The Mississippi

An African American family and their bedraggled cat cling to the roof of a house adrift in the muddy turbulence of flood water. The father's raised hands beseeching divine aid are silhouetted against a break of light, suggesting hope for their dire situation. The artist, John Steurat Curry, like many of his fellow American Scene artists, believed in the rural family as the bedrock of American values. This painting is based on a drawing by the artist whose title, “Mississippi Noah,” refers to a flood that plagued the Mississippi Valley in 1927. Covering 27,000 square miles, displacing over 200,000 African Americans and enlarging the Mississippi River to a width of 60 miles below Memphis, this flood was one of the most destructive in the nation's history. It was, however, only one of the many floods that plagued rural populations in the 1930s.