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West Side Rising: How San Antonio's 1921 Flood Devastated a City and Sparked a Latino Environmental Justice Movement
On September 9, 1921, a tropical depression stalled just north of San Antonio and within hours overwhelmed its winding network of creeks and rivers. Floodwaters ripped through the city’s Latino West Side neighborhoods, killing more than eighty people. Meanwhile a wall of water crashed into the central business district on the city’s North Side, wreaking considerable damage.
The city’s response to this disaster shaped its environmental policies for the next fifty years, carving new channels of power. Decisions about which communities would be rehabilitated and how thoroughly were made in the political arena, where the Anglo elite largely ignored the interlocking problems on the impoverished West Side that flowed from poor drainage, bad housing, and inadequate sanitation.
Instead the elite pushed for the $1.6 million construction of the Olmos Dam, whose creation depended on a skewed distribution of public benefits in one of America’s poorest big cities. The discriminatory consequences, channeled along ethnic and class lines, continually resurfaced until the mid-1970s, when Communities Organized for Public Services, a West Side grassroots organization, launched a successful protest that brought much-needed flood control to often inundated neighborhoods. This upheaval, along with COPS’s emergence as a power broker, disrupted Anglo domination of the political landscape to more accurately reflect the city’s diverse population.
West Side Rising is the first book focused squarely on San Antonio’s enduring relationship to floods, which have had severe consequences for its communities of color in particular. Examining environmental, social, and political histories, Char Miller demonstrates that disasters can expose systems of racism, injustice, and erasure and, over time, can impel activists to dismantle these inequities. He draws clear lines between the environmental injustices embedded in San Antonio’s long history and the emergence of grassroots organizations that combated the devastating impact floods could have on the West Side.
The city’s response to this disaster shaped its environmental policies for the next fifty years, carving new channels of power. Decisions about which communities would be rehabilitated and how thoroughly were made in the political arena, where the Anglo elite largely ignored the interlocking problems on the impoverished West Side that flowed from poor drainage, bad housing, and inadequate sanitation.
Instead the elite pushed for the $1.6 million construction of the Olmos Dam, whose creation depended on a skewed distribution of public benefits in one of America’s poorest big cities. The discriminatory consequences, channeled along ethnic and class lines, continually resurfaced until the mid-1970s, when Communities Organized for Public Services, a West Side grassroots organization, launched a successful protest that brought much-needed flood control to often inundated neighborhoods. This upheaval, along with COPS’s emergence as a power broker, disrupted Anglo domination of the political landscape to more accurately reflect the city’s diverse population.
West Side Rising is the first book focused squarely on San Antonio’s enduring relationship to floods, which have had severe consequences for its communities of color in particular. Examining environmental, social, and political histories, Char Miller demonstrates that disasters can expose systems of racism, injustice, and erasure and, over time, can impel activists to dismantle these inequities. He draws clear lines between the environmental injustices embedded in San Antonio’s long history and the emergence of grassroots organizations that combated the devastating impact floods could have on the West Side.
245 pages, Hardcover
First published September 7, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
October 16, 2022
With a forward by Julián Castro
4****
Subtitle: How San Antonio's 1921 Flood Devastated a City and Sparked a Latino Environmental Justice Movement
I grew up in San Antonio. The all-girls boarding school I attended from kindergarten through 7th grade was downtown, on the banks of the San Antonio River. Still visible on the limestone walls of the main building’s second floor was a watermark from “the great flood.” I learned when I was in high school that the city’s famous River Walk was a WPA project begun as part of an effort for flood control.
I also grew up on the city’s West side. And each summer, the torrential rains so common in that season would flood our street, sometimes resulting in a raging torrent that carried cars for blocks.
This book explores not only the results of the city’s founding in a flood plain, but the political decisions – motivated by class and racial prejudice – that ensured that the areas poorest citizens would continue to suffer for centuries despite contributing tax dollars to help the wealthy stay dry. And how, a group of those West Side residents, fueled by yet another flood, marshalled their collective political power to achieve major changes.
Miller did extensive research, and it shows. But the parts of the book I most enjoyed were those that dealt directly with the 1921 disaster and its aftermath. I wanted more of the personal stories, but they went unrecorded for the most part. While I was interested in the political struggle to change the city’s focus on its majority minority population (and Miller does a great job of detailing the successful efforts of organizations such as COPS - Communities Organized for Public Service), the compelling disaster story seemed to fade.
One of Miller’s sources was a 64-page report written shortly after the disaster, titled “La tragedia de la inundación de San Antonio. Here is a section of Miller’s book that quotes extensively from that report:
The “San Antonio River hit the rich – it affected the big stores on Avenida C. The powerful houses of Houston and Commerce St. It must be said in its honor that it was greedy – it wanted riches and destroyed estates.” By contrast, Alazán Creek – “an imitation of a brook, a laughable pantomime, a thin and flexible snake” – proved ravenous. “It was the taker of lives – it was a cruel executioner who wiped out every poor soul it encountered.” Put differently, the river “swallowed pianos velvet rugs, Venetian moons of unparalleled beauty and wealth. Alazán Creek drowned children, killed women, knocked down men. And it was our people, the Mexican people, that succumbed defeated, whose poverty did not allow [them] to reside in a house in a pious neighborhood, a street near the center and out of danger. The sons of Mexico were the ones that fell asleep, unperturbed by danger, to wake up in the hands of a monster.”
A storm sewer drainage system was finally put into my parents’ neighborhood in the late 1990s. Every year, still, there are drownings in San Antonio as a result of flood waters – usually people who try to drive their cars through water covering the road and get swept away by the current.
For images of the various creeks – looking innocent when NOT in flood stage – visit
https://www.westsidecreeks.com/about-... In the green bar at the top of the page, hover your cursor on the “about the creeks” link and you can visit each creek in turn. Hard to imagine these little “imitation of a brook” waterways can rage into killer torrents – but they can, and do.
4****
Subtitle: How San Antonio's 1921 Flood Devastated a City and Sparked a Latino Environmental Justice Movement
I grew up in San Antonio. The all-girls boarding school I attended from kindergarten through 7th grade was downtown, on the banks of the San Antonio River. Still visible on the limestone walls of the main building’s second floor was a watermark from “the great flood.” I learned when I was in high school that the city’s famous River Walk was a WPA project begun as part of an effort for flood control.
I also grew up on the city’s West side. And each summer, the torrential rains so common in that season would flood our street, sometimes resulting in a raging torrent that carried cars for blocks.
This book explores not only the results of the city’s founding in a flood plain, but the political decisions – motivated by class and racial prejudice – that ensured that the areas poorest citizens would continue to suffer for centuries despite contributing tax dollars to help the wealthy stay dry. And how, a group of those West Side residents, fueled by yet another flood, marshalled their collective political power to achieve major changes.
Miller did extensive research, and it shows. But the parts of the book I most enjoyed were those that dealt directly with the 1921 disaster and its aftermath. I wanted more of the personal stories, but they went unrecorded for the most part. While I was interested in the political struggle to change the city’s focus on its majority minority population (and Miller does a great job of detailing the successful efforts of organizations such as COPS - Communities Organized for Public Service), the compelling disaster story seemed to fade.
One of Miller’s sources was a 64-page report written shortly after the disaster, titled “La tragedia de la inundación de San Antonio. Here is a section of Miller’s book that quotes extensively from that report:
The “San Antonio River hit the rich – it affected the big stores on Avenida C. The powerful houses of Houston and Commerce St. It must be said in its honor that it was greedy – it wanted riches and destroyed estates.” By contrast, Alazán Creek – “an imitation of a brook, a laughable pantomime, a thin and flexible snake” – proved ravenous. “It was the taker of lives – it was a cruel executioner who wiped out every poor soul it encountered.” Put differently, the river “swallowed pianos velvet rugs, Venetian moons of unparalleled beauty and wealth. Alazán Creek drowned children, killed women, knocked down men. And it was our people, the Mexican people, that succumbed defeated, whose poverty did not allow [them] to reside in a house in a pious neighborhood, a street near the center and out of danger. The sons of Mexico were the ones that fell asleep, unperturbed by danger, to wake up in the hands of a monster.”
A storm sewer drainage system was finally put into my parents’ neighborhood in the late 1990s. Every year, still, there are drownings in San Antonio as a result of flood waters – usually people who try to drive their cars through water covering the road and get swept away by the current.
For images of the various creeks – looking innocent when NOT in flood stage – visit
https://www.westsidecreeks.com/about-... In the green bar at the top of the page, hover your cursor on the “about the creeks” link and you can visit each creek in turn. Hard to imagine these little “imitation of a brook” waterways can rage into killer torrents – but they can, and do.
September 15, 2021
Very interesting and eye opening.
In September 1921 a tropical storm stalled over San Antonio and flooded the business downtown area and the West Side. 80 people, mostly Mexican or Mexican-Americans, died in the flood. The city decided to build a dam and to widen the confluence of the San Antonio River and San Pedro Creek. This benefitted the white business owners and created new whites-only subdivisions just north of the downtown area. However, this did nothing for those living in the slums of the West Side. There were floods every few years after this flood of 1921. Nothing was done until 1974 when grassroot activism in the West Side demanded the City Council do something. This is the true story of the flood, its aftermath, and the grassroots activism.
I learned many things even though I grew up in San Antonio.
1. The town of Thrall which is east of Austin received 38.21 inches of rain in a 24 hr during this 1921 event. However, the single day with the most rain was in Alvin Texas in 1979 as a result of Hurricane Claudette.
2. The indigenous people of San Antonio and central Texas were the Payaya people. Why didn't I learn this in school?
3. New terminology such as racial capitalism. Yes, there was charitable help for the beleaguered and homeless but post-flood, the city's power elite (local government) built the dam to protect downtown businesses which were all white-owned. Spending money to support whites.
4. There was a good explanation of the Balcones Escarpment which is the geological formation just north of San Antonio which causes weather formations to stall or slow down as it moves from the Gulf Coast.
5. I never realized there were so many creeks around the West Side. They are the Alazan, Martinez, San Pedro Creek, and Apache Creek which all converge with the San Antonio River.
Very detailed and good.
In September 1921 a tropical storm stalled over San Antonio and flooded the business downtown area and the West Side. 80 people, mostly Mexican or Mexican-Americans, died in the flood. The city decided to build a dam and to widen the confluence of the San Antonio River and San Pedro Creek. This benefitted the white business owners and created new whites-only subdivisions just north of the downtown area. However, this did nothing for those living in the slums of the West Side. There were floods every few years after this flood of 1921. Nothing was done until 1974 when grassroot activism in the West Side demanded the City Council do something. This is the true story of the flood, its aftermath, and the grassroots activism.
I learned many things even though I grew up in San Antonio.
1. The town of Thrall which is east of Austin received 38.21 inches of rain in a 24 hr during this 1921 event. However, the single day with the most rain was in Alvin Texas in 1979 as a result of Hurricane Claudette.
2. The indigenous people of San Antonio and central Texas were the Payaya people. Why didn't I learn this in school?
3. New terminology such as racial capitalism. Yes, there was charitable help for the beleaguered and homeless but post-flood, the city's power elite (local government) built the dam to protect downtown businesses which were all white-owned. Spending money to support whites.
4. There was a good explanation of the Balcones Escarpment which is the geological formation just north of San Antonio which causes weather formations to stall or slow down as it moves from the Gulf Coast.
5. I never realized there were so many creeks around the West Side. They are the Alazan, Martinez, San Pedro Creek, and Apache Creek which all converge with the San Antonio River.
Very detailed and good.
December 29, 2023
Trinity U was once called by US News and World Report the Harvard of the Southwest. Considering that Harvard's current present repeatedly plagiarized another African American woman and well the hearings were calling for genocide is acceptable in certain context it is fitting this book be published by Trinity U press, the Harvard of the Southwest!
I am in part Hispanic my mom is Latina and in fact one of her ancestors was part of the supply lines Santa Anna at the Alamo. Shallow research, sheer ignorance or deliberate omission of facts. The rise of Hispanic activism in the west side of San Antonio was hardly unique in the time frame of the mid 70s. Familia waged a successful court battle to integrate a previous all white extra curricular activity in the DFW area (my late Tio Fito). Mi made y mi Tia were caught in the middle of another school integration case ..... the almost all white school had in fact 2 Hispanic teachers. I was the nephew of one. Basic research .... the rise COPS and other other groups and the end of the at large system was a big deal in San Antonio but other cities in Texas experienced similar changes! It began with WOrld War 2 vets whose patience with being treated poorly had worn thin. Boss Parr first got push back from that group A Wing and a Prayer: The "Bloody 100th" Bomb Group of the US Eighth Air Force in Action Over Europe in World War IIOmar Gonzales the first Group Navigator of the 100th Bomb Group came from San Antonio. The Fall of the Duke of Duval: A Prosecutor's JournalConsidering the current ethnic situation in San Antonio and the actual ethnicities of some of those who work at Mi Tierra a retired (Hispanic) Border Patrol officer would laugh at his nickname. The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture (Volume 2) Char Miller failed to do basic research and made the cries of the West Side and Latino activism look well. There was also a major flood control project completed just in time for the historic October 1998 flood! The book is introduced by well one of the I will not use the Spanish word illegtimate fatherless twin who also omits how little funding for actual infra-structure was in the Biden bill. Even Hispanics made of Julian Castro when called for a healthy fiesta using the racial slur of a HIspanic tryng to be white
Char Miller fails to point out another book did point out there was a massive wave of immigration from Mexico at the turn of 20th century due to a revolution. Perhaps it was fitting that a Gringo retired from Trinity U gave this book to read the way he takes care of his property exaserbates and pollutes run off his house is near the dividing point where run off either goes into the Salado Creek or into the Olmos Basin. In heavy rains he nearest arterial street floods as well in Faux9.
Other than those glaring omissions its a great read.
I am in part Hispanic my mom is Latina and in fact one of her ancestors was part of the supply lines Santa Anna at the Alamo. Shallow research, sheer ignorance or deliberate omission of facts. The rise of Hispanic activism in the west side of San Antonio was hardly unique in the time frame of the mid 70s. Familia waged a successful court battle to integrate a previous all white extra curricular activity in the DFW area (my late Tio Fito). Mi made y mi Tia were caught in the middle of another school integration case ..... the almost all white school had in fact 2 Hispanic teachers. I was the nephew of one. Basic research .... the rise COPS and other other groups and the end of the at large system was a big deal in San Antonio but other cities in Texas experienced similar changes! It began with WOrld War 2 vets whose patience with being treated poorly had worn thin. Boss Parr first got push back from that group A Wing and a Prayer: The "Bloody 100th" Bomb Group of the US Eighth Air Force in Action Over Europe in World War IIOmar Gonzales the first Group Navigator of the 100th Bomb Group came from San Antonio. The Fall of the Duke of Duval: A Prosecutor's JournalConsidering the current ethnic situation in San Antonio and the actual ethnicities of some of those who work at Mi Tierra a retired (Hispanic) Border Patrol officer would laugh at his nickname. The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture (Volume 2) Char Miller failed to do basic research and made the cries of the West Side and Latino activism look well. There was also a major flood control project completed just in time for the historic October 1998 flood! The book is introduced by well one of the I will not use the Spanish word illegtimate fatherless twin who also omits how little funding for actual infra-structure was in the Biden bill. Even Hispanics made of Julian Castro when called for a healthy fiesta using the racial slur of a HIspanic tryng to be white
Char Miller fails to point out another book did point out there was a massive wave of immigration from Mexico at the turn of 20th century due to a revolution. Perhaps it was fitting that a Gringo retired from Trinity U gave this book to read the way he takes care of his property exaserbates and pollutes run off his house is near the dividing point where run off either goes into the Salado Creek or into the Olmos Basin. In heavy rains he nearest arterial street floods as well in Faux9.
Other than those glaring omissions its a great read.
June 8, 2023
While the prose is at times a bit overly formal, this was excellently written history. Miller clearly outlined the ways that inequality and segregation were reinforced time after time through policy in San Antonio, and (even more compellingly) how Latino community members pushed back, organized and advocated for themselves.
May 27, 2022
It was full of facts about the flooding in San Antonio, Texas. One of the biggest floods was in 1921. The author Char Miller takes you through every flood and all the politics that took place until the issue of flooding was finally addressed. It is sad that so much suffering had to take place.
Read
September 30, 2021Reviewed by Si Dunn for Lone Star Literary Life.
January 30, 2022
Everybody in San Antonio should read this.
February 27, 2022
Although (because?) it was meticulously researched from primary sources, this book was way less interesting than being in Char Miller’s classes at Trinity.
Still, I learned some new things.
Still, I learned some new things.
November 21, 2022
San Antonio specific racial inequality circa 1921, but as we all know certainly not an isolated case in time or place. Especially liked the up close look at documents and photos.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews