The Facts of Environmental Racism

To civil rights activists looking on as the events in Warren County played out, the
actions of the North Carolina state government in forcing a toxic landfill onto a small
African-American community were an extension of the racism they had encountered for
decades in housing, education and employment. But this time, it
was environmental racism.

The Afton protests energized a new faction within the civil rights movement that saw the
environment as another front in the struggle for justice. Many early environmental
justice leaders came out of the civil rights movement. They brought to the environmental
movement the same tactics they had used in civil rights struggles -- marches, petitions,
rallies, coalition building, community empowerment through education, litigation and
nonviolent direct action. Many veterans of the civil rights movement -- often affiliated
with black churches -- showed up in Afton, helping to attract national media attention.
Among them were Reverend Ben Chavis and Reverend Joseph Lowery, then of the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Reverend Leon White of the United
Church of Christ's Commission for Racial Justic