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Tavis: Marc Morial is the President and CEO of The National Urban League. Prior to that post, he served two terms as the Mayor of New Orleans, from 1994 to 2002. His father, the legendary Ernest "Dutch" Morial, was New Orleans' first African American mayor. In fact, all the pictures you have seen of the Convention Center over the harrowing days of this story, that Convention Center bears the name of his father, 'Dutch' Morial. Marc Morial joins us tonight from New York. Mr. Mayor, Mr. President, nice to have you on the program.

Marc Morial: Thank you, Tavis. Good to be with you under these circumstances.

Tavis: Speaking of your father, let me start by asking how your momma's doing. As they say down there, 'How our mom and them?'

Morial: Mom and them good, family is, thank God, blessed and all evacuated to safety. Mostly before the storm, some got out later, but we've accounted for just about everybody, certainly in our immediate family, and some extended family members. But we're still worried about so many friends and others that, we don't know if they got out, or where they are, or how they're doing. So this tragedy is going to affect so, so many of us, and so many people we know in this city we love so much.

Tavis: I know you have, you live in New York now as head of The Urban League, but you still have a home in New Orleans, your mother--has a home there. Your brother, Jacques, has a home there. You have sisters and brothers there. Did you...did they lose their homes?

Morial: We think that many of them are under water. We really don't know. It's hard to determine. There's some pictures on line, some satellite shots. I really haven't gone to take a look, Tavis. I think, for me, people, the rescue operation, people's evacuation, this is what we ought to be focusing on. The city is more than the physical city. The city is the people. And now, we have literally hundreds of thousands of people, maybe a million people, if you count all three states, who have been displaced from their homes.

Tavis: As the former Mayor of that city, and I guess more importantly now as the head of The National Urban League, have you spoken to Ray Nagin?

Morial: I haven't spoken to Mayor Nagin. I have spoken to the Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana, Mitch Landrieu, who is, and State Representative Cedric Richmond. And I reached out because I could get to Mitch Landrieu, and certainly I am, and have remained available, and trying to do from my standpoint what I think people who love the city, and people who are expatriates of the city, and people who are civil rights leaders, ought to be doing in this humanitarian crisis.

And that is trying to keep attention and hold accountable everyone who may have been involved in a series of mistakes. But certainly, Tavis, at this point, we've got lives that need to be healed. We've got people that need to be taken care of. We've got people who may never see their homes again, who have lost everything they've ever owned. We've got so many people who have been separated from their family members, and we've got what is probably going to be just an untold loss of lives.

Tavis: You have not spoken to Mayor Nagin, but let me ask you what you make of how he's handled this. There are a lot of folk who think that he ought to be put in the same category as a Rudy Giuliani in New York after 9/11, for not abandoning his city. He's still inside the city limits. There are others who think that he and the entire system of government failed them. I had a sister on this program last night who said that even though she was born and raised there, she never wants to ever see New Orleans again. Let me ask you how you think Mayor Nagin has done.

Morial: Let me say this. I'm not prepared to make a judgment on that, except to say that I know that he's operating under difficult circumstances, a crisis of untold magnitude, a humanitarian crisis, a natural disaster. I'm not prepared to do that because I do believe that in all of this sort of chorus of finger-pointing that's taken place, there ought to be an independent examination to determine what responsibility the city, the state, and the feds bear.

Emergency management is a sophisticated, many times, rehearsed science. And there are important roles that the city government plays, and the Mayor, state government, and the Governor. Certainly, the federal government, the President, and FEMA and other agencies. And I think there ought to be an examination. If it's just 30 days of finger-pointing and blaming, and that's the end of it, and it's just a political crisis, and we wipe our hands, that does not do justice. There's got to be a thorough examination. I think any and all officials and their activities, their actions and their inactions need to be carefully looked at.

Tavis: But to your point, your earlier point, they did rehearse. As you well know, they had an exercise called 'Hurricane Pam.' They rehearsed this. And by any, I shouldn't say by any, I'm putting my own bias here, but I think personally, and I have seen a lot of Americans who feel the same, that in this nation's first test of national preparedness since 9/11, the government, everybody, somebody, failed miserably here. So what do you make of the fact that they did rehearse and we still got this?

Morial: Well, the issue is, is when the real thing came, did they follow what they rehearsed? Did they follow the plan? Did they do the things that the plan called for? And I think in any emergency, and you know, Tavis, as Mayor, I led the operation in a number of hurricanes, and a number of floods, and untold disasters. None, I must stress, of this magnitude. But even the best plan requires what I call battlefield adjustments. And a disaster declaration. And a state of emergency gives local, state and federal officials the opportunity to make battlefield adjustments in the middle of the response.

So--it needs to be seen. If what was rehearsed, if the plans that were laid out were in fact followed, if, in fact, the people who were supposed to do what they were called upon to do, did what they were supposed to do. There needs, there must be, and I can tell you, organizations like mine, The National Urban League, I'm certain that other national organizations, we're going to demand that there be this examination.

Now, how should that examination take place? I think there ought to be a 9/11-style commission, an independent commission with staff, with subpoena authority, with the opportunity to cull out information, to determine what in fact went wrong. Because what's important is that not only that government be held accountable, but also that this type of thing never, ever happens again.

Tavis: Let me ask you, speaking of 9/11, when the 9/11 commission convened, and as you well know, there is now a group of bipartisan Senators who have called for those kinds of hearings on the Senate side, so I suspect that we will see that upon at some point. That said, the 9/11 hearings stretched back, while it happened under the watch of George W. Bush, it stretched back to the Clinton administration. It even at points stretched back to the administration of George H. W. Bush.

I wonder, that said, when the investigation here kicks up about what happened, what went wrong in New Orleans with regard to Hurricane Katrina, whether you are at all worried that your administration, which ran City Hall for eight years, might have fingers pointed at it.

Morial: Not at all, Tavis. I think we earned a reputation when I was Mayor for being excellent crisis managers. My team and I did Hurricane Georges, we did the Brightfields, we did a number of floods. None of this magnitude. And in Hurricane Georges, it was the first time there was an evacuation of the city. It was the first time the Superdome and the Convention Center and a facility in New Orleans East were utilized as shelters of last resort. The storm did not devastate the city. You did not have anywhere the level of flooding like you had in Hurricane Katrina.

But in fact, out of Hurricane Georges, certain modifications to the city's emergency plan took place. One was how you deal with special-needs populations. Secondly, the other was to contra flow the highways in order to give people a faster and easier opportunity to get out of the city in the event of an evacuation. So I think that certainly, any examination will go back, probably all the way to Betsy, not only with respect to hurricane preparedness, but also with respect to improvements in both the levee and drainage systems which are so important to, certainly important to New Orleans.

And, but more importantly, there is the instantaneous event. What happened from the time it was clear. I was in New Orleans on the Saturday before Hurricane Katrina for a funeral of Clarence Barney, the late and very great President of the New Orleans Urban League. And it was, I got out on Sunday morning, on one of the last flights out to come back to New York. There needs to be an examination of all that the city did, the feds did, the state did, in the hours leading up to the evacuation. Which--what was clear to me, is that there was clearly foresight that this was a powerful storm, because the President issued a disaster declaration in advance.

That, I found to be very different than my experiences when I was Mayor when the disaster declaration came either during the storm, or immediately after the storm, if my memory serves me correct. So I think that there's got to be an examination. Let me say this. Congressional hearings are important, but Congress sometimes has a short attention span, can't devote the amount of time and the thoroughness to this.

Let the Congressional hearings go forward. Let's make them bipartisan. But on the other hand, let us have an independent commission that's going to serve to examine what in fact occurred. This is critical. This is important. It's not about simply blaming people, it's about holding people accountable.

Tavis: Let me ask you a question about the looting. I heard you make a point, the other day, about what you thought these stores, Wal-Mart and other stores, should have been turned into with regard to being distribution centers. I'll let you expound on that in just a second. But first, Marc, if I can, I want to put up two photos. Some people who have been on the Internet, many of you have seen these photos. I wanted to show them tonight while Marc Morial was on the program to get his reaction and response to them.

The first photo, which one I can't tell which one is up first. Is this the black person or the white person? I can't see. It is, the brother. All right, leave that up for a second, Jonathan. I want to read the captions. Both of these photos were put on the national wire. Both photos on the national wire, put on the wire within eight hours of each other. Both photos put on the national wire within eight hours of each other. The national wire means they put it on the wire, papers all across the world could run these photos. And papers did run these photos with these captions.

The caption under this picture read, and I quote, "A young man walks through chest-deep flood water after looting a grocery store in New Orleans.' 'A young black man,' a young man, rather, 'A young man walks through chest-deep flood water after looting a grocery store in New Orleans.' And you see the picture and you see what he looks like.

Second picture. Two white Americans. Here's the caption to this picture, and I quote. "Two residents wade through chest-deep water after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store.' 'Two residents wade through chest-deep water after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store.' Mr. President.

Morial: It's just plain wrong. It's just a plain, I mean, you have basically nailed them, Tavis, by demonstrating the different twist, and the different tilt for two sets of Americans, basically. Who, in a difficult situation, trying to save the lives of their family, found food and or water wherever they could. The important thing is, is that in a crisis situation like a hurricane, one of the acute things that occurs, is that people run out of fresh water to drink because the water's contaminated.

They run out of food because there is no refrigeration, because the power is out. So I think there is a distinction to be made from people who are trying to find food and water where there is none. First, is perhaps people who may have--take televisions that they clearly can't use. Guns, which is clearly inappropriate. Or other items that have no value when it comes to survival.

I think that that point needs to be made. What I saw on television, in the days immediately after Katrina was what I thought was an exaggerated portrayal of some of the problems in the city. And--painting a brush in a city that I love, and a people that are honorable and respectful, that everyone was somehow lawless. I have no doubt that there were some hard-headed fools who may have been doing the wrong thing, and have been placing other people in jeopardy and in danger.

But to suggest that women and children who may have been at the Dome, women and children who were at the Convention Center without food and water for many days, people who were in acute medical distress, somehow were violent, and looters, and criminals, did an injustice, and it did a disservice. And I think that it created some of the immediate panic; that it wasn't, quote, 'safe for rescue workers, first responders and emergency workers to work in the city.' Now, why do I say that? I just spent six, seven, eight hours...

Tavis: Mark, I hate to cut you off. I hate to do this, I'm about to lose the feed here, but I thank you for coming on. I promise...

Morial: Thanks, Tavis. We'll talk again.

Tavis: ...in the coming days. I promise we will. Thank you for coming on the program.

Morial: Appreciate you.

Tavis: That's our show for tonight. You can catch me on the weekends on PRI, Public Radio International. Check your local listings. See you back here next time on PBS. Thanks for watching, good night from LA, and keep the faith.