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Tempest in the Forbidden City: Racism, Violence, and Vulnerability in the 1926 Miami Hurricane

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2014

Marian Moser Jones
Marian Moser Jones*
Affiliation:
University of Maryland
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Journal of Policy History , Volume 26 , Issue 3: American Disaster Politics Gareth Davies, Editor , July 2014 , pp. 384 - 405
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Copyright © Donald Critchlow and Cambridge University Press 2014 

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References

NOTES

1. National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office—Miami South Florida website, http://www.srh.noaa.gov/mfl/?n=floridahistorypage#Richard_Gray. National Weather Service Memorial Website for the 1926 Great Miami Hurricane, http://www.srh.noaa.gov/mfl/?n=miamihurricane1926 (both sites accessed 5 June 2012); Emanuel, Kerry, Divine Wind: The History and Science of Hurricanes (New York, 2005), 15–18Google Scholar; Rose, Cornelia Bruère, National Policy for Radio Broadcasting, reprint edition (New York, 1971), 124–25 (radio infancy).Google Scholar

2. Richard Gray, “Monthly Meteorological Notes at Miami, Fla. for September 1926,” 3, National Weather Service Memorial Website for the 1926 Great Miami Hurricane (accessed 28 June 2013).

3. “Charge Gov. Martin Block Florida Aid,” 30 September 1926, 14 (real estate boom); “Survivors Picture Hurricane Horrors,” 22 September 1926, 1 (landfall in Miami, statistics on deaths) (both in New York Times). “The Florida Hurricane Sep. 18 1926, Official Report of the Relief Activities,” American Red Cross, 1927, Folder DR-207 Florida Hurricane 9/18/26 Reports and Statistics, Box 729, Group 2, Record Group 200, Archives of the American National Red Cross, National Archives at College Park (hereafter NACP); Emmanuel, Divine Wind, 107 (financial damage estimate for today).

4. Gray, “Monthly Meteorological Notes,” 3; Dunn, Marvin, Black Miami in the Twentieth Century (Gainesville, 1997), 1–2, 57– 60, 77–78.Google Scholar The “Minutes of the Preliminary Organization of the Colored Relief Unit of the American Red Cross, Palm Beach County Chapter” indicates that there were no “colored relief cases” registered in Miami Beach “as there are no colored families permitted to live on the island.” Folder DR-207.91 Florida Hurricane 9/18/26, Criticism and Controversial Subjects, Box 732, NACP.

5. “The Forbidden City,” Chicago Defender, 2 October 1926, 2. The weekly Defender claimed to be “the mouthpiece of 14 million people” and reached an estimated readership of five hundred thousand nationwide through distribution by black Pullman porters in the South. See Chicago Defender bio at website, “The Black Press: Soldiers without Swords,” http://www.pbs.org/blackpress/news_bios/index.html (accessed 11 July 2013). Black folk songs also conveyed this idea of the hurricane as divine retribution. See James Brown, singer, Robert Cornwall, Carita Doggett Corse, collectors, “God Moves on the Water,” Florida Folklife from the WPA Collections, 1927–42, available at http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.afc/afcflwpa.3898a1 (accessed 25 May 2012). Alton C. Morris, Folksongs of Florida (1950; Gainesville, 1990), 103. See also Leila Holmes, “A Holiness Preacher,” American Life Histories, Library of Congress, explaining the hurricane as God’s punishment.

6. Jones, Marian Moser, The American Red Cross from Clara Barton to the New Deal (Baltimore, 2013), 199, 216–17Google Scholar; Daniel, Pete, Dep’n as It Come: The 1927 Mississippi River Flood, 2nd ed. (Fayetteville, Ark., 1996), 120–27Google Scholar; Barry, John M., Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America (New York, 1997), 382Google Scholar; Spencer, Robyn, “Contested Terrain: The Mississippi Flood of 1927 and the Struggle to Control Black Labor,” Journal of Negro History 79, no. 2 (1994): 170–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. Here I use the word “racism” to refer to ideologies asserting that different phenotypic or sociocultural groups possess inherent superiority and inferiority to one another, as well as to the actions motivated by these ideologies. I use this term rather than “race,” which merely denotes a set of phenotypic characteristics or a sociocultural category. I borrow the distinctions between these terms from Barbara Fields. See Fields, “Ideology and Race in American History,” in Region, Race, and Reconstruction: Essays in Honor of C. Vann Woodward (New York, 1982), 143–77. I draw the idea that segregation and racial violence are man-made hazards from Nathan Connolly’s comparison of racial segregation in the building of South Florida to a bulldozer or a railroad in the Everglades—a mechanism “of domestication that white elites built and operated to facilitate economic expansion.” See Connolly, “By Eminent Domain: Race and Capital in the Building of an American South Florida,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 2008), 65.

8. Connolly, “Timely Innovations: Planes, Trains, and the ‘Whites Only’ Economy of a Pan-American City,” Urban History 36 (2009): 243–61. Dunn, Black Miami, 54–56 (“would break the . . .”). In this article, “black” is used to describe the larger group of Afro-Caribbean and African American residents, while “black Bahamian” and “African American” are used to refer to members of these distinct ethnic communities.

9. Paul S. George, “Colored Town: Miami’s Black Community, 1896–1930,” Florida Historical Quarterly 56, no. 4 (1978): 433 (blacks at incorporation meeting), 435 (Bahamian, Haitian, Jamaican); Shell-Weiss, Melanie, Coming to Miami: A Social History (Gainesville, 2009), 173–74 (Cubans in Miami).Google Scholar

10. George, “Colored Town”; Dunn, Black Miami, 56–58; Michael Grunwald, The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise (New York, 2007), 362.

11. Michael E. Parrish, Anxious Decades: America in Prosperity and Depression (New York, 1992), 223–24 (1920s population increase, development of area). A. J. Manning, “A.J. Manning’s Reminiscences,” interviewed by Elvira S. Burnell, 23 March 1939, American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936–1940, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (boom). George, Paul S., “Brokers, Binders, and Builders: Greater Miami’s Boom of the Mid-1920s,” Florida Historical Quarterly 65 (1986): 1, 27–51.Google Scholar

12. Loewen, James, Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism (New York, 2005), 3–14.Google Scholar

13. Connolly, By Eminent Domain, 60, citing Albert W. Erkins, My Early Years in Florida: From 1905 (Fort Lauderdale, 1975), 29, 38–39 (“shore up their . . . “Afromobile”).

14. Dunn, Black Miami, 117–24, 133–39; Shell-Weiss, Coming to Miami, 115; Connolly, By Eminent Domain, 57; “Florida Gang Takes Preacher Out for Beating,” Defender, 9 July 1921, 1. Indeed, even whites who opposed racial injustice could be targets of such violence. In 1921, an Irish Episcopal priest who headed an interracial group of British expatriates was tarred and feathered by Klan members. See “Tar and Feather White Pastor of Negro Church,” Miami Herald, 18 July 1921, 1.

15. “Florida Trek Draws All Types,” New York Times, 6 December 1925, SM1 (inflated prices, tourist camps, “Tin Can tourists”); Arthur Evans, “Suckers Good Meat for Crook in Florida Rush,” Chicago Daily Tribune, 1 November 1925, 10 (rents inflated); State Board of Health of Florida, Thirty-Third Report (Jacksonville, 1933), 92 (sanitation in tourist camps).

16. While Florida State Board of Health officials did not publish race-specific infant mortality rates during the 1920s; the board’s later reports and national public health data from the 1920s both strongly suggest that this racial disparity in infant mortality persisted throughout the 1920s. Florida State Board of Health, 33rd Report, 116–21, 123. Racial disparities in infant mortality were present in almost every southern city that kept birth and death records during the time. See S. J. Crumbine, “A Statistical Report of Infant Mortality for 1926,” American Journal of Public Health 17 (1927): 9, 922–27.

17. Barbara Bates, Bargaining for Life: A Social History of Tuberculosis, 1876–1938 (Philadelphia, 1992), 1.

18. State Board of Health, 33rd Report, 9 (epidemic to chronic disease); George, “Colored Town,” 436 (one hundred families, lack of sanitation, crowding); Shell-Weiss, Coming to Miami, 62 (Colored Town, later called Overtown, unpaved streets, lack of indoor plumbing); Wilbanks, William and George, Paul S., “Re-evaluating the ‘Good Old Days’: A Study of Dade County Homicides, 1917–1982,” American Journal of Criminal Justice 8 (1984): 2, 232–44 (automobile ownership).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19. Wilbanks and George, “Re-evaluating the ‘Good Old Days,’” 238 (homicide rate was 102.6/100,000 in 1925 and 110.1/100,000 in 1926). These rates may be inflated due to undercounting of the city’s total population during the highly transient boom years, but they are consistent with earlier analyses. See Brearley, H. C., “The Negro and Homicide,” Social Forces 9 (1930): 2, 247–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar (black homicide rate in Miami 1925 highest in nation). Dublin, Louis I., “Vital Statistics,” American Journal of Public Health and the Nation’s Health 18 (1928): 8, 1050–52CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed (Miami 1927 homicide rate of 40.0/100,000, down compared to 1926); Martin Wisckol, “Miami Homicide Rate Drops 20 Percent In ‘97,” Sun Sentinel, 11 January 1998 (homicide rate reached height in 1980–81), http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1998-01-11/news/9801100110_1_miami-police-homicides-last-year-delrish-moss; Lauren Galik, “America’s 10 Deadliest Cities 2012,” PolicyMic website. http://www.policymic.com/articles/22686/america-s-10-deadliest-cities-2012 (both sites accessed 9 July 2013).

20. Shell-Weiss, Coming to Miami, 62; George, Colored Town, 441 (vice district). Dunn, Black Miami, 70 (reform campaigns).

21. Federal Writers’ Project, Florida: A Guide to the Southernmost State (New York, 1939), 502–3 (history); Warren Irvin, “Florida Storm Hit Moore Haven Worst,” New York Times, 28 September 1926, 6 (400 dead at Moore Haven); “Moore Haven Mayor Puts Town’s White Dead at 125,” Baltimore Sun (AP), 22 September 1926, 1 (total dead estimated at 250; black death toll “would probably never be known”); “Minutes of the Preliminary Organization of the Colored Relief Unit of the American Red Cross, Palm Beach County Chapter” (black dead and missing); Negro Population of De Soto County, 1920 U.S. Census (twice as many black men as women, indicating migrant worker population); William M. Harris, “Report on Moore Haven, Florida, 20 January 1927 (black farm workers who lived in “large numbers of small shacks” before the storm), Folder DR207.11 Florida Hurricane 9/18/26, Lake Okeechobee Area, Box 730, NACP.

22. Mary McLeod Bethune, “Mrs. Bethune Tells of Florida Storm Horrors,” Chicago Defender, 2 October 1926, 4; Audrey Thomas McKluskey and Elaine M. Smith, eds., Mary McLeod Bethune: Building a Better World: Essays and Selected Documents (Bloomington, 1999), xi–xiii; Dunn, Black Miami, 130–31 (Colored Town “most devastated area,” forced work); Irvin, “Two Marines Shot In Miami Gun Fight,” New York Times, 25 September 1926, 8; Connolly, By Eminent Domain, 40–42 (Wilhelmina); “‘Work or Jail’ Threat Stirs Miami Race War,” Defender, 2 October 1926, 1 (conscription of black men and women, also corroborates Wilhelmina’s story).

23. Pete Daniel, The Shadow of Slavery: Peonage in the South, 1901–1969 (Champaign-Urbana, 1990), 150. See also note 4 above.

24. “$100,000 for Relief Sent by Red Cross,” New York Times, 28 September 1926, 6; “Affidavit Says Defender Was Right in Miami Case,” Defender, 4 December 1926, 1; “NAACP: 100 Years of History,” National Association for the Advancement of Colored People website, http://www.naacp.org/pages/naacp-history (accessed 11 July 2013); Dr. A. B. Wilbur, October 12 Report, Folder DR207.11 Florida Hurricane 9/18/26, Box 730, NACP (“Nassau negroes”). Black men were also reportedly conscripted to clean up and bury bodies following the 1900 Galveston hurricane. Fannie B. Ward, report, reprinted in Clara Barton, A Story of the Red Cross (New York, 1917), 168–70.

25. Following the 1900 Galveston hurricane, soldiers reportedly shot black men for “looting” as well. “Negroes Caught Pillaging Shot by Soldiers,” New York World, 13 September 1900, 2; “Many Negroes are Arrested,” Atlanta Constitution, 13 September 1900, 2.

26. “‘Work or Jail’ Threat Stirs Miami Race War,” Defender, 2 October 1926, 1; “Looters Reported Burned,” New York Times , 25 September 1926, 9 (both stories report burning of three on Tamiami Trail); Lynching Statistics, from Tuskegee University Archives, “The Trial of Joseph F. Shipp, et Al,” website, University of Missouri Kansas City Law School, http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/shipp/lynchingsstate.html (accessed 11 July 2013).

27. Kevin Kosar, The Congressional Charter of the American National Red Cross: Overview, History, and Analysis, CRS Report No. RL33314 (Washington, D.C., 2006). For discussion of an earlier American Red Cross (ARC) effort to aid African American hurricane survivors, see Jones, “Race, Class, and Gender Disparities in Clara Barton’s Late Nineteenth-Century Disaster Relief,” Environment and History 17 (2011): 107–31. For evidence of the ARC’s work with black soldiers during World War I, see Emmett J. Scott, Scott’s Official History of the American Negro in the World War (self-published, 1919), 176, 400.

28. Jones, The American Red Cross, 196–97; American Red Cross, When Disaster Strikes: Suggestions for Red Cross Chapters (Washington, D.C., 1924).

29. “Serum Airplane Disabled,” New York Times, 21 September 1926, 2. The Florida Hurricane, Sep. 18, 1926, Official Report of Relief Activities (Washington, D.C., 1927), 10–22 (Cuban government and Chicago Herald Examiner assistance); L. F. Reardon, The Florida Hurricane and Disaster (Miami, 1926), 53 (work of Legion and Knights of Columbus). Risk of typhoid, a waterborne ailment, is elevated following storms, when overturned sewage tanks contaminate water supplies. At the time, it was thought that typhoid antitoxin inoculation prevented such infection.

30. Report of Miss E. L. Dennison, 27 September 1926; Earl Kilpatrick to James Fieser, Vice-Chairman, 11 October 1926, Folder DR-207- Florida Hurricane 9/18/26 Reports and Statistics; Kilpatrick to Fieser, “Progress Report to October 9,” 8, Folder DR-207.08 Florida Hurricane 9/18/26 Progress Reports (“197 family workers”); “Red Cross makes Final report of Hurricane relief work,” Press Release, 17 February 1927, DR-207.02 Florida Hurricane 9/18/26 Cooperation with U.S. Government and with other organizations and agencies (fund-raising appeal falls short); Box 729, NACP.

31. Lazelle Margaret Smedley to Mr. Buchanen [sic], 29 October 1926, Folder DR207.11 Florida Hurricane 9/18/26 (Liberty City relief station, “within a few days”); Miami Area; Report of Byron T. Hacker, manager, Duval County Welfare Board, Jacksonville Fla., 18 October, Folder DR-201.11 Florida Hurricane 9/18/26 Miami Beach (twelve caseworkers, two hundred families); Kilpatrick to Fieser “Progress Report to October 9,” 8; Box 729, Group 2, NACP.

32. Kilpatrick to Fieser, “Second Progress Report, October 17,” 3 (twenty-seven cars); Smedley to Mr. Buchanen [sic], 29 October 1926; “Report on Conditions of Stations in Miami,” Box 729, Group 2, NACP. Smedley mentions that “Carrie Emmanuel,” the “colored public health nurse,” presumably from the city or state health board, as well as Dr. Ziebold from “the City clinic,” “the Lemon City medical Unit, the colored welfare organization under Captain Scott, and the American Legion all co-operated with me splendidly.” The “Report on Conditions,” above, lists the Lemon City medical unit as consisting of “Dr. Westerman, local dr., and two local nurses.”

33. Smedley to Mr. Buchanen [sic], 29 October 1926; Mrs. Pearle Sparkman to Mrs. Clara B. Wines, “Recommendations for Allapattah School Relief Station,” 27 September 1926, 3, DR207.11 Florida Hurricane 9/18/26 Miami Area; Box 729, Group 2, NACP.

34. William B. Taylor to Griesemer, 30 September 1926, Folder DR-207-Florida Hurricane 9/18/26 Reports and Statistics (description of house damage); Henry Baker, Progress Report, 16 October 1926, Helen Colwell, Narrative reports from Hialeah, Folder DR-207.08 Florida Hurricane 9/18/26, Progress Reports; Kilpatrick to Fieser, 11 October 1926, Box 729; Jeffers to Baker, 27 September 1926, Folder DR-207.02 “Florida Hurricane 9/18/26 Cooperation with U.S. Government and with other organizations and agencies”; “Summary of Field Survey Report of Earl W. Dodd, For the Territory East of Hialeah,” “Summary of Report of Mr. Klinck and Mr. Brotsky,” 25 September 1926; Baker, “Report on Visit to Hialeah,” Rose R. Schwab, “Report on Hialeah,” Folder “Florida Hurricane 9/18/26 Hialeah Area,” Box 730, Group 2, NACP.

35. Kilpatrick to Fieser, 11 October 1926; Colwell to Hialeah Press, 1 December 1926, Folder Florida Hurricane 9/18/26 Hialeah Area, Box 730, Group 2, NACP.

36. “Report of Employers of Labor at Colored Tent City,” 18 November 1926; W. R. Redden to Baker, 16 November 1926; Annette McClaren to Red Cross Relief HQ, 28 September 1926; McClaren to Baker, 29 September 1926; Colwell to Sheriff Chase of Dade County, 18 October 1926, Folder “Florida Hurricane 9/18/26 Hialeah Area,” Box 730; Colwell, Hialeah narrative report, 16 October 1926; Colwell, “Narrative Report Dating from Oct. 16,” Folder DR-207.08 Florida Hurricane 9/18/26, Progress Reports; Smedley to Mr. Buchanen, 29 October, p. 4, Box 729, Group 2, NACP.

37. Howard J. Rogers to Baker, 23 October 1926; Kilpatrick to H. J. Rogers, 25 October 1926, DR-207.91 Fla. Hurr 9/18/26 Criticism and Controversial Subjects, Box 729; Colwell to Kilpatrick, 13 November 1926, Folder Florida Hurricane 9/18/26 Hialeah Area, Box 730, Group 2, NACP.

38. Colwell, “Narrative Report Dating from Oct. 22nd to Oct. 29th Inclusive,” “Narrative Report, Hialeah, 13 November 1926”; Kilpatrick to Fieser, 14 November 1926, DR-207.08 Florida Hurricane 9/18/26 Progress reports, Box 729; Colwell to Hialeah Press, 1 December 1926, “Over 125 Awards Made on Tuesday and Wednesday,” Hialeah Press, 3 December 1926, Folder Florida Hurricane 9/18/26 Hialeah Area, Box 730, Group 2, NACP. “Miami Is to Open on Schedule Jan. 13,” New York Times, 29 September 1926, 20.

39. Meetings of Hialeah Advisory Committee, 22 and 30 October, 6, 13, and 18 November, Folder Florida Hurricane 9/18/26 Hialeah Area, Box 730, NACP. Wage comparison calculated from weekly wage for male skilled and unskilled workers, 1926, in U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970 (Washington, D.C., 1976), Series D811, D838, D 841, D844, K181; reprinted in Gene Smiley, “The U.S. Economy in the 1920s,” EH.Net website, “Table 1: Real Average Weekly or Daily Earnings for Selected Occupations, 1920 to 1930.” http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/smiley.1920s.final (accessed 10 July 2013).

40. “Red Cross makes Final Report of Hurricane relief work,” Press Release, 17 February 1927 ($2.69 million to homeowners); Kilpatrick to Fieser, 11 November 1926, Folder DR-207.91 Fla. Hurr 9/18/26 Criticism and Controversial Subjects, Box 732, Group 2, NACP. Fort Lauderdale, where 75 percent of black residents surveyed owned their homes, provided an exception to the overall trend of black area residents renting their homes.

41. Baker to Wm. Hepner, 7 January 1927, to Laurie Jean Reid, 9 February 1927, DR207.11 Florida Hurricane 9/18/26 Lake Okeechobee Area. I deduced that the doctor was white from the fact that all nonwhite doctors, nurses, or relief workers were denoted in Red Cross reports as “colored,” and that memos concerning the doctor contain no such notation.

42. Baker to A. A. Coult, 18 December 1926 (food, clothing, medicine, nursing, to Moore Haven); Congressman Herbert Drane to John Barton Payne, Chairman, ARC, 12 October 1926 (refugees in resort hotel); Dr. A. B. Wilbur to Dr. Clawson, 4 October 1926, Fieser to Col. Miller, 22 November 1926 (engineering problems); Baker to Fieser, 14 December, 1926 (long-term problems with Moore Haven); Harris, “Report on Moore Haven, Florida, 20 January 1927 (need for “large numbers of negroes” to pick crops and “housing of such help”), Folder DR207.11 Florida Hurricane 9/18/26, Lake Okeechobee Area. “Minutes of the Preliminary Organization of the Colored Relief Unit of the American Red Cross, Palm Beach County Chapter” (percentage of tenants in Moore Haven and lack of rehousing), Folder DR-207.91 Fla Hurr 9/18/26 Criticism and Controversial Subjects; Report from Sebring, 15 October 1926 (floating tents on the “muck”), Kilpatrick to Baker, 21 November 1926 (soil still wet), Laurie Jean Reid, R.N., Progress Report on Area Stations, 15 October 1926 (inoculations in Everglades), Folder DR-207.08 Florida Hurricane 9/18/26 Progress reports. All in Box 730, NACP. “Issues Appeal to Nation”New York Times, 23 September 1926, 2. The Florida Hurricane, Official Report, 22–23 (nurses); “Legion Acts upon Recommendation of Committeemen,” Ft. Myers Press, 28 December 1926 (rebuilding aid still needed for Moore Haven).

43. “Calls Miami Area Better Than Ever,” New York Times, 29 October 1926, 13.

44. State Board of Health, 33rd Report, 5, 55 (“interfered with”), 93 (tourist camp crackdown), 105, 111; Wilbanks and George, “Re-evaluating the ‘Good Old Days,’” 238; “Public Health Engineering Abstracts,” Public Health Reports 42 (1927): 49, 3025–30 (septic tank regulations); “Revised Count Puts Florida Dead at 372,” New York Times, 10 October 1926, 22 (Miami board of welfare closes tourist camps). Morgan, C. E., “Nitrites Formed in Water by Chlorination,” Water Works 67 (1928): 3, 125–26Google Scholar, cited in “Public Health Engineering Abstracts,” Public Health Reports 43 (1928): 21, 1280 (chlorination of water in Miami after hurricane).

45. State Board of Health, 33rd Report, 84, 94, 111.

46. Ibid., 120, 123–25; “African American Club Members Assembled for a Group Portrait Following the Hurricane of 1926,” Image SBH0069, State Board of Health collection Series 904, Midwife program files, 1924–75; Box 4, FF14, Florida State Archives, Florida Memory Photo Collections website, http://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/44545 (accessed 11 July 2013).

47. “Flood Not God’s Way to Punish Dixie Whites,” Baltimore Afro-American, 21 May 1927, quoted in Richard Mizelle, “Backwater Blues: The 1927 Flood Disaster, Race, and the Remaking of Regional Identity, 1900–1930” (Ph.D. diss., Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, 2006), 141.

48. See note 4 above; Jones, The American Red Cross, 201, 207–10, 215–24.

49. Schafer, ARC to NAACP, 26 October 1928, telegram, citing Bethune, Folder DR-207.91 Florida Hurricane 9/18/26, Criticism and Controversial Subjects, Box 732, NACP.

50. Jones, The American Red Cross, 217–22.

51. Ibid., 257–59, 279; Robert C. Maynard, “Racial Bias Hindered Relief Effort after Hurricane Camille, Probe Told,” Washington Post, 9 January 1970, A10; Nicholas C. Chriss, “Red Cross Aid Efforts in Hurricane Criticized, Los Angeles Times, 10 January 1970, A3; Jon Nordheimer, “Red Cross Actions after Storm Called ‘Dehumanizing’ by Negro,” New York Times, 10 January 1970, 54.

52. E. L. Quarantelli, “The Importance of Thinking of Disasters as Social Phenomena,” University of Delaware Disaster Research Center, Preliminary Paper #184 (1992), available at http://udspace.udel.edu/bitstream/handle/19716/572/PP184.pdf?sequence=3 (accessed 3 March 2014); Kenneth Hewitt, “The Idea of Calamity in a Technocratic Age,” in Interpretations of Calamity from the Viewpoint of Human Ecology, ed. Hewitt (Boston, 1983), 1–25.

53. The South End Press Collective, What Lies Beneath: Katrina, Race, and the State of the Nation (Boston, 2007); Chester Hartman and Gregory D. Squires, eds., There Is No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster: Race, Class, and Hurricane Katrina (New York, 2006); Susan Cutter, “The Long Road Home: Race, Class, and Recovery from Hurricane Katrina,” Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development 48 (2006): 2, 8–20.

54. Avis A. Jones-DeWeever and Heidi Hartmann, “Abandoned Before the Storms: The Glaring Disaster of Gender, Race, and Class Disparities in the Gulf,” and Evangeline Franklin, “A New Kind of Medical Disaster in the United States,” in Hartman and Squires, eds., There Is No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster, 85–102, 185–96.

55. Joseph B. Treaster, “Superdome: Haven Quickly Becomes an Ordeal,” New York Times, 1 September 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/01/national/nationalspecial/01dome.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0; Scott Gold, “Trapped in the Superdome: Refuge Becomes a Hellhole,” Los Angeles Times, 1 September 2005, http://seattletimes.com/html/hurricanekatrina/2002463400_katrinasuperdome01.html (both sites accessed 29 June 2013); A. C. Thompson, “Katrina’s Hidden Race War,” The Nation, 5 January 2009, http://www.thenation.com/article/katrinas-hidden-race-war (accessed 11 July 2013).