minute, but if you could describe what happened in 1927, the natural disaster and then the man-made disaster that followed?

PETEDANIEL: Well, it was a wet spring, to put it briefly, and the Mississippi river, which draws water from so much of the country flooded. And the levee system failed, all down the river, and something close to a million people were out of their homes. 300,000 of them were fed in 154 Red Cross camps. Others lived with relatives. You see the same thing developing today. Of course in 1927, the South had segregation, and although during the rescue aspect, people were taken as they came, black and white. Once they were in camps, they were segregated, and of course, African-Americans received inferior bedding, tents and so forth.had a better life in the camps than they had the plantations they came from.

AMYGOODMAN: Well, Pete Daniel, I want to thank you very much for being with us. Author of "Deep’N as it Come: The 1927 Mississippi River flood." Curator of the Division of Work and Industry at the National Museum of American History.