Walter E. Fauntroy at protest, September 28, 1982
MIKE SARGENT: AFTON, NC
Walter E. Fauntroy was the non-voting delegate to the United States House of Representatives for the District of Columbia. Fauntroy and Rev. Joseph Lowery, Southern Christian Leadership Conference president, led approximately 500 protesters on the September 27 protest march. North Carolina Highway Patrol arrested Fauntroy for impeding traffic by kneeling in front of a dump truck.
The News and Observer
North Carolina Collection
Siting of Hazardous Waste Landfills and Their Correlation with Racial and Economic Status of Surrounding Communities, June 1, 1983
UNITED STATES GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE, WASHINGTON, DC
In mid-December, Fauntroy and United States Representative James Florio of New Jersey requested from the General Accounting Office a report correlating offsite hazardous waste landfills in eight southeastern states to the racial and economic status of their surrounding communities. The GAO found four such landfills. Blacks were the majority in three of the four communities, and at least 26% of the population in all four communities—the majority of which were Black—had incomes below the poverty level.
US Government Accountability Office website
In November 1982, the United Church of Christ’s Commission for Racial Justice held its annual meeting in Charlotte, NC (item A). Reverend Leon White was the commission’s field director, and Reverend Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr. was its deputy director. The commission called for a study of the types of communities selected for toxic waste disposal and their impacts on those communities.
In January 1986, the commission initiated two studies that led to the 1987 report Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States (item B). During the press conference announcing its publication, Chavis, now the commission's executive director (who spoke and marched in Afton during the second day of the PCB landfill protests) (item C), equated the high correlation between the locations of toxic waste facilities and minority communities as "environmental racism" (item D).
Within seven years of the publication of Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States, on February 11, 1994, President Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 12898, “Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations.” Among its provisions, the order required each federal agency to “make achieving environmental justice part of its mission” and directed the EPA to create an Interagency Working Group on Environmental Justice.
"Minority Neighborhoods Becoming Dumping Grounds?," November 11, 1982 (item A)
THE CHARLOTTE POST, CHARLOTTE, NC
Courtesy of Johnson C. Smith University
Toxic Waste and Race in the United States: A National Report on the Racial and Socio-Economic Characteristics of Communities with Hazardous Waste Sites, 1982 (item B)
COMMISSION FOR RACIAL JUSTICE, UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST, NEW YORK, NY
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Reverend Benjamin Chavis at protest, September 17, 1982 (item C)
MIKE SARGENT, AFTON, NC
The News and Observer
North Carolina Collection
"Ben Chavis Charges ‘Environmental Racism,'" April 23, 1987 (item D)
THE CHARLOTTE POST: CHARLOTTE, NC
Courtesy of Johnson C. Smith University
Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality, by Robert C. Bullard, 1990
WESTVIEW PRESS, BOULDER, CO
Robert C. Bullard's seminal book Dumping in Dixie chronicles what he described as the "mainstream environmental equity movement." Bullard wrote, "Blacks did not launch a frontal assault on environmental problems affecting their communities until these issues were couched in a civil rights context." He observed that, "The key to this inclusion strategy rests on linking environmental issues with the social justice concerns of minority communities, whose problems to date have not been fully addressed." Bullard noted, "The first national protest by blacks on the hazardous-waste issue" occurred in Warren County, North Carolina. In 2005 Bullard wrote, "The protesters of Warren County put the term 'environmental racism' on the map."
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