For this week’s Throwback Thursday, we return to the question, what can studies of environment tell us about African American experiences? In his recent book, Backwater Blues: The Mississippi Flood of 1927 in the African American Imagination (University of Minnesota Press, 2014), Richard Mizelle argues that blues music, Richard Wright’s stories, NAACP documents, and black newspapers open a window onto a more thorough understanding of the Mississippi River flood of 1927—the most destructive flood in U.S.