaster Relief Bill Developments,” 28 August 1969; Norton, “Disaster Relief Legislation Developments,” 4 September 1969; Norton, “Special Meeting on Disaster Relief Friday,” 5 September 1969, Folder S. 1685 Staff File 8/1–9/15, Box 3, Legislative Files: Disaster Relief, Bayh Papers; “Eastland Legislative Proposal for the Disaster of Hurricane Camille,” [September 1969]; Sen. James Eastland, [on disaster relief, September 1969], both Folder 10, Box 661, Colmer Papers.

47. Norton, “Special Meeting on Disaster Relief.”

48. Norton to Bayh, 8 September 1969; Norton to Bayh, 11 September 1969, Folder S. 1685 Staff File 8/1–9/15, Box 3, Legislative Files: Disaster Relief, Bayh Papers.

49. For a detailed discussion of the racial problems in Camille relief, see Mason and Smith, Beaches, Blood, and Ballots, 168–83.

50. Mason and Smith, Beaches, Blood, and Ballots, 176.

51. Federal Response to Hurricane Camille, 886–87; Jon Nordheimer, “Negroes and Storm Relief: Black Victims of Hurricane Camille Want Aid Based on Equal Standards,” New York Times, 12 January 1970, 16; Ralene Hearn interview with author, 10 August 2013.

52. American National Red Cross, “Guide to the Family Food Budget,” March 1969, Folder Internal Documents and Background, 1969–70, Box 3, Legislative Files: Disaster Relief, Bayh Papers; Easterling Oral History, 34.

53. Nordheimer, “In Camille’s Wake, An Economic Crisis,” New York Times, 5 January 1970, 32. See also Pyle, R. Wayne, “An Oral History With Dr. Henry Maggio,” The Mississippi Oral History Program, vol. 220, 1980, 24.Google Scholar

54. Davies, See Government Grow, 120; Bolton, The Hardest Deal of All, 128–31.

55. Combined Community Organizations Disaster Committee, “Report and Recommendations Regarding Conditions of the Refugees and Hurricane Camille Victims . . .”; Nicholas Criss, “Hurricane-Racked Area Sinks to New Poverty,” Los Angeles Times, 18 December 1969; Dean interview, 8 February 2013. After the composition of the Emergency Council began to attract national publicity (and civil rights groups in Mississippi threatened a lawsuit), the Nixon administration twisted Williams’s arm to add three African American members to the council—days before the Subcommittee on Disaster Relief showed up in Mississippi to conduct hearings; “Mississippi Adds Three Negroes to Storm Relief Unit; Governor Moves to Counter Charge of Bias in Group Aiding Camille Victims,” New York Times, 1 January 1970; “Senate Group Seeks New Approach to Disaster Relief,” Congressional Quarterly, 6 February 1970, 360.

56. Federal Response to Hurricane Camille, vol. 2, 721.

57. Eliot Cutler, “Disaster Relief and Hurricane Camille: The Need for Hearings,” 14 November 1969, Folder Creation of Subcommittee, Box 3, Legislative Files: Disaster Relief, Bayh Papers; Eliot Cutler to Edmund Muskie, “Disaster Relief and Hurricane Camille,” 14 November 1969, Folder 8, Box 978; Cutler to Muskie, “Mississippi Disaster Relief Hearings,” 22 December 1969, Folder 7, Box 974, Edmund S. Muskie Papers; Eliot Cutler Oral History, 24 May 2002, 9; Edmund S. Muskie Oral History Collection; Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library, Bates College, Lewiston, Maine.

58. Jennings Randolph, “Establishment of a Select Subcommittee on Disaster Relief,” [November 1969]; Bayh and Muskie to Randolph, 19 November 1969, Folder Creation of Subcommittee, Box 3, Legislative Files: Disaster Relief, Bayh Papers; Cutler Oral History. The Mississippi Council on Human Relations was an affiliate of the Southern Regional Council.

59. Ed Nakawatase e-mail. Nakawatase was a former staffer with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Georgia who had taken a job in New Jersey with the American Friends Service Committee, and who came back south to work on the Camille investigation for the AFSC.

60. American Friends Service Committee and Southern Regional Council, In the Wake of Hurricane Camille: An Analysis of the Federal Response (Philadelphia, 24 November 1969); Calvin Trillin, “U.S. Journal: Pass Christian, Miss; Just the Normal Greed,” The New Yorker, 29 November 1969, 175–84.

61. Federal Response to Hurricane Camille, vol. 2, 724.

62. McClure Oral History, 233.

63. Cutler Oral History.

64. Derthick, “Crossing Thresholds.”

65. Lubalin, “Presidential Ambition and Senatorial Behavior,” 424–25, 582, 591.

66. Florence Sillers Ogden, “‘Dis and ‘Dat: Rejection of Haynsworth Based on Hate for the South,” Jackson Clarion-Ledger, 30 November 1969; “Statement of Cong. William Colmer on Proposed Investigation of Handling of Hurricane Camille Funds,” 29 November 1969, Folder 11, Box 607, Colmer Papers.

67. Fred Russell, “Memorandum for General Lincoln,” 12 January 1970, Folder Camille Investigation, Box 5, Entry 1079, RG 396.

68. Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff, The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation (New York, 2006), 405.

69. See ABC, NBC, and CBS nightly reports for 9 January 1970, VTNA; “Relief Bias After Camille Charged,” Toledo Blade, 9 January 1970; Robert Maynard, “Bitter Exchanges Mark Camille Relief Hearings,” Washington Post, 8 January 1970, 1; Jon Nordheimer, “Red Cross Actions After Storm Called ‘Dehumanizing’ by Negro,” New York Times, 10 January 1970; McClure Oral History, 232–33.

70. Lincoln, “Thoughts,” 9 January 1970; David J. Pattison, “Senators Muskie and Bayh,” 16 January 1970, both in Folder Subject Files, Disaster Assistance, Camille, 3 of 3, 1970, Box 36, Entry 2A, RG 396.

71. By contrast, the second set of hearings, held in Virginia in early February, drew no national network attention and only regional newspaper coverage, despite the fact that the death toll in the Virginia phase of Camille had been higher. See “Flood Hearings Begin,” Fredericksburg Free-Lance Star, 2 February 1970, 11; J. Y. Smith, “Virginia Officials Rap Federal Relief,” Washington Post, 3 February 1970, C3.

72. “Press Conference on Disaster Relief Hearings,” 14 January 1970, Folder Hearings Biloxi Mississippi Follow-Up, Box 3, Legislative Files: Disaster Relief, Bayh Papers.

73. Norton to Bayh, 8 April 1970; Norton to Bayh, 17 April 1970, both in Folder S. 3619 Staff File, March/April 1970; Norton to Bayh, 2 June 1970, Folder S. 3619 Staff File, May/September 1970, all in Box 4, Legislative Files: Disaster Relief, Bayh Papers.

74. George Lincoln, “Conferences with Senators Bayh and Dole,” 23 April 1970, Folder 4041: Camille Investigation, Box 5, Entry 1079 (OEP), RG 396.

75. McClure Oral History, 234; “Federal Disaster Assistance,” CQ Almanac (Washington, D.C., 1970), 760.

76. “Romney and Shapp Clash Over Flood Relief Plans,” New York Times, 10 August 1972, 70; For more on the Romney episode, see Davies, “From Coolidge to Obama,” and Robert Wolensky, Better than Ever! The Flood Recovery Task Force and the 1972 Agnes Disaster (Stevens Point, Wis., 1993), 40–42.