Keywords: environmental justice, community, conversation, networking, webinar
Home to over 800,000 people, Charlotte is the largest city in North Carolina and the 14th largest city in the United States, yet ranks last place out of the 50 largest U.S. cities in terms of economic mobility for its residents. Charlotte is a vibrant and diverse “New South” city, but with underlying, less-visible histories of economic and racial inequality forged at the intersections of segregation and policing, extractive industry, and environmental precarity. Sewage spills in Sugar Creek lower the quality of life for residents of the neighborhood and for the creatures that use the creek to sustain life. Air pollution among neighborhoods divided by redlining, freeway construction, and “urban redevelopment,” coal ash and oil spills in suburbs of Charlotte such as Lake Norman, Huntersville, and Mooresville, have caused cancer clusters and health issues for the residents of these areas. The Huntersville Colonial Pipeline spill in 2020 is called the largest in the nation. These environmental hazards lower the quality of life for all residents, but there are especially harsh and disparate impacts on the poor and in communities of color.
Despite these facts, if you were to mention Charlotte to someone they would likely only think of its towering uptown skyscrapers, craft beer and lively nightlife, and booming banking industry — not of ongoing environmental injustices. Even fewer would recognize Charlotte as a significant location in the creation of the environmental justice movement. In fact, the term “environmental racism” was first coined by a UNC Charlotte alumnus named Benjamin Chavis in 1982. In 1987, Chavis also published a groundbreaking report in partnership with the United Church of Christ’s Commission for Racial Justice, “Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States,” which found that three out of five Black and Hispanic Americans lived in a community that posed a significant risk to human health and life according to EPA standards. Another notable UNC Charlotte alumnus, Thomas James "T. J." Reddy, used art to draw attention to the unjust gentrification of Charlotte’s historic Brooklyn neighborhood — a self-sustainable, predominantly Black community that thrived before falling victim to the city’s urban renewal plans in the 1970s.
Why, then, are so many people seemingly unaware of, or perhaps uninterested in, environmental justice in Charlotte? It could be many reasons. Maybe some simply don’t know. Maybe those who do know aren’t sure where to begin to take action. Maybe scholars like myself aren’t presenting our research in the most accessible, digestible way. All of these issues are what I intend to tackle in an upcoming project: “Environmental Justice in Charlotte: Study and Practice.” This webinar series will bring together students, scholars, and activists to discuss the history of environmental justice in Charlotte, strategies for organizing, and methods for ethically teaching about the topic. By the end of the series, I hope that both participants and viewers will have made connections, learned about their city, and become motivated to do the necessary work to combat injustice.