By the summer of 1982, the three-year legal battle led by the predominantly white Warren County Citizens Concerned about PCBs group had run its course and the arrival of the dump trucks loomed. Its leaders reached out to local Black ministers with the hope of mobilizing congregations and connecting with broader networks of civil rights organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and the United Church of Christ’s Commission for Racial Justice (CRJ).
Local Black leaders, including Rev. Ben Chavis, Golden Frinks, and Rev. Leon White, brought in sympathetic national leaders such as Rev. Joseph Lowery (SCLC) and Walter E. Fauntroy (Delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives for the District of Columbia and SCLC Board member).
This shift in the movement also expanded discourse, from the so-called "NIMBY" (Not In My Backyard) argument that was focused on health and economic outcomes, to inclusion of a critique of the disproportionate environmental risks faced by Black and Indigenous communities. The Warren County movement has been credited with defining the concept of environmental racism.
SCLC magazine, January/February 1983
SOUTHERN CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE, ATLANTA, GA
Several months after the main protests in Warren County had concluded, SCLC published this cover story on the landfill fight, signaling an ongoing interest in the burgeoning environmental justice movement. The article points to two other cases (Livingston, AL, and Pinewood, SC) of EPA-approved toxic landfills being sited in Black communities.
Jenny Labalme files, Bob Hall Papers
Southern Historical Collection
Letter to John "Yonni" Chapman, October 6, 1982
PETE SEEGER, BEACON, NY
Chapman was North Carolina state coordinator for the Federation for Progress (FFP), a social justice organization formed in early 1982. Pete Seeger sends his regrets that he was unable to attend the September 22, 1982 rally in the Pit at UNC Chapel Hill. In the letter, Seeger also encourages the use of music in the PCB movement.
John Kenyon Chapman Papers
Southern Historical Collection
(Left to right) Armenta Eaton, Evelyn Lowery, Dollie Burwell, and Joycelyn McKissick in jail, September 28, 1982
HARRY LYNCH, WARRENTON, NC
Following their arrest on September 28th, these women leaders refused to post bond and stayed in jail for two days to bring more national attention to the movement. Eaton is a Franklin County-based activist who was on staff with the Commission for Racial Justice and involved in its campaign in the 1970s to free Joan Little. In the 2010s, along with her mother Rosanell Eaton, she was a co-plaintiff in the landmark North Carolina NAACP v. McCrory voter ID case.
Lowery was a visiting national leader who, with her husband SCLC President Rev. Joseph Lowery, participated in many key civil rights campaigns from 1957 until her death in 2013.
Burwell was a board member for SCLC and the Commission for Racial Justice. She was arrested five times during the 1982 protests. Later in 1982 she was elected as Register of Deeds for Warren County, a position she held until 1996.
McKissick was a teacher and civil rights advocate (and the daughter of Soul City founder Floyd McKissick) whose activism began at the age of fourteen during the 1957 Royal Ice Cream Sit-Ins in Durham, NC. She remained active in the movement until her death in 2005.
Courtesy of the State Archives of North Carolina
Copyright: News and Observer, 1982
Lois Gibbs, September 19, 1982
JOSEPH THOMAS, AFTON, NC
In 1978, residents of Love Canal, NY, discovered that the land under their community had served as a dumping ground for industrial waste for decades. After her own son got sick, Lois Gibbs organized the Love Canal Homeowners Association and led a grassroots struggle to protect her community. Over 800 Love Canal households were relocated from the community. The fight led to passage of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), known as the Superfund Act. Gibbs spoke to a packed Coley Springs Baptist Church on September 19, 1982.
Courtesy of the State Archives of North Carolina
Copyright: News and Observer, 1982
Arrest of Joseph Lowery, October 4, 1982
HARRY LYNCH, AFTON, NC
Born in 1921 in Huntsville, AL, Rev. Joseph Lowery was involved in many of the pivotal events of the civil rights movement. In the early 1950s, he led efforts to desegregate buses in Mobile and Montgomery, AL, alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., which led to the founding of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). He served as SCLC president from 1977-1997. Lowery was invited to Warren County by SCLC field organizer Golden Frinks.
Courtesy of the State Archives of North Carolina
Copyright: News and Observer, 1982