Honoring the mothers of environmental justice
Dollie Burwell and Hazel Johnson have been under-recognized in environmental studies—and relegated to mere footnotes in church history.
(Left) Dollie Burwell and other protesters in Warren County, North Carolina, in 1982; (right) Hazel Johnson, in Chicago.
Touted for its pristine waters and health benefits, Warren County, North Carolina, was the last place one would expect to find a toxic waste dump. That is, Dollie Burwell realized, until you factor in race. In 1978, a trucking company, looking to cut costs, dumped more than 30,000 gallons of toxic waste—including deadly manufacturing chemicals called polychlorinated biphenyls—alongside roadways in Warren County and elsewhere in the state. To address the problem, the state bought farmland in Warren County and began plans to move the PCB-laced toxic waste to a landfill site there.
There was just one problem: the local community drew well water from a watershed ten feet below that farmland. Warren County was a poor area whose population included North Carolina’s highest percentage of Black residents. Many of them came to believe that the state was treating them as expendable. Burwell, who lived in the community, understood that those who would be most impacted by this decision were Black women and children, those with voices least likely to be heard. She decided to turn up the volume.
At the same time as Burwell was addressing the environmental racism in her rural community, Hazel Johnson was hearing God’s call in Chicago. After losing her husband to lung cancer and discovering that the housing project where she lived sat on a toxic waste dump, she began to organize and advocate in a way that continues to reverberate to this day.
