SIDON, Mississippi — Malissa Whitehead is known for making tea cakes and blueberry pies during the holidays — but as Christmas approaches, she’s uneasy about baking anything in the house she’s lived in for 40 years. The kitchen ceiling wood is peeling, revealing small holes and chipped paint. On the outside, the roof is covered […]
Environmental Justice
Posted inEnvironmental Justice, Land Pollution, Politics & Policy
Louisiana Town Fights for Relief After a Billion-Dollar Oil Disaster
Four months have passed since a Louisiana oil facility burst apart, spewing a dense black sludge that drifted across homes, farms, and waterways as far as 50 miles away. Since then, the U.S. Department of Justice and Louisiana environmental regulators have filed a sweeping lawsuit against Smitty’s Supply, the company that ran the facility storing […]
Posted inAgriculture, Black Farmers, Environmental Justice, Extreme Weather, Food Access, Rural Issues
In a N.C. Town With Almost No Grocers, One Farmer Is Expanding Local Food Access
Most days, Patrick Brown kneels in the red clay of Warren County, North Carolina, running the soil through his fingers. His roughly 300 acre farm has been in his family since 1865 and has survived crisis after crisis. Now it has another important job to do — affordably feeding families in one of the state’s […]
Posted inClimate Change, Environmental Justice, Land Pollution, Unsafe Water
How Plastics and Fossil Fuels Are Making Black Communities Unlivable
Copyright © 2025 by Beyond Plastics. This excerpt originally appeared in The Problem with Plastic: How We Can Save Ourselves and Our Planet Before It’s Too Late, published by The New Press. Reprinted here with permission. Debra Ramirez lives at a place where survival and sacrifice meet. She knows the winding back roads that crisscross […]
Posted inEnvironmental Justice, Religion
Meta’s AI Data Center Sparks a Crisis in the Bible Belt Over the Power of Faith
Photo illustrations by Alexandra Watts/Capital B RICHLAND PARISH, Louisiana — Seen as far as 2 miles away, a white cross — the size of a 12-story building — welcomes you to this largely forgotten stretch of Delta country. While cotton no longer runs supreme here, every road, ballot measure, and industrial promise still has to […]
Posted inEnvironmental Justice, Health, Land Pollution, Reproductive Health
Black Women in South LA Lead the Fight to End Urban Oil Drilling
LOS ANGELES — When the winds shifted last January and smoke from wildfires settled into South LA, the city’s low-lying neighborhoods, residents there didn’t need another study to tell them the air was unsafe. They could feel it. For Iretha Warmsley, the soot raining down was another reminder of what decades of fossil fuel extraction […]
Posted inExtreme Weather
Jamaican Americans Mobilize After the Island’s Worst Hurricane in a Century
Out of many, one people. Kimisha Simpson says she’s confident that Jamaica’s national motto will rally the diaspora and others to help rebuild the island that was battered by Hurricane Melissa earlier this week. “We like to say, ‘We’re the heartbeat of the Caribbean,’” Simpson said. “Jamaica is an island that has given so much […]
Posted inExtreme Weather
Hurricane Melissa Batters Jamaica With Strongest Hurricane Winds in 90 Years
Hurricane Melissa is hammering Jamaica as a Category 5 storm, bringing 185 mph winds. This is the strongest hurricane wind speed to make landfall in 90 years, threatening to cause catastrophic floods, landslides, and a sea surge up to 13 feet along the island’s southern coast. The relatively slow speed of the monster storm will […]
Posted inEconomic Development, Environmental Justice, Politics & Policy
From Mississippi to Maryland, Black Communities Are Taking On Big Tech
When word spread through Bessemer, Alabama, earlier this year that a tech giant was eyeing hundreds of pine-covered acres at the city’s edge, Benard Simelton’s phone wouldn’t stop ringing. The longtime NAACP leader had fielded calls about toxic air and shuttered steel mills before, but this, he said, was new to him. At first, the […]
Posted inExtreme Weather, Money, Wealth Gap
Climate Disasters Are Destroying Black Retirements and the American Dream
Standing in front of the Pasadena, California, City Council in June, Totress Beasley begged for support. After being displaced twice — after previous landlords sold the rental properties she called home — she explained how she thought she should put her life in her own hands and buy her own house. For five years, through the Great Recession, the […]