1. San Felipe-Okeechobee Hurricane 1928

3. The Lake Okeechobee Region

4. This was a deadly storm, primarily in Florida. Property damages were estimated at $75 million.

5. Migrant Worker Camp “The very next day he burst into the room in high excitement. ‘Boss done bought out another man and want me down on do lake. He got houses fuh de first ones dat git dere.”

6. Migrant Workers in the Potato Fields

7. Some of the fields around Okeechobee “But all day long the romping and playing they carried on behind the boss’s back made her popular right away. It got the whole field to playing off an on.”

8. Working in the Fields

9. Plantation Home

10. Aftermath Havoc was there with her mouth wide open…. In the city it had raged among houses and men. Tea Cake and Janie stood on the edge of things and looked over the desolation.

11. Hurricane Damage

12. Home Destroyed

13. Aftermath in Palm Beach

14. Damage in West Palm Beach

15. Storm Damage

16. Bodies “Dey’s grabbin’ all de menfolks dey kin git dey hands on and makin’ ‘em help bury de dead.”

17. Loading Bodies “Miserable, sullen men, black and white under guard had to keep on searching for bodies and digging graves.”

18. Funeral Services

19. Coffins Waiting to Be Buried “Got orders from headquarters. They makin’ coffins fuh all do white folks. ‘Tain’t nothin’ but cheap pine, but dat’s better’n nothin’. Don’t dump no white folks in de hole jus’ so.”

20. Coffins waiting to be Used

21. Nearly 1800 people died due to subsequent flooding. Total death tolls from the U.S, Puerto Rico, around the Lake Okeechobee area where the hurricane spawned a 6-9 foot surge on the lake and the Bahamas were over 2,100.

22. Breaking News “Federal researchers' newest reckoning of the nation's fiercest hurricanes increases the 1928 storm's death count to at least 2,500, and possibly as much as 3,000.” Source – The Palm Beach Post

23. Breaking News WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — City officials Monday marked the mass grave where nearly 700 black victims of one of the nation's deadliest hurricanes were buried 74 years ago. The victims of the 1928 hurricane died in the Everglades, near Lake Okeechobee. Their bodies were loaded onto barges and taken to the coast. Workers separated the corpses by race, burying 69 whites in caskets at a cemetery. The 674 black victims went to the mass grave, which the city has since partially paved over. 2002 – USAtoday.com