Marjorie (Margie) Richard

Marjorie Richard has spent a majority of her life fighting environmental racism in her own backyard and throughout the world. She grew up in the Old Diamond neighborhood in Norco, Louisiana which was predominantly Black and known as Cancer Alley. Old Diamond consisted of four square blocks and was in between a Shell plant and oil refinery. Many people in this neighborhood suffered from health ailments, cancer, and birth defects. Over a third of the kids in Norco also had asthma or bronchitis. Although some people were able to move, socio-economic conditions made it impossible for others to do so. Richard witnessed this and in 1973 she decided to become an activist after a Shell pipeline exploded and killed two people. In 1988 a major industrial accident also killed 7 workers and released 159 million pounds of toxins into the air.

The Shell Oil Refinery explosion on May 5th, 1988 in Norco, Louisiana (The Raging Pelican Journal).

Richard fought to hold Shell accountable for causing so many health issues in her community. In 1989 she founded ‘Concerned Citizens of Norco’, which demanded Shell provide the community with resettlement costs. For 13 years, Richard campaigned to seek justice by holding press conferences, collaborating with researchers, and holding workshops to empower her neighbors. In the year 2000, Shell agreed to reduce its emissions by 30% and pay for the relocation of residents who lived on the two streets closest to it. Richard and the ‘Concerned Citizens’ were not satisfied and continued to fight until they secured a $5 million community development fund and funds to relocate all four Old Diamond streets. After securing this, Richard continued to work with Shell to create an initiative that improved the environmental health and safety in Norco. However, Richard did not stop there - she also became an advisor for other communities fighting for justice against corporate pollution, and traveled abroad to speak at the World Summit on Sustainable Development.

Protests against Shell Oil, organized by Concerned Citizens of Norco (Tufts Library).

Marjorie Richard’s dedication to fight for those affected by environmental racism led her to be the recipient of the 2004 Goldman Environmental Prize. Her long years of sacrifice which resulted in a landmark environmental justice victory inspire many, and her continuation to educate communities around the world empowers them to fight against environmental racism.

Marjorie Richard with the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2004 (Goldman Prize).

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Sources:

(1) “Margie Richard.” Goldman Environmental Foundation, 3 Mar. 2020. www.goldmanprize.org/recipient/margie-richard/. 

(2) Petersen, Melissa. “28 Black Environmentalists.” Medium, Medium, 18 June 2020. medium.com/@melpete94/black-history-month-environmentalists-69b16007da8f.

African Americans & Environmentalism

Joining Our City Forest has opened my mind to many more questions I have about my own community. First, I would like to say that I identify as a young black woman trying to navigate a space very new to me. I have recently relocated to the Bay Area from Virginia to join Our City Forest as an AmeriCorps member. I grew up in rural central Virginia, with around 80 percent of the population being white. The house I grew up in was in the middle of the woods and my neighbors were mainly farmers. They raised cattle for dairy production and to sell as livestock. We even had turkeys enter my yard from these nearby fields - fields which had been passed down by generations on my father’s side of the family.

Growing up in my community, I was educated on the importance of how and why we need to keep our land clean. In middle school there were several agriculture classes you could take as an elective. In elementary school we had some of the local farmers give us a crash course on how to make homemade apple juice or have a small farmer’s market for children. While I recognize that everyone has a different upbringing, my childhood experience has shaped me to take an interest in the environment. As a minority in my hometown, I have had some time to reflect on the relationship between black and brown communities and the environment.

Orange County, Virginia

It is no secret that the communities most impacted by climate change are communities of color in the United States. Black and brown communities tend to reside in areas with higher pollution, circumstantial to the lower cost of living in these places. These areas tend to have fewer rural environments, such as outdoor parks, that provide us with many physical and mental health benefits. The end of slavery in the South in the late 1800’s caused many black Americans to move away from the South and from rural areas. This period is often referred to as The Great Migration. During the Great Migration, African Americans moved into industrial cities to find work and later helped fill labor jobs created by the events of World War I. After years of working the land as slaves, it is not difficult to imagine why African Americans fled from farmland and to urban areas. This exodus from rural regions has created a physical and mental block between African Americans and the environment because they associate open land with slavery and the Jim Crow era. With all that has expanded us as black people in the past century, we have also managed to lose our connection to the environment and the land.

“I want to rest again in southern fields, in grass and hay and clover/bloom; to lay my hand again upon the clay baked by a/southern sun, to touch the rain-soaked earth and smell/ the smell of soil.”

— Southern Song - Margaret Walker

The 1900’s were also a source of the Segregation Era. The Segregation Era refers to the different zoning and sectioning off of neighborhoods and community spaces to ensure certain communities are not integrated, and creates a literal barrier between the black and brown communities and everyone else. The segregation of certain communities generated a slate of health issues because black and brown communities were sectioned off into areas with higher levels of air pollution, land pollution, noise pollution, and water pollution. Particularly in the hard times we live in today, black and brown communities have a higher chance to develop health issues than the majority of other communities.

A sign posted across from a federal housing project in Detroit, MI in 1942 (Harry S. Truman Library & Museum).

Interaction with nature has been proven to directly reduce mental health issues, such as anxiety and depression. In addition, nature, and specifically trees, provide many benefits to the climate by cleaning our air and water stores, reducing urban heat island effects, and providing protection from extreme weather events such as landslides, wildfires, and flooding. 

To allow all communities to profit from these ecological benefits, and to re-connect black and brown communities to the environment, I believe a solution is to educate children in our school systems about the environment and its benefits. By incorporating environmental curriculum into our schools, we can work towards keeping the environment healthy and safe for everyone. In addition, I believe we should create programs that educate black and brown communities on the spaces they reside so that they can feel more connected to their surrounding environment, and from this connection develop a desire to protect the land. Some program ideas could be the creation of small projects that allow people to work in the environment, such as learning to plant a shrub, or how to care for various tree species, or the benefits of converting a lawn. The environment is always a continuous struggle because of opposing views on climate change and in turn the legislation that is implemented. Planting trees helps to alleviate climate change, despite occurring on a small scale, and is a benefit that lasts long-term. Our City Forest is an organization that aims to offer the benefits of trees and green spaces to all communities in the Bay Area. We dedicate a lot of time helping others to get involved and learn new environmental skills. A great place to start learning a couple of simple practices on how to take care of a plant is on the Our City Forest website.

In addition to sharing Our City Forest’s resources, I would like to share the names of a few people who belong to smaller communities in the Bay Area or San Francisco area that are helping to create environmental change. First we have Aniya Butler, who is a young, black, high school student and climate activist fighting for social justice. She fights for both of these causes because she knows that if the environment is in poor condition, it affects the overall health of the people in these communities. Second we have Ariana Rickard, who is a biologist and climate activist. She believes that people of color are not promoted in the environmental fields and advocates for change within this area. Lastly, Will Allen is the founder of Growing Power Incorporation. Growing Power is a non-profit organization and land trust that supports farmers to produce high-quality, safe, and affordable crops. He also takes charge on agriculture, food policy, and expanding the field of urban agriculture. These are a few names of people who inspire me to continue to fight to make our world better and safer. The current push for social justice and climate justice are connected to one another because they are both fighting for human rights; the right to drink fresh clean water, the right to breathe fresh air, and the right to live longer, healthier lives.

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Sources:

Bell, Jasmine. “5 Things to Know About Communities of Color and Environmental Justice.” Center for American Progress, 8 May 2017, www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/news/2016/04/25/136361/5-things-to-know-about-communities-of-color-and-environmental-justice/. 

Gardiner, Beth. “Unequal Impact: The Deep Links Between Racism and Climate Change.” Yale E360, Yale School of the Environment, 9 June 2020, e360.yale.edu/features/unequal-impact-the-deep-links-between-inequality-and-climate-change.

Hill Gordon, Sherita. “Coronavirus in African Americans and Other People of Color.” Johns Hopkins Medicine, Johns Hopkins Medicine, 20 Apr. 2020, www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/covid19-racial-disparities. 

Morris, J.D. “Climate Activism, Racial Justice Intersect in Bay Area Protests.” San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Chronicle, 24 June 2020, www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Climate-activism-racial-justice-intersect-in-Bay-15361543.php. 

Pace, David. “Minorities Suffer Most from Industrial Pollution.” NBCNews.com, NBCUniversal News Group, 14 Dec. 2005, www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna10452037. 

Rickard, Ariana. “Open Forum: Environmental Movement Lacks People of Color.” San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Chronicle, 9 Sept. 2019, www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Open-Forum-Environmental-movement-lacks-people-14423063.php. 

“Celebrating Black Environmentalists during Black History Month.” Sfenvironment.org - Our Home. Our City. Our Planet, 5 Feb. 2020, sfenvironment.org/article/celebrating-black-environmentalists-during-black-history-month. 

“10 Ways Your Class Can Help Save the Earth.” The Teachers Academy, 11 Dec. 2019, theteachersacademy.com/10-ways-your-class-can-help-save-the-earth/.

Between the World and Me

“It does not matter if the agent of those forces is white or black - what matters is our condition, what matters is the system that makes your body breakable.”

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

Difficult truths will crash upon you as you read Between the World and Me. Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote this novel as a letter to his son. Follow along in American history with Coates as he grows up in West Baltimore, attends college in Washington D.C., and has a child in New York. He paints a picture of his youth that is vivid and reveals some of the facets of growing up in this environment. He points out to his son the reality of school, his neighborhood, the streets, and his experience within them. Throughout the novel, Coates relates his experiences with the fact that black people in America lack the autonomy of their own bodies, a privilege many take for granted. He relates the disturbances in the community, his brawls, the culture of the streets, to his and other black peoples’ loss of control of their own bodies. Coates uses his experience to guide both readers of color and white readers into his reality. He is introspective and not pretentious as he carries the reader through his childhood and young adulthood.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, American author and journalist

The book begins with his own son’s anguish, pain caused by the outcome of the shooting of Tamir Rice. A 12-year-old boy whose body was stolen for carrying a toy gun in Cleveland, OH in 2014. Coates’ son at this point in time is also 12. Rice’s killers were not indicted. This is the same year as the murder of Eric Garner, Tanisha Anderson, and Michael Brown (among many others), and less than 2 years after the murder of Treyvon Martin, another teenage black boy. His son grew up seeing this injustice, and Coates makes a point to connect these tragedies with the history of America and the systematic processes of racism that he himself has experienced. He connects these feelings with his own experiences growing up in Baltimore.

As Coates becomes a young man, he reflects to his son his own emotions about these systems and how his mindset has evolved to address these challenges. Coates attended Howard University. He calls it ‘The Mecca’ in the book as a place of knowledge and mental expansion. He talks about the women he met there, the friends he made, and the overall atmosphere of the campus. He also talks about leaving this bubble and his experiences in Northern Virginia. 

Howard University - A federally chartered, historically Black University in Washington D.C.

Like his son, Coates experienced the agony and confusion of the murder of his friend, Prince Jones in 2000. Jones was shot in the back 5 times by an out-of-uniform officer in Fairfax County. The officer had followed him from Prince George’s County. Neither county prosecuted the officer who later claimed a case of mistaken identity as the reason he ended Prince Jones’s life. Coates elaborates on Jone’s death and connects it with the community, families, and perspective of black bodies being taken without consequence. Coates illuminates hard to digest truths about American history. Affluent people, especially white people, have profited from the treatment of black people since the slavery era. This abuse has continued into the present-day systems. Coates emphasizes that the Dream, his own version of the American Dream, does not exist without racist injustice, as material prosperity here in America is inevitably tied to the exploitation of black bodies.

“To be black in the Baltimore of my youth was to be naked before the elements of the world, before all the guns, fists, knives, crack, rape, and disease. The nakedness is not an error, nor pathology. The nakedness is the correct and intended result of policy, the predictable upshot of people forced for centuries to live under fear.”

This is a book about American history. A touching and thought-provoking experience as every parent can attest to the love and best wishes for their own children. “Black people love their children with a kind of obsession. You are all we have, and you come to us endangered.” He wants his son to embrace the fears and realities of modern America. His son cannot forget the tragedy of the black experience which will allow him to remember and respect the past as to not drown within the Dream, a whitewashed experience of American culture. He, like all parents, wants to see a life for their child which is better than that of their own. 

Take your time reading this novel. While the vocabulary is not advanced, the message is introspective and requires time to reflect. White readers may feel uncomfortable, but just as edge zones of ecosystems host the widest variety of biodiversity and growth, so too do our ‘edge zones’ provide an environment to learn and grow. As a white reader, I took 10 pages in, then 2 minutes to reflect. It took me a while to actually get through the book. But this is a book that deserves your time. After its publication in 2015, the message of this book was seemingly ignored with the continuation of the disregard for black bodies. George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Antwon Rose Jr. (and many more), have all died at the hands of police in just this year alone. We can’t have an equitable system if we continue to disregard black bodies. Embracing diverse communities helps not only society but our environment. From Flint, MI to Cancer Alley, LA we can see the connections between the disregard for black bodies and the environment. We cannot leave behind neighborhoods and marginalized community members as we ‘Green Silicon Valley’. Read this book, reflect, discuss it with friends and family.

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