Table of Contents

Foreword: The Age of Environmental Inequality / Paul S. Sutter

Acknowledgments

Introduction

PART 1 THE NATURE OF SEGREGATION

"WHERE WE LIVE"

Russell Lee, Shack of Negro Family Farmers Living near Jarreau, Louisiana, 1938

John Vachon, Backed Up Sewer in Negro Slum District, Norfolk, Virginia, 1941

Carl Mydans, Kitchen of Negro Dwelling in Slum Area near House Office Building, Washington, D.C., 1935

Dorothea Lange, Migratory Mexican Field Worker's Home on the Edge of a Frozen Pea Field, Imperial Valley, California, 1937

Home Owners Loan Corporation, Los Angeles Data Sheet D52, 1939

John Vachon, Negro Children Standing in Front of Half Mile Concrete Wall, Detroit, Michigan, 1941

Examples of Racially Restrictive Real Estate Covenants

Arthur S. Siegel, Detroit, Michigan. Riot at the Sojourner Truth Homes, a New U.S. Federal Housing Project, Caused by White Neighbors' Attempt to Prevent Negro Tenants from Moving In, 1942

Craig Thompson, "Growing Pains of a Brand-New City," 1954

Norris Vitchek, "Confessions of a Block-Buster," 1962

Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C., 1963

Fair Housing Protest, Seattle, Washington, 1964

Fair Housing Act of 1968

U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, "Understanding Fair Housing," 1973

"WHERE WE WORK"

Ruby T. Lomax, [Cotton Picking Scenes on Roger Williams Plantation in the Delta, New Drew, Mississippi], 1940

John Vachon, Steel Mill Workers, Bethlehem Company, Sparrows Point, Maryland, 1940

Help Wanted White Only

Lloyd H. Bailer, "The Negro Automobile Worker," 1943

Navajo Miners Work at the Kerr-McGee Uranium Mine at Cove, Ariz., 1953

Mildred Pitts Walter, "Biographical Sketch," September 28, 2017

Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title VII: Equal Employment Opportunity

Lyndon B. Johnson, Commencement Address at Howard University: "To Fulfill These Rights," 1965"

Exhibit 1 in City of Memphis vs. Martin Luther King, Jr.," 1968

"WHERE WE PLAY"

Victor H. Green, ed., Introduction, The Negro Motorist Green Book: 1950

Lewis Mountain Entrance Sign, Shenandoah National Park

Colored Only Sign

Mayor and City Council of Baltimore City v. Dawson, 1955

Civil Rights Demonstration at Fort Lauderdale's Segregated Public Beach, 1961

Jackson NAACP Branches to City and State Officials, May 12, 1963

PART 2 A MORE INCLUSIVE ENVIRONMENTALISM? FROM EARTH DAY TO ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

A NEW CIVIL RIGHTS CRITIQUE

Indians of All Tribes, "The Alcatraz Proclamation," 1969

Timothy Benally, "'So a Lot of the Navajo Ladies Became Widows'"

El Malcriado, "Growers Spurn Negotiations on Poisons," 1969

Wilbur L. Thomas Jr., "Black Survival in Our Polluted Cities," 1970

RACE, ENVIRONMENTALISM, AND ENVIRONMENTAL GOVERNANCE

Edmund S. Muskie, Speech at the Philadelphia Earth Week Rally, Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, April 22, 1970

EPA Task Force on the Environmental Problems of the Inner City, Our Urban Environment and Our Most Endangered People, 1971

John H. White, Chicago Ghetto on the South Side, 1974

Don Coombs, "The [Sierra] Club Looks at Itself," 1972

TOXICS, WARREN COUNTY, AND THE DOCUMENTATION OF ENVIRONMENTAL DISPARITIES

Penelope Ploughman, Protest Signs in Front Yard Love Canal 99th Street Home, 1978

Protest Sign: Danger, Dioxin Kills, 1980

Robert T. Stafford, "Why Superfund Was Needed," 1981

Jenny Labalme, Anti-PCB Protests in Warren County, North Carolina, 1982

"A Warren County PCB Protest Song," 1982

General Accounting Office, "Siting of Hazardous Waste Landfills and Their Correlation with Racial and Economic Status of Surrounding Communities," 1983

Cerrell Associates, Political Difficulties Facing Waste-to-Energy Conversion Plant Siting, 1984

United Church of Christ, "Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States," 1987

United Church of Christ, "Fifty Metropolitan Areas with Greatest Number of Blacks Living in Communities with Uncontrolled Waste Sites," 1987

Marianne Lavelle and Marcia Coyle, "Unequal Protection," 1992

BUILDING THE MOVEMENT

Sam Kittner, The Great Louisiana Toxics March, 1988

Peggy Shepard and Chuck Sutton Protest New York City's North River Sewage Treatment Plant, 1988

SouthWest Organizing Project, "Letter to Big Ten Environmental Groups," March 16, 1990

Mark Gutierrez, From One Earth Day to the Next, 1990

Indigenous Environmental Network, "Unifying Principles," 1991

First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit Press Conference, October 24, 1991

Dana Alston, "Moving beyond the Barriers," 1991

"The Principles of Environmental Justice," 1991

William K. Reilly, "Environmental Equity," 1992

Melissa Healy, "Administration Joins Fight for 'Environmental Justice' Pollution," 1993

William J. Clinton, Executive Order 12898, February 16, 1994

Dorceta E. Taylor, "Women of Color, Environmental Justice, and Ecofeminism," 1997

Luz Claudio, "Standing on Principle"

"Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing," 1996

Public Citizen, "NAFTA's Broken Promises," 1997

PART 3 THE ENVIRONMENT AND JUSTICE IN THE SUSTAINABILITY ERA

INSTITUTIONAL LEGACIES

Richard Moore, "Government by the People"

Christine Todd Whitman, "Memorandum," August 9, 2001

Second People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, "Principles of Working Together," 2002

Robert D. Bullard et al., "Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty," 2007

Marty Durlin, "The Shot Heard Round the West," 2010

Environmental Protection Agency, "Plan EJ 2014," 2011

Kristen Lombardi, Talia Buford, and Ronnie Greene, "Environmental Justice, Denied," 2015

CONTINUING EJ ACTIVISM

Tracy Perkins, Buttonwillow Park, CA, January 30, 2009

Tracy Perkins, Wasco, CA, January 30, 2009

Online Meme on #NoDAPL

Amy Goodman, "Unlicensed #DAPL Guards Attacked Water Protectors with Dogs & Pepper Spray," 2016

Brian Bienkowski, "2017 and Beyond: Justice Jumping Genres," Environmental Health News

FROM ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE TO JUSTICE AND THE ENVIRONMENT

"Bali Principles of Climate Justice," August 29, 2002

Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner, "Rising Sea Levels," 2016

Brentin Mock, "For African Americans, Park Access Is about More Than Just Proximity," 2016

Norma Smith Olson, "Food Justice," 2013

Van Jones, "Power Shift Keynote," 2009

World Rainforest Movement, "'For a Change of Paradigm': Interview with Tom Goldtooth from the Indigenous Environmental Network," 2016

Index

About the Author

Christopher W. Wells is professor of environmental history at Macalester College. He is the author of Car Country: An Environmental History.

Reviews

"[A]n important contribution to an EJ literature...it should be widely used there in courses on US environmental history, the history of race and environment, and even on social movements in the twentieth century." (Environmental History) "[A] powerful tool for introducing students to the US environmental justice movement and the sometimes tense relationship between environmentalism and social justice." (New Books Network)