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| 9 1 Race, Place, and the Environment in a Small Southern Town A Personal Perspective from Robert D. Bullard Who we are often defines what we do. Many of our experiences also help define and shape our worldview. This chapter chronicles my early years growing up in the racially segregated South (Alabama and Louisiana) and the influence of those years on my thinking about race, environment, disaster , social equity, and government responsibility. It is written from a first-person perspective and provides unique insights into my journey to becoming an environmental sociologist and one of the founders of the environmental justice movement in the United States. The analysis places in context three decades of research, policy work, and activism—all directed toward getting various levels of government to respond fairly and equitably to natural and man-made disasters and health emergencies in communities inhabited by African Americans and other people of color.1 It should be made clear that much of what has transpired in my efforts to move environmental justice into mainstream thinking was largely a result of events and circumstances beyond my control and had a lot to do with being “drafted” into this struggle before the national movement took hold. Much of the credit for getting me started is owed to Linda McKeever Bullard , my former wife, who for more than six years singlehandedly held back one of the second largest waste disposal companies in the world, Browning Ferris Industries (BFI), with her lawsuit and legal challenges. While I have gained some degree of notoriety for my environmental justice work, her contribution to developing the legal theory behind challenging environmental racism has pretty much gone unnoticed in the field. However, a few legal scholars, such as the late Luke Cole, recognized Linda’s work early on and patterned many of his legal theories and much of his analysis on her Bean v. Southwestern Waste Management Corp. lawsuit. 10 | The Wrong Complexion for Protection Over the past three decades, I have written more than fifteen books and hundreds of articles that address environmental justice, environmental racism , land use and industrial facility siting, housing and residential segregation , transportation, suburban sprawl, smart growth, livable communities, regional equity, sustainable development, disaster response, and climate justice. All of my writings use an environmental justice and racial equity framework. Environmental justice is seen as not only a civil right but a basic human right.2 Race matters. Also, place matters. Long before I became a sociologist and an environmental justice scholar, growing up in the segregated South, I witnessed up close and personal how race and place combine to create opportunity for whites and barriers for blacks. For me, it was not theory or something I had to read in a book or discover in the library. Nevertheless, my parents provided me with a wealth of books and other reading materials so that I could expand my mental boundaries beyond my isolated small-town southern roots. This exposure led me to believe early on that clean air, clean water, and safe housing are basic human rights—even though they were denied me and many of my fellow black residents who lived in my segregated hometown in southern Alabama. Making the Race-Environment Connection—My Early Years in Elba Much of my writings over the past years are rooted in my early years growing up in the region that gave rise to the modern civil rights movement in Montgomery , Alabama, in December 1955—which began with Rosa Park’s single defiant act of refusing to give up her seat on the bus to a white man. Elba is a city located in Coffee County, Alabama. In 2000, the population was 4,185. The racial makeup of the Elba is 64 percent white, 34 percent black, and 2 percent other races. Elba is a typical small southern town where blacks and whites live in segregated neighborhoods. Although blacks made up one-third of the city’s population, whites governed the town as if its African American citizens were invisible. As late as 1964, a decade after Brown v. Board of Education, Elba’s blacks attended segregated schools and were still being served at the back door of restaurants or at the “colored” window (though the “colored” signs had come down). In Elba, Jim Crow translated into white neighborhoods receiving the “best of the best,” including libraries, street lighting, paved roads, sewer and water lines, garbage pickup, swimming pools, and flood control measures years before black...

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