The origins of environmental justice and Hazel Johnson

Environmental justice is a social movement based on providing social, political, and environmental equity and protections to marginalized and underprotected groups. People of color - particularly Black communities - bear a heavier environmental burden than other groups within the United States. (Rainey, et al 3) 

Black women and women of color have led the environmental justice movement and played an integral role in achieving environmental justice - in fact, 90 percent of active members in environmental justice movements are women, primarily women of color. (Rainey et al 3) 

 Hazel Johnson, a Black woman from Chicago, is widely regarded as the mother of the environmental justice movement. In 1979, Johnson discovered that the public housing project she lived in was built on top of a toxic landfill, which caused higher rates of cancer and respiratory illness among its residents. Following this discovery, Johnson formed an organization called “People for Communtiy Recovery,” which still exists to this day. (Persaud) Johnson’s organization serves to educate communities on environmental justice and improve the quality of life for residents who suffer from the effects of environmentl pollution, specifically within communities of color. 

 Largely, the environmental justice movement is an example of Black women mobilizing in response to institutionalized racism - and in response to the unequal exposure to environmental dangers that people of color face as a result of this institutionalized racism. While men have played a role within the movement, it is by and large an example of the idea written about in Audre Lorde’s “Uses of Anger: women responding to racism.” (Lorde 124) 

The environmental movement has excluded Black women since its genesis, but Black women and their responses have taken the environmental movement and expanded it into a social movement that fights not only for the environment, but for the people that live within it. Kimberle Crenshaw’s “Mapping the Margins” created a sociological context to the issue of domestic abuse within Black communities, specifically as it impacts Black women. (Crenshaw 1250) Crenshaw called for the use of intersectionality when studying this issue, and the Black women who created and lead the environmental justice movement are following a very similar path in addressing environmental justice. Many people - not only Black women - fight for climate justice and environmental reform, in the interest of securing safety for future generations from the effects of climate change. However, what is not often addressed is the reality that the impacts of this climate change, and these environmental dangers, disproportionately affect communities of color. 

 “The system of capitalism (and its afterbirth--racism) under which we all live has attempted by many devious ways and means to destroy the humanity of all people, and particularly the humanity of black people,” Frances Beale wrote in her piece “Double Jeopardy: To be Black and Female.” (Beale 145) One of the devious ways in which capitalism has attempted to destroy the humanity of Black people was the very event that led to the formation of the environmental justice movement. The Chicago housing projects were built on a toxic landfill because those responsible for its building had no regard for the humanity of its future residents, and undoubtedly because of cost benefits. The proceeding response from Black women and their communities was a direct response to this disenfranchisement and dehumanization. In fact, the environmental justice movement itself could be widely regarded as a consciousness of Black women, as it has become such an important part (whether known or not) of the lives of Black communities across the United States. 

 Works Cited: Crenshaw, Kimberle. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review, vol. 43, no. 6, 1991, pp. 1241–1299. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1229039. Accessed 30 Oct. 2020. Guy-Sheftall, Beverly, and Frances Beale. Words of Fire An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought. New Press, The, 2011. Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider. W. W. Norton & Company, 2000. Persaud, Krystal. “Environmental Justice History: Hazel M. Johnson.” Grouphug, Grouphug, 15 June 2020, grouphugtech.com/blogs/blog/environmental-justice-history-hazel-m-johnson. Rainey, Shirley A., and Glenn S. Johnson. “Grassroots Activism: an Exploration of Women of Color's Role in the Environmental Justice Movement.” Race, Gender & Class, vol. 16, no. 3/4, 2009, pp. 144–173. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41674682. Accessed 30 Oct. 2020.