Over the weekend, the Midwest suffered some of the largest flooding ever recorded in the region. Some officials worry that this week’s deluge could rival the floods of 1993, which caused about $20 billion in damage.

Along the Mississippi, the economic effects are already being felt. The tourism season is effectively canceled, thousands of acres of crops have been washed out, and officials plan to close a crucial 315-mile stretch of the Mississippi River used for transporting millions of tons of coal, grains and steel.

Unfortunately, flooding along the Mississippi is nothing new. In the spring of 1927, after weeks of incessant rains, the Mississippi River went on a rampage from Cairo, Illinois to New Orleans, inundating hundreds of towns, killing as many as a thousand people and leaving a million homeless.

Besides the physical damage, the flood of 1927 also surfaced racial tension in the community. In Greenville, Mississippi, efforts to contain the river pitted the majority black population against an aristocratic plantation family.

You can follow the dramatic story of greed, power and race during one of America’s greatest natural disasters in AMERICAN EXPERIENCE’s “Fatal Flood.”

• Read eyewitness accounts
• Watch footage of the damage
• Trace the history of floods along the Mississippi River
• See a map of the widespread devastation

For more information about the severe flooding ravaging the Midwest this week, visit the NEWSHOUR online.