The celebration of Black History Month calls for us to reflect on how experiences and history for Black liberation have shaped our present and future. To highlight the invaluable groundwork Black individuals have laid for the environmental and climate movement, each week this month CleanAIRE NC will be highlighting Black leaders at the intersections of environmental justice, climate change, food justice, outdoor recreation, sustainability, and more.
Black excellence should be celebrated every day. We hope that elevating these voices and their work can guide us all as public servants in our mission to support a healthy environment for all.
The Environmental Justice movement that we know and fight for today would not be what it is without the Black community and the Black voices who shaped it. One of those voices belongs to Benjamin Chavis, who helped to create the foundation for Environmental Justice and protested side by side with Warren County residents at the 1982 sit-in against North Carolina’s polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) landfill in their community, which catalyzed the movement…
February 1, 2022
Racial justice is integral in the fight to end hunger and food insecurity. It’s an unfortunate truth that Black individuals and Black communities face a greater risk of food insecurity, and the health disparities that accompany it, than others. This inequity in access to healthy food is attributed to a long history of discriminatory red-lining, lack of access to nutritional resources, intentional racism, and many other factors. Eboné Lockett, CEO and Founder of Harvesting Humanity, is tackling the root causes of these persistent inequalities through her organization’s fight to end hunger…
February 10, 2022
While some Black historical figures are well known, many others are less familiar due to history often being written and told from the perspective of those most systemically empowered and privileged. When such narrative biases occur, so can the invalidation and misrepresentation of an individual or group. Without reflection or intervention, history may repeat. The recent fertilizer fire in Winston-Salem and its impact on nearby residents is a tragic example of this historic repetition. In Winston-Salem and other North Carolina communities, environmental racism is an all too familiar story…
February 15, 2022