by Sophie Kelly
In the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the following wave of support for the Black Lives Matter movement, conversations borne from the intersection of racial, social, and environmental justice have revealed so many ways in which the environmental movement has historically and presently been championed by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) communities with little recognition and awareness.
PCB Landfill Protest in Afton, North Carolina, September 1982. Source: Jerome Friar/UNC Libraries
The roots of the modern day Environmental Justice movement in the United States can be traced back to Warren Country, North Carolina in the 1980s. One of the only counties in the state with a majority Black population, Warren County was chosen as the site for a landfill containing PCB (Polychlorinated Biphenyl) contaminated soil from over 210 miles of the state’s roadsides. This sparked a massive outcry from communities throughout the county, and protesters came together to call upon Civil Rights leaders to address the unequal enforcement of environmental and civil rights laws. While the state of North Carolina persisted in displacing toxic PCB waste onto Warren County, the protests had sparked a new wave of environmental activism that integrated core values and demands of the Civil Rights Movement in order to demand justice and access to safe, livable, and healthy environments.
In 1983, the U.S. General Accounting Office found 3/4 of the hazardous waste landfill sites in 8 southeastern states were located in primarily poor, Black and Latinx communities. Then in 1987, the Commission for Racial Justice conducted a study on toxic waste sites and found that race was (and still is) the single most important factor in determining where toxic waste facilities were sited in the United States.
Screenshots from the 1987 UCC Commission for Racial Justice report “Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States.”
Growing outrage across the country came to fruition in October 1991 when the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit convened; more than 650 grassroots and national leaders attended, representing all fifty states, Puerto Rico, Chile, Mexico and as far away as the Marshall Islands.
People of Color Summit Delegates hold rally on the steps of the U.S. Capitol Building, Washington, DC, 1991. Source: R.D. Bullard
The Summit broadened the environmental justice movement beyond its toxic waste focus to include issues of public health, worker safety, land use, transportation, housing, resource allocation and community empowerment. We see this same confluence of social, environmental, and racial justice activism today with grassroots movements like the Black Lives Matter Movement and the Sunrise Movement!
The delegates drafted and adopted the Principles of Environmental Justice, a “defining document for the growing grassroots movement for environmental justice.” Introducing the 17 core principles of EJ, the delegates wrote:
WE, THE PEOPLE OF COLOR, gathered together at this multinational People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, to begin to build a national and international movement of all peoples of color to fight the destruction and taking of our lands and communities, do hereby re-establish our spiritual interdependence to the sacredness of our Mother Earth; to respect and celebrate each of our cultures, languages and beliefs about the natural world and our roles in healing ourselves; to ensure environmental justice; to promote economic alternatives which would contribute to the development of environmentally safe livelihoods; and, to secure our political, economic and cultural liberation that has been denied for over 500 years of colonization and oppression, resulting in the poisoning of our communities and land and the genocide of our peoples, do affirm and adopt these Principles of Environmental Justice.
These words written into history nearly 30 years ago feel just as imperative and sacred today. Although we all face the effects of climate change, deeply embedded environmental injustice is still very much present in the United States. You may be wondering if this applies to your town or city, and it may not; not every county in the country faces detrimental environmental health risks. Disparities between counties exist because of intentional redlining that purposely displaced predominantly Black and minority communities to areas that not only have higher exposure to environmental harms (e.g., pollution, toxic chemicals, contaminated water), but that are also more sensitive to climate change.
There is a hopeful and determined force of young activists today that are centering racial justice in the climate conversation in ways we have never seen before. In the meantime we highly encourage everyone to engage in more of these conversations. Need some ideas? Listen to the Black Nature Narratives podcast (the first series is especially relevant to this conversation) or to this episode of the Flossy Podcast written and created by high schoolers about Climate Change and Environmental Racism. There are plenty of ways you can get involved. Stay tuned as we continue to explore these topics and reach out if you have questions or ideas!