[soft music] [people murmuring] [people continue murmuring] - [Speaker 1] Welcome.

Say a real welcome.

[crowd applauding] - 40 years ago, of the 100 counties in North Carolina, Warren County was the most predominantly Black.

Warren County was a rural agricultural county.

Truth of the matter is, I'm certain that the state officials, including the governor, knew that it wasn't appropriate to put tons of toxins in a poor, rural, predominantly African-American community that got most of its water from wells.

It's the last place you want to dig a hole and dump tons of toxins.

But that's what happened.

And they announced it, and they started to bring these trucks in September of 1982.

And while I'm giving a lot of credit for what happened, I must give the credit first to the women, to the children, one of whom was only four years old, a child, get arrested by the state of North Carolina for laying down in the road to block the trucks from dumping PCB in Warren County.

[soft music] [birds chirping] [soft music continues] [people chatting] - Yes.

- And we get, right back for your wristband.

Thank you, thank you for coming out.

♪ Stayed on freedom ♪ ♪ Woke up this morning with my mind ♪ ♪ Stayed on justice ♪ ♪ Woke up this morning with my mind ♪ ♪ Stayed on justice ♪ ♪ Walking and talking with my mind ♪ ♪ Still on justice ♪ ♪ Hallelu, hallelu, hallelu, hallelu ♪ ♪ Hallelujah ♪ - Right on!

- Right on!

- We don't want no PCB!

- We don't want no PCB!

- [Leader] Give it to Hunt, don't give it to me!

- [All] Give it to Hunt, don't give it to me!

- [Leader] No, we don't want no PCB!

- [All] We don't want no PCB!

- [Leader] Give it to Hunt, don't give it to me!

- [All] Give it to Hunt, don't give it to me!

- Fired up!

- Fired up!

- Fired up!

- Fired up!

- Fired up!

- Fired up!

- [Leader] We ain't gonna take it no more!

- [All] We ain't gonna take it no more!

[soft solemn music] - [Wayne] Buck Ward had a transformer company here in Raleigh.

The insulation that was used in these transformers, that oil contained a chemical called PCB, or polychlorinated biphenyls.

Buck Ward had some of his employees dispose of this oil by putting it in his tankers, and late hours of the night, drive along with the valve open and leaking out a little bit at at time.

[tense music] - We moved here in '77, and so it was just a little more than a year later in 1978, that polychlorinated biphenyls, PCBs, were dumped along the roadsides in 14 counties, and also at the Fort Bragg Army Base.

All 14 counties, people kept calling in, saying, "What is this black, gooey, stinky, nasty stuff along our roadsides?"

And it took a while for the state to even begin to get involved with what to do.

- [Newscaster 1] Three men dumped thousands of gallons of PCB oil along these rural North Carolina roadways.

Two men were sentenced to prison, but more than 210 miles of roadways had been contaminated.

Lawsuits prevented the immediate cleanup.

- This guy did what?

And so he wanted to save money, and he just decided to open the spigot, and pour along the side of the road in 14 counties for 200 and some miles.

I think, well, initially, we're all just literally stunned that someone would actually do something like this.

And then it became, okay, this is reality, and this stuff is toxic.

It's just not like he poured out a milkshake or something on the side of the road.

But the issue became, we said, okay, we gotta dig up all this stuff for 200 some miles.

Where are we gonna put it?

We gotta put in a landfill.

- The state of North Carolina needed to have a toxic waste facility, and then we learned that the state had actually purchased 150 acres of land and had an option on another 200 acres of land.

And then we start thinking long term, that this is not just about the PCB, it's about Warren County probably becoming a permanent toxic waste facility for maybe not just North Carolina, but the whole southeast region.

[soft music] - Jim Hunt and his administration chose Warren County because we were a poor county, and we're a minority county.

I felt that Warren County was chosen because it was perceived to be the path of least resistance - That was low hanging fruit for them.

You know, a poor Black rural community, for a landfill, that's very expedient.

At the time, that was quite the practice, quite the regular practice.

It's quickest and easiest.

My guess is it'd be far easier to do that than to truck across state lines, or anything like that.

So I'm sure that is what drove their decision.

- So what was the motive of the state choosing the most predominantly Black county?

A rural poor agricultural community that had a shallow aquifer, very important.

Most of the people in that area got their water from well water.

So any seepage, any deposit into groundwater is gonna get in people's well water, not just for a few yards, but for miles away.

- How do you know if a given chemical like PCBs, how do you know where the safe level is?

And when you start looking into the research, you find some very interesting things going on.

One, there's a great deal of inconsistency and disagreement among federal institutions and risk assessment communities on what constitutes a safe level.

- Our governor, our government, that's supposed to protect us was sort of like exploiting us, and it had come right to our front doors.

So immediately thinking, what impact will this have on the water table, and how will it affect people who have, who are least able to move from the area?

- I didn't want to sell my house and leave the community.

Other people didn't wanna sell their house, or sell their land, because we knew that there were other people who inherited their land from a great-grandmother, or a grandfather, that went back generations.

I had the means to leave, but I didn't want to leave anybody who didn't have the means to leave.

- That PCB landfill was the type of thing that would mobilize people who might have been a little bit divergent in their thoughts and beliefs sometimes, might not even have thought about the same kind of strategies for engagement.

But when the landfill was announced, and the landfill was becoming a reality, it was time to come together and fight together and push back.

- Look at the epic story, environmental justice, environmental civil rights, environmental racism.

Look at this story.

And that will always be there, the precedence will be there, the inspirations will be there, to inspire communities that really, without it, would probably just give up hope, and either make an adjustment, move, or just get ready to adjust to horrible circumstances.

[soft tense music] - Soul City was an awesome idea inspired by Attorney Floyd McKissick about bringing opportunity to a rural community, as an example, a city that's pretty much managed by Blacks, but welcoming to all.

- When they bought the land for Soul City, it was proposed for 50,000 people over a period of 20 to 30 years.

- Floyd McKissick was the first to talk about developing a city in a predominantly African-American community, a metropolis amidst poverty, the notion of putting down infrastructure.

Most of the people were working at that time in agriculture and tobacco.

But Floyd saw opportunity for people to not necessarily leave the farm, but do other kinds of work to generate family revenue other than farming.

- Floyd McKissick was the founder of Soul City.

He was just all about his people.

And so I think that's what attracted a lot of people to believe in Soul City.

- I mean, understand you had a county that was 68% Black, but they had never elected a public official that was Black.

I think what people could see was that the dollars that were coming in from Soul City and building those roads and building that infrastructure were also bringing jobs.

It was also beginning to bring growth and development.

So a lot of the fears, apprehension, concerns, were overcome because of that change.

I mean, there was a sign right out there in Oxford it said "The Ku Klux Klan welcomes you to Granville County."

And you know, it was my father talking to Mayor Currin, Hugh Currin, of the city of Oxford saying, you know, "It's time for that sign to go down.

It needs to come down."

And Mayor Currin went, in fact, to the Ku Klux Klan, and he met with them, and said, "Look."

Perhaps he didn't do it because it was morally the right thing to do, but to say it's bad for business, we need to bring it down because we want jobs, we want growth development.

And in fact, that sign came down.

- I was engaged with Soul City as their director of the Soul City Foundation.

And under the Soul City Foundation, I had responsibility of building Soul Tech, which was a incubator for businesses.

So Soul City, not only was the idea of bringing services and commerce, but it also was the beginning of many things.

Rural health in the United States started in Warren County at Soul City, okay?

By the same man who created rural health across the United States.

His name is Jim Bernstein.

Started that incubator program at Soul Tech.

Soul City brought not only attention to Warren County, but brought an energy and a possibility and a hope and an aspiration something could be done.

We are not lost in the wilderness, huh?

You had to have the will to do it, and that's, I think, the continuation and the aspiration of Soul City.

- On one end, we had this hopefulness through Soul City, something new and bigger.

And on the other side, we had identified as a marginalized community where we got dumped on.

- Had it not been for Jesse Helms, and launching attacks against the project, that pretty much brought it to a standstill, I think the project would've continued far, far longer.

Unfortunately, Helms made many false accusations relating to financial mismanagement improprieties, and basically brought development to a halt.

- Even outta Soul City grew the Warren County Political Action Council, which is still active very much in the community, for the purpose of electing Blacks.

- The state interpreted that Warren County, maybe we would get some resistance.

Look at the population of a small population, look at the content of its population being mostly minority Black.

So where's the political resistance to that, hmm?

But little did they know, hmm?

What I was saying about Soul City have an inspired people.

And there was a residue of people who wanted to not only build, but there was a residue of people who will fight.

Hmm?

[people chatting] - [La'Meshia] Alright, good evening.

Good evening.

- All right!

- There we go, there we go.

I hope we are excited to be in this space this evening to hear a robust and historic conversation, not just historic in the nature of presenting and discussing history with history makers, but in making history tonight on the 40th anniversary of the birth of the environmental justice movement.

Today, we all have the esteemed privilege of being in the presence of the originators, of the movement, and allies to discuss the Warren County protest.

The honorable Eva Clayton who served as the first African-American to represent North Carolina in the House since 1898.

Reconstruction.

- Oh, wow.

[all applauding and cheering] - How I got to Wine County is because my husband was recruited by a white attorney in Warren County who wanted to start an integrated law firm, which represented the very first integrated law firm in the state of North Carolina.

So it was a result of that invitation I happened to be in Warren County, and by the way, that lawyer was Moses' cousin, too.

So it's in the family.

[all chuckling] At the time of the PCB announcement, I happened to be writing, working for the governor who put PCB in Warren County.

I had signed up with them the first term.

When I heard the announcement of the PCB, I thought it was time for me not to go the second term, right?

[soft music] - This largely Democratic County was not about to let this Democratic governor roll over us.

And so they stood up to him.

And in fact, Reverend Ramey is, the one, when we met with the governor, who looked at Governor Hunt and said, "Look, we helped put you in office, Governor Hunt."

You know, "Now we expected you to listen to us.

We don't need this in a poor county like Warren County.

We'll never come out of this."

- He assured us that everything was going to be all right.

That, you know, they started talking about the landfill, that it was going to be made leak proof.

If we start a contamination site here, then what is going to stop another company from spilling something else?

And then we end up being a contamination dump county.

And this is something that we don't want.

It even got to the point that we called it hunch dump.

- We had four years of due process.

We had three litigations, actually, and a lot of research.

And by that time in 1981, the state had passed the Waste Management Act, and the Waste Management Act gave the governor the right, authorized the governor, to make the final decision concerning the location of these sites.

And to do it even prior to public hearing, or with no public hearings.

Once we knew that it was inevitable, that they were not going to listen to our research-based opposition, we knew it was time to organize.

And so people came from New York, and from Atlanta, United Church of Christ, Commission for Racial Justice.

But it was just a whole multicultural convergence really, on Warren County for these demonstrations.

- Well, I mean, I think it was that special synergy.

I mean, you had Ken and Deborah Ferruccio.

I mean, they were white, they were progressive, they were liberal, you know, and outspoken, and media savvy.

I mean, you had Dollie Burwell, who was a community activist.

I mean, somebody who was well-known and well-regarded, involved with a lot of the Black churches in the area, involved with the United Church of Christ back in that point in time.

And Reverend Leon White was one of the great champions of Ben Chavis.

I mean, he was the one out there fighting for Ben to get outta jail with the Wilmington Ten.

So, I mean, you know, I think Ben being outspoken in the forefront was important and significant.

You had Reverend Brown from Coley Springs Church being active and engaged and involved.

You had this synergy that was coming together, bringing together factions of the community in Warren County and beyond, that were so deeply and passionately concerned about this injustice that was being brought to Warren County, this blight that put people's lives potentially at risk, that also was gonna have a devastating impact on Warren County to grow and attract development, in a place where people were looking for a better quality of life.

So, I mean, it was the convergence of all those factors that was rare.

But more importantly, it was profound.

And it became the very forefront of what's come to be known today as the environmental justice movement.

- For six weeks, an unprecedented, multiracial coalition of hundreds of citizens and our supporters dramatized, with civil disobedience and direct action, the injustice of toxic aggression.

We marched in protest against the forced burial of some 10,000 truckloads containing 60,000 tons of toxic PCB-contaminated soil in a landfill just above our groundwater.

We were unified around a common cause.

Our strategy was to be informed, dignified, respectful, unyielding and nonviolent.

We were strengthened by the ties that bound us, and were an uncorrupted grassroots force, aware that we were effecting a significant historic rupture.

- They lay in the roads, not just to stop the trucks from dumping PCB-tainted soil.

They fought for environmental justice, the right of all communities to a safe environment, and the right to participate in decisions that would affect their lives.

- The first day of the demonstration, I got my daughter ready to go to school about quarter to eight.

I'm rushing through, let me get outta here.

I see her sitting on the couch, and I'm getting upset as a mom, then.

"Why you didn't get on that bus?

You know your bus."

And she said, "'Cause I'm going to the march with you, Mama."

And I said, "Kim, you cannot go to the march with me."

And she said, "Well, if you go, why can't I go?"

And, you know, it just hit me, that, what am I going to tell her?

So I said, well, okay.

And I said, "Now you know, I might get arrested."

♪ We shall not be moved ♪ ♪ Just like a tree ♪ ♪ Planted by the water ♪ ♪ We shall not be moved ♪ ♪ Just like a tree ♪ ♪ That's planted by the water ♪ - In North Carolina today, a PCB cleanup operation became an object of protest, and 76 arrests.

Wyatt Andrews reports, the demonstrators had nothing against the cleanup, but plenty of qualms about where the PCBs were being shipped.

- Hold it, hold it!

Hold it, hold it.

We gonna wait for the trucks.

- [Trooper] Where are you wanting to go, Reverend?

- I want to go down to that dump site.

We want to block- - There's no trespassing on that site.

- I see the signs.

The land belongs to the people.

And what we gonna do- - Well.

- Wait, wait, wait a minute.

What we're gonna do is put up a human blockade.

I know y'all are friends.

I ain't worried about you.

I know you got to obey the law, I understand that- - Reverend.

- But I know where your heart is, so we all together, you know.

So we'll work that out.

- Reverend, we've got some trucks coming in here in a minute that's got to go in there.

- But that's why we here.

- And they're trying to- - We say we gonna stop it.

- Well, we're gonna ask you to move over to the side so that the trucks can come on through.

- We can't do that.

- Well, whenever they get here, and if you don't move, you'll be impeding.

- Okay, I understand that.

- We understand that.

[soft music] - The governor sent a proclamation by way of the highway patrol, which was read to us, stating that we were in violation and that we would be arrested if we did not disperse, at which time, 66 of us laid in the highway to block the trucks.

[people shouting] - I was arrested, and I think they didn't process us until late in the afternoon that day.

And when I got, I must have didn't get home until about six o'clock, 6:00 or 6:30.

And I saw her on the national news.

- [Newscaster 2] Kimberly Burwell was arrested, 10 years old.

She's in the fifth grade.

- I'm scared I might catch cancer.

- They took her to juvenile hall, and there was a couple of other kids that they took to juvenile hall.

- You're in violation of state law.

You're impeding normal flow of traffic.

[protesters shouting] You are all under arrest.

You're all under arrest.

[protesters shouting and singing] ♪ Ain't no time but now ♪ ♪ Black or white ♪ ♪ Ain't gonna stop us now ♪ ♪ Ain't gonna stop us now ♪ - [All] The people united will never be defeated!

The people united will never be defeated!

[key clinking] [soft music] - So I didn't know that the PCB, the protest was even going on.

But about 10 o'clock that morning, I got a call from the sheriff and said, "Mary, you need to be aware that they're gonna start to them people out there in Afton laying all in the road in front of dump truck, the highway patrol, they're gonna start arresting 'em and bringing 'em down."

And I remember asking him, "Well, where am I supposed to put 'em?"

You know, he started telling me, you know, how many it was.

I said, "Well, where am I supposed to put 'em?"

And he actually just hung up.

And before he could literally get off the phone, I looked at the door downstairs, and it was dust all across the grounds.

They were cars, highway patrol deputies.

Yard was full of 'em.

Well, yeah, the jail has a capacity of holding 34 inmates.

With the PCB disturbance, I'd have 'em on the floor.

But once we got all ourselves for the magistrate, he set up his little desk and chair out here.

We would just, he said, "Just send them in."

And he would do the processing, you know, at his convenience.

So as the highway patrol and the deputies would bring carloads of protestors in, this is where we would put 'em here.

All around the fence.

They would be at the fence.

The outside would come to the fence, and they would be talking, you know, as if they were really inmates, talking to others on the outside.

- Somebody!

- Somebody!

- May bring the PCB!

- May bring the PCB!

- But I am!

- But I am!

- Somebody!

- Somebody!

- I may go to jail!

- I may go to jail!

- But I am!

- But I am!

- Somebody!

- Somebody!

- Soul power!

- Soul power!

- People's power!

- People's power!

- Love power!

- Love power!

- Right on!

- Right on!

- We don't want no PCB!

- We don't want no PCB!

- [Jenny] The first day I went up to the protest, the songs are what pulled me in.

I mean, I remember them like yesterday.

♪ Black and white together ♪ - After people spoke, I remember them singing "We Shall Overcome", which everyone has heard.

And they linked arms like this, and swayed back and forth, and I thought, oh my gosh.

Not that I hadn't heard songs like that, but just being there in person reverberated in my soul.

And then when I went out to photograph them marching, I caught the emotions of the people, and the anger and the disbelief, and the indignation at the injustice of a landfill being sited that didn't meet, even meet EPA standards at the time.

People were very welcoming to me.

And I had to go back, develop the film myself.

And I do remember bringing up copies of some of the prints, possibly my contact sheets.

And I think once people saw what I was doing, not that their guard was up before, but I think they became more comfortable with me.

And I had the luxury, when I had free time, and wasn't in class to go back up to Warren County as often as I could.

- We met at Coley Springs Baptist Church, a meeting place, and logistically, within two miles of the dump.

We would march from Coley Springs Baptist Church down to the dump almost daily, - People who couldn't be arrested, they cooked, they organized the rallies, and they would always have someone at the church in the mornings to make coffee.

The whole community, I think, especially the Afton community, found a way to lend their support, whether they got arrested or not.

- Other people signed their property over so we could be bailed outta jail.

And it was people from all economic backgrounds, all educational backgrounds, everybody got involved at some level.

- And when we talked about people, it wasn't just Black, it was we as a county, we must fight.

And so we had people that came outta Hollister, and this is down to where the Saponi tribe is.

And it's not just one group of people, it's the people of Warren County.

It was an interracial mix of people.

- Some of the community ladies went home and fried some chicken, cooked some biscuits, and they brought it back to the jail and asked if they could feed the prisoners.

And they said no.

Well, they didn't take that answer.

And they stood across the street and we would say, "Throw me a wing, or chuck me a breast."

And they would throw the biscuit or the piece of chicken over the road, over the fence, and into our waiting hands.

- It was about leadership, but you also had people who cared about people.

We were all a part of the United Warren County, and what hurt one hurt the other, and that was why we came together and we worked together.

So there's opportunity for anyone who wants to be a part of civic engagement.

You've just gotta figure out where you fit in, and then you've just gotta do it.

- [Newscaster 3] State officials say the PCBs, which have caused cancer in laboratory rats, can be safely put in this landfill because the soil here is above well water, the area remote.

Warren County residents know they lost this fight today, but they are encouraged that they gave the state more opposition than expected from a county with just 17,000 people - Worth every second of it!

- Would you do it again?

- Yes, sir!

I'll do it again!

- You go get arrested at 10 in the morning, and you're not out 'til four.

Those are long hours.

You start at, you know, nine in the morning, it takes you an hour and a half to slowly march down there, and sing, and lay down.

And all of it was very time consuming.

Every day for six weeks, people marched and got arrested.

Some days, there'd be 60 some that got arrested and 200 marched, but there were 550, more than 550 arrests total in that six weeks.

That was pretty phenomenal, because you can't imagine until you're in a situation like this, what it takes to convince people to get involved in civil disobedience, particularly when you're doing it and it's not stopping it.

The trucks were coming in anyway.

It slowed the trucks down, it didn't stop it.

And that's why it took so much time, and they had to work at night.

[chuckles] [soft tense music] [soft tense music continues] [soft tense music continues] [soft tense music continues] - What Warren County did do for the first time was a direct intersection of the civil rights movement and the environmental movement.

These two movements prior to Warren County were separate and apart.

At Warren County, they intersected.

Even the state troopers, that were picking up children and women and putting them in jail, I could tell on their face, they knew they, they didn't want to do it, but they were ordered to do it.

Some of the truck drivers, I saw their facial expression.

You know, they put those trucks in park.

They were not gonna roll over people lying in the street.

- Overall, they were very careful to say to everybody, "This should be peaceful and nonviolent."

And of course what better way to do that also was through young people's voices.

People a lot of times won't listen to adults.

You may not think about the importance of something on an adult, but when you see a child, it makes you go, "Oh yeah, this is important."

[soft inspiring music] [soft inspiring music continues] - So a lot of the younger folks, as you say, Children's Day, had made a plan to go and be a part of the protest.

I was one of the ones who wasn't arrested, but was a part of that initiative, because we felt like, as the youth of that time, we had to take a stand, and we are that next generation, and we've gotta be in involved in this as well.

- We were doing it for the future.

We were doing it so we wouldn't be dumped on forever, and we would do it, we did it so that every community that was like us would realize, you know, march before it's too late.

We didn't know these things until the deal had been struck, all this behind the scenes.

If we had known it, we would've been fighting way earlier if we, you know.

But usually, they don't tell you that.

And to this day, they don't, because they know that anybody that's intelligent, and you don't have to be educated to be intelligent, is gonna fight them.

- [Benjamin] That was Reverend Leon White who called to the New York office of the United Church of Christ, and asked if I would come down to help lead the protest movement.

And I said, "Well, Reverend White, I'd be glad to come down," but I said, "The last thing I want to do is get arrested again in North Carolina after just spending most of the 1970s unjustly incarcerated."

But I knew the dangers.

So to me, that was a risk worth taking.

And so when other civil rights people heard that these arrests were taking place, some came that same day.

And for six weeks straight, over 500 people were arrested.

♪ Na, na, na, na, na ♪ ♪ Na, na, na, na ♪ ♪ Na, na, na, na, na, na, ♪ ♪ Na, na, na, na ♪ ♪ Now old Jim Hart, oh yeah ♪ ♪ He better watch out ♪ - Actually, that night I was in the Warren County Jail, I began, in my mind, and I wrote it out on some piece of paper.

I coined the term "environmental racism".

Not because I was angry about what had just happened to me personally.

But what I saw that day, there were other incidences of disproportionate exposure to these toxins in minority communities.

The difference that Warren County made was that the protest led to a national exposure.

And right after those demonstrations went on, those of us in the United Church of Christ, community church, we got hundreds of calls, literally, from Louisiana, from Mississippi, from Alabama.

All over the country, people are saying, "The same thing's going on in our community.

Can we organize a similar protest?"

That's what gave birth to the environmental justice movement.

- We don't want the difficulties that come, okay?

So I don't want to say we wanted the PCB.

I don't want difficulties in life, you know?

I really don't.

But because they come, and I stand up to them in difficulties, I'm stronger.

I'm a more determined person.

And I think as a result of being dumped upon, you felt that you had to stand up as a community.

And the resolve that comes from standing up makes you even more determined to do greater things, hmm?

- Our fight was, if you're going to put it here, just our dirt, nobody else's dirt, and then give us a promise that no other contaminant will be put in our county.

The state promised that.

So far, they have kept their promise.

So no, we don't look at it as being a defeat.

We look at it as being a victory that God gave us, 'cause we didn't do it by ourselves.

♪ Don't be discouraged, yeah ♪ ♪ When trouble's in your life, yeah ♪ ♪ Give back your burdens ♪ [all clapping rhythmically] ♪ And remove all misery and strife ♪ ♪ That's why we've come this far by faith ♪ ♪ Leaning on the Lord ♪ ♪ We're trusting ♪ ♪ Trusting in his holy word ♪ ♪ He never failed us ♪ ♪ He never failed me yet ♪ ♪ Whoa, whoa ♪ ♪ Whoa ♪ ♪ Can't turn around ♪ ♪ We've come this far by faith ♪ [all clapping] - You have a small thing that happened that other things grow out of.

It may not grow to be what you want, but you can see some benefits from it.

And it makes all the difference in the world of how you continue to be engaged in the community.

- Rise up!

- Ready to go!

- Rise up!

- Ready to go!

- Rise up!

- Ready to go!

- Rise up!

- Ready to go!

- Rise up!

- Ready to go!

- My natural inclination, of course, was to follow women like Dollie Burwell, who's now known as the mother of the environmental justice movement.

But my activism and my advocacy came from my beginnings, or my humble beginnings, with women like that who were on the forefront of this social justice movement.

- When I look out today, as I said this morning, I am looking forward to the day when they call me the grandmother of the environmental justice- [all cheering and laughing] - All right, Grandma!

- I wanna be the grandmother.

I want some of you young people to be the mother, and I wanna be the grandmother and the great-grandmother.

So I'm looking, I'm just, this just stirs my heart so good.

Again, I'm reminded that I am a daughter of hope!

I may be angry, but I got power!

[all cheering and clapping] - I'm an organizer.

I consider myself a community organizer, and someone who cares about justice, whether that's social justice, economic justice, my story, my journey makes me a community activist.

This is me right here.

That's one of the times that we went to jail, and we stayed in jail all night.

We were all marching that morning, and the children at South Warren Elementary School had become really, really afraid, because they were passing all these troopers with billy clubs, and they really felt like it was something happened that would kill them right away.

So as you can see, all of us who went to jail was kind of dressed up that day.

[laughing] We didn't have on our normal jeans and sweatshirts.

- Congresswoman Clayton took it to DC, you know, took her efforts there, and Dollie worked the local angle, you know?

So it's like the standard in terms of how you engage with true community participation, true community advocacy, having the stakeholders and the responsible parties work together.

You know, it's just, it checks all the boxes.

Now, you know, where do we go from here?

[soft atmospheric music] - [Eva] The inspiration and the hope, and the kind of determination to make something here, to do something yourself, and having to defend on this side against something that's encroaching on your right as a citizen to be free.

♪ We're gonna let it shine ♪ - And so the voter registration was intense.

That was the first time a Black had been elected as sheriff.

At least after reconstruction, okay?

And when I got elected, I was the first to be elected since 1901, since George White.

And it was a very, very jubilant time.

We weren't just serving because we were Black, we were serving 'cause we wanted to improve this community.

In fact, being engaged, having been engaged in Soul City, having been engaged at the state, put me in a position to provide that kind of leadership, hmm?

Because I brought not only the will to do, but also brought some experience in doing it.

- At some point, it's more than just about community organizing.

At some point, it's more about just articulating policy.

At some point, it becomes a matter of engagement and taking it to the next level where you put yourself there, not just complain to decision makers and the policy makers.

You become one of them, so you can advance your position, and advance the type of progressive policies that you think are necessary, not just for the generation that we're serving today, but for the generation that will follow us for our children and for our grandchildren, to make Warren County the state of North Carolina a better place.

[soft atmospheric music] - Let's see.

Anna's here, Wayne's here, Jenny's here, Sherry, Mark.

What's next?

We are gonna have everybody from the community members who are affected by the dumping all the way up to policy makers, so it'd be a great opportunity for us to begin to look moving forward.

And so this will be passed on to Cameron, and all the young folk who represent the young generation of activists who will continue the work.

So there's gonna be a real spiritual significance of it.

Definitely we want our young folk to be represented, as one thing, because they need to have pride in their county.

A lot of 'em don't see what happened here, and they think of us as being weak.

So this is to, again, to keep us centered, us centered in lifting up our young folk, lifting up us to really own this story.

Those are the updates.

And now I can exhale.

[laughing] It's been a nice busy, but I have to attribute it all to God.

I thank God for allowing me to do this work, and sending me such a dynamic team of folk to be a part of this bigger work.

[soft atmospheric music] - In 1986, I convinced the United Church of Christ to put up $100,000.

And so we had a renowned statistical research company to help us, not just crunch the numbers, but it's the question.

No one had ever asked the question before, is there a correlation between the racial composition of the community and the location of these toxic waste facilities?

Prior to us doing this study, most people would've told you, even sociologists would've said that it was poverty.

Poor people get dumped on.

That is true.

But when we did the study, it showed that poverty was not the leading social indicator.

It was race was the number one factor.

It was African American exposure, it was Latino exposure.

It was Asian American Pacific Islander exposure.

It was Native American exposure.

It was also white exposure.

It became a landmark publication.

Our study was so tight, from that point on, it was even used by the EPA to help develop environmental policy.

- There are not that many Black environmental geologists.

And a lot of the communities that have environmental problems are minority communities.

I would seek out these communities, and I would try to work to help bring about some solutions and enable them to see someone that looks like them working for them.

I was paid by the state, but work it for the community.

We had supposedly had a dry tomb landfill.

It was lined on the bottom, lined on the top.

No water was supposed to get in or out.

Of course we know liners fail, so there was water in the landfill, and they indicated that, oh, that was water that was entrapped with the soil when it was placed and there was no new water in the landfill.

But, again, by looking at the water levels over time, you saw that it had the seasonal cyclical fluctuations, which indicated that the water was coming in and going out.

It wasn't a separate pattern in the landfill that it was out of.

It was very similar.

The motivation went to, well, let's get this water out, we've gotta pump it out, haul it off for disposal.

And the community said, "No, we don't want to dump on another community.

The water has to stay in the landfill until it's treated and detoxified."

- We didn't make that choice.

We made a tough choice to keep it where it was and force the governor to detoxify it, which is something he had promised us.

- [Ken] You cannot fact out the continuity of Jim Hunt, 'cause it all goes back to Hunt's promise.

In 1982, the Warren record, that given technical feasibility, we will detoxify this site.

- [Deborah] The other thing he did was say, "This will only be for these PCBs.

It will never be open for anything else ever."

- [Ken] Well, the EPA came up with base catalyze decomposition, and we went through the RRP and all of that kind of stuff we had to go through.

And finally, it was that EPA contribution or invention, or whatever, that they use to detoxify the site.

- I have not been involved technically with the project since 2003.

I'm not even sure if they're still collecting samples, or anything like that.

There are new contaminants of concern that have come, that we've become aware of in the environment, and that we've never tested for before.

- One of the other great tragedies, there's been no concerted health study on the effects of that stuff in the community.

Anecdotally, we know of several, and they remembered people who had all kinds of illnesses that came up after the dumping.

- And as a result of the contaminations, the corporations, the funding, the opportunities that would've come with that dried up.

And if there was anything I feel like government could have done for us is let's make sure that these people who we have dumped on are given access to at least a quality hospital, clinics, and other resources, should they ever contract disease, cancer, that sort of thing.

And as we well know, that is definitely what did not happen in my hometown.

- It is not taboo to fetch what is at risk of being left behind.

We must embody the term Sankofa, remembering that in order to make positive progress, there must be continued movement forward, and also new learning as time passes.

[all applauding] - We talked about passing the torch, but torch to me means you're running forward.

You're all concerned about getting there.

And we find that the Sankofa bird represents what we want.

Sometime the process of equity is slow, and you have to go back and visit the past.

- To this new generation of activists, I love all our students that stand up, Warren County students, college students and you, yeah, you pass it to the younger generation, and we wanna acknowledge you.

[all cheering and clapping] We're passing the work!

We all honor this work!

We're so glad you're here.

- Warren County cannot be overstated, but there were other moments.

You know, James Farmer Jr., who was the founder of the Congress on Racial Equality, said at the height of the civil rights movement, that whatever we hope to accomplish in the fight for civil rights, if we do not save the environment, would be for nothing, because we would all know the brotherhood of extinction.

[birds chirping] - I think there's a lot more work to be done.

And that's something else I say, that we're all environmentalists.

Our choices, or our lack of, has an impact on our environment.

What we purchase, and what we use has an impact on our environment.

We might look at big oil industry, and what they might do as far as polluting the environment, but we also have to look at our own individual behaviors.

- Are the dollars there for multinational corporations to come in and clean up these communities?

Or are the dollars there for communities to engage with corporations and help clean up their own communities?

- When you think about the environmental justice movement in the United States, it serves as the foundational framework from where we get concepts now of climate justice that looks at, you know, disproportionate impacts and the legacy of our society's dependence on the fossil fuel infrastructure.

It is the foundational framework on which we build concepts like energy justice, where we see some of the most egregious energy burden.

People be spending up to one third of their disposable income, in many cases, just trying to heat or cool their homes - And their power bills are very high, and they only have a certain amount of money, and they're living in a trailer 'cause that's all they can get.

You know, that's part of that structural inequity that exists.

And they are dealing with climate issues.

- The climate justice movement involves a lot of earning and yearning for social justice internationally.

I refer to Cameron Oglesby as a young G. I'm an old G, and I have a responsibility to make sure that she has all the tools that she needs to open wider this journey of the movement for freedom, justice, and equality for all of humanity.

- We the young people are honored to accept the work, and the present and future labor of this movement, in leading it forward, but also never forgetting the people and the actions that got us here.

But we accept this work with the hope that the movement elders will continue to hold space with us, will educate us, those too young to have witnessed some of the fundamental moments in the movement's history.

Let's keep each other accountable, and continue to build great things together.

Thank you.

[all applauding] Addressing the climate crisis, addressing environmental issues, addressing environmental hazards, and injustices is about people.

It's about us as individuals, but also us as a collective, our collective wellbeing, our collective health.

And if we're not willing to hear out the people who are on the ground, most impacted by these issues, and incorporate not only their knowledge, whether it's ancestral knowledge, experiential knowledge, but their needs into the solutions that we are developing, then we're not really addressing the issue.

So I think that that aligns with what the Warren County protest stood for.

At its basest level, it's everything.

[people chatting] [soft atmospheric music] - I live less than a mile and a half, not down this road, but the fork road, it forks off, so the PCB dump is on the fork if you keep straight.

I'm like a mile and a half down that road.

So this was personal to me.

- Knowing that they were my age, that they were young people starting things from the ground up, and have been able to reach this point in their lives as icons and as legends, it's inspiring.

I don't know that they saw that in themselves when they were young and doing this work.

They were just doing the best they could, right?

And that's all that I can do.

I can do the best that I can, and know that there are people before me that have laid a foundation for me to do the work intentionally, and with perhaps greater impact moving forward.

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