Hurricane Camille

Name: Hurricane Camille
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ISBN: 9781512829365

When Natural Disasters Became National Disasters

Andrew Morris

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Hardback

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English

University of Pennsylvania Press
19 May 2026

History of the Americas; 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000; Social impact of disasters; Social welfare & social services; Local history

Series: Politics and Culture in Modern America

The story of how Hurricane Camille, which struck the Mississippi Gulf Coast in 1969 as a Category 5, changed the way the nation responded to disasters

Hurricane Camille, which struck the Mississippi Gulf Coast in 1969, was one of only three Category 5 hurricanes to hit the United States in the twentieth century. In this book, Andrew Morris tells the story of how this one storm changed the way the nation responded to disasters. From that point forward, Americans came to expect the federal government to play a major role in aiding individual disaster victims and helping disaster-struck communities rebuild.

For most of US history, Morris recounts, this was not the case. Localities, states, and charities such as the American Red Cross were on the front line of disaster response. But after World War II, the nation's prosperity and growth put billions of dollars of homes and businesses in harm's way—particularly in storm-prone regions like the Mississippi Gulf Coast—and exceeded the capacity of this system to respond.

When Hurricane Camille struck Mississippi, it ravaged a vibrant coastal economy buoyed by tourism and federal military and space facilities. Moreover, it struck a state that was in the last throes of resistance to the application of federal civil rights laws. And it struck at a particular political juncture in American politics during which a Congress still dominated by the Democratic Party had an expansive view of the nation's commitment to the less fortunate while newly elected President Richard Nixon sought to draw conservative southerners into the Republican party.

Morris argues that all of these dynamics—the sheer scale of destruction, the activism by civil rights advocates for equitable care of African American disaster victims, the desire of southern elites for government subsidies to rebuild a risky coastal economy, and the openness of officials in Congress and the White House to broaden the reach of federal authority—led to a system in which, in the twenty-first century, Americans assume the federal government will be there for them in the wake of disaster.

By: Andrew Morris
Imprint: University of Pennsylvania Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 225mm, Width: 150mm,
ISBN: 9781512829365
ISBN 10: 1512829366
Series: Politics and Culture in Modern America
Pages: 336
Publication Date: 19 May 2026
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Andrew J. F. Morris is Professor of History at Union College and author of The Limits of Voluntarism: Charity and Welfare from the New Deal Through the Great Society.

Reviews for Hurricane Camille: When Natural Disasters Became National Disasters

""Here, finally, is the book that Hurricane Camille deserves: a rigorous and enlightening study that shows how important Camille was to the thousands of people whose lives it touched directly--and how important Camille remains to all Americans today, who live with the national disaster relief system that it transformed.""-- ""Andy Horowitz, author of Katrina: A History, 1915-2015"" ""In Hurricane Camille, Andrew Morris tells the fascinating story of how federal disaster relief came to be democratized. In doing so, he recounts a critical moment in the history of not only federal emergency policy, but also the modern American welfare state. It is a deeply researched, engagingly written book that makes original and important contributions to the fields of Southern history, the history of the civil rights movement, and modern American politics.""-- ""Joseph Crespino, author of In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution"" ""With the cost of disasters skyrocketing in recent years, understanding the dynamics of this pattern has become a vital undertaking. In Hurricane Camille, Andrew Morris presents this monster storm from the Nixon Presidency as the crucial turning point. Drawing on extraordinary archival research, he makes a compelling case, presenting Dixiecrat conservatives as well as Great Society liberals as the architects of Washington's growing involvement in federal disaster politics.""-- ""Gareth Davies, author of From Opportunity to Entitlement: The Transformation and Decline of Great Society Liberalism""