This story was originally published by The 19th. First, the butterflies disappeared. Then, the family dog died; and then the neighbors did, too. But Marquita Bradshaw’s biggest loss of those adolescent days was probably her great-grandmother. Susie Hall died in 1995 after developing uterine and kidney cancers. “We lost our matriarch. … She was the […]
Environmental Justice
Posted inClimate Change, Environmental Justice
Black Americans Are Moving to Phoenix in Historic Numbers. Few Are Finding a Better Life.
This story was produced in partnership with High Country News. In late October 2012, the 80 mph winds of Hurricane Sandy pelted the tiny suburb of Pennington, New Jersey, where Brian Watson worked. Watson’s job as a fraud analyst for Bank of America Merrill Lynch required him to be on call 24/7 despite the severe […]
Posted inAir Pollution, Environmental Justice
Air Pollution and its Impact on Black Communities, Explained
Across the country, pollution has drastically declined since the 1970s because of the Clean Air Act’s expansion, but the health impact of dirty air is still widely felt. According to the World Health Organization, air pollution is associated with 7 million premature deaths annually, with nearly 200,000 of those happening in the United States. The […]
Posted inAir Pollution, Environmental Justice
The EPA Moves to Limit This Pollutant That Hurts Black People Disproportionately
Dail Chambers knows when the air is unsafe in her North St. Louis neighborhood. It’s when the sky “looks like a 1970s film,” she said. “There’s an orange haze over the whole neighborhood for weeks at a time.” The haze is a mixture of air pollutants anchored by a high concentration of fine-particulate matter, sometimes […]
Posted inAir Pollution, Environmental Justice
In Brooklyn, Public Housing Tenants Struggle Against the ‘Slow Violence’ of Industrial Pollution
This story was published in partnership with The City. Sign up for their newsletter here. Elisha Fye jokes that he was a member of the “true little rascals” while growing up in the New York City Housing Authority’s Cooper Park Houses in North Brooklyn’s industrial corridor. The expansive 700-apartment housing project was erected in 1953, and Fye’s […]
Posted inEnvironmental Justice
Environmental Justice Wins You Might Have Missed in 2022
Every year, it becomes more evident that Black communities in the U.S. are on the front lines of the climate crisis. Black communities, through decades of disinvestment and the residual effects of segregation, are at highest risk for flooding, most likely to be located next to polluting power plants, and least likely to retain housing […]
Posted inClimate Change, Environmental Justice
Meet the Trailblazing Black LGBTQ Official at ‘Ground Zero’ for Climate Justice
In 1969, a state-mandated consent decree desegregated the school system in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Forty years later, continuing conflict over that desegregation effort in the city — evenly split between Black and white residents — inspired a young Davante Lewis’ first foray into public service. His high school was strapped for cash and required much-needed […]
Posted inEnvironmental Justice
The Quiet Toll of Oil Drilling on Black Los Angeles
When Dominic Gibbs’ family moved to the Harbor City neighborhood of Los Angeles in the 1990s, the young child had a lingering question for his mother: What is that massive 20-foot-tall pump next to our house? “I always think about when I first saw the pump, because I thought it was just something that happened […]
Posted inClimate Change, Environmental Justice
Addressing Seasonal Depression in Black Communities Impacted by Climate Change
For years, Black Twitter has affectionately named the gloomy, drawn-out winter months as “cuffing season,” made perfect by dropping temperatures and “cuddle weather.” It’s when you hole in with your chosen partner or community, binge-watch television, and, if you’re lucky, crank up the heater while darkness takes over outside. But the winter months are not […]
Posted inEnvironmental Justice, Extreme Weather
How Natural Disasters Create Voting Crises
Voting has often been inconvenient for residents of Florida’s Dunbar community. For decades, they fought to get an early-voting site in their Gulf Coast neighborhood. It finally came to fruition ahead of the 2020 election, but now, just two years later, that polling site has shut down. The story is similar for many in this […]
