The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency
celebrates
Black History Month!
What we now call Black
History Month originated in 1926, founded by Carter G Woodson as Negro History Week. The month of
February was selected in deference to Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln who were both born in
that month.
 Dr. Carter G. Woodson is the father of Black History Month. The son of a slave,
Carter G Woodson was born in New Canton, Virginia on December 19, 1875. He began high school at the
age of 20 and then proceeded to study at Berea College, the University of Chicago, the Sorbonne, and
Harvard University, where he earned a Ph.D. in 1912.
Carter G Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in 1915 to train
Black historians and to collect, preserve, and publish documents on Black life and Black people. He
also founded the Journal of Negro History (1916), Associated Publishers (1922), and the Negro Bulletin
(1937). Woodson spent his life working to educate all people about the vast contributions made by Black
men and women throughout history. Mr. Woodson died on April 3, 1950 and Black History Month is his
legacy.
Notable African Americans in Environmental Protection
 Dr. Robert Bullard is the Dean of the Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of
Public Affairs at Texas Southern University in Houston, Texas. He is often described as the
father of environmental justice.
Professor Bullard received his Ph.D. degree
from Iowa State University. He is the author of seventeen books that address sustainable development,
environmental racism, urban land use, industrial facility siting, community reinvestment, housing,
transportation, climate justice, emergency response, smart growth, and regional equity. Professor
Bullard was featured in the July 2007 CNN People You Should Know,
Bullard: Green Issue is Black
and White. In 2008, Newsweek named him one of 13
Environmental Leaders of the Century. And that same year, Co-op America honored him with its Building
Economic Alternatives Award (BEA). In 2010, The Grio named him one of the “100 Black History Makers in the Making” and
Planet Harmony named him one of Ten
African American Green Heroes.” And in 2012, he was featured in Welcomebooks
Everyday Heroes: 50 Americans Changing the World One
Nonprofit at a Time by Katrina Fried.
His book, Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class and Environmental Quality (Westview Press, 2000), is a
standard text in the environmental justice field. His most recent books include Just Sustainabilities:
Development in an Unequal World (MIT Press, 2003), Highway Robbery: Transportation Racism and New
Routes to Equity (South End Press, 2004), The Quest for Environmental Justice: Human Rights and the
Politics of Pollution (Sierra Club Books, 2005), Growing Smarter: Achieving Livable Communities,
Environmental Justice, and Regional Equity (MIT Press, 2007), and The Black Metropolis in the
Twenty-First Century: Race, Power, and the Politics of Place (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007). Dr.
Bullard is co-author of In the
Wake of the Storm: Environment, Disaster and Race After Katrina (Russell Sage Foundation, 2006) and
Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty: 1987-2007
(United Church of Christ Witness & Justice Ministries, 2007). His latest books include
Race, Place and
Environmental Justice After Hurricane Katrina: Struggles to Reclaim, Rebuild, and Revitalize New Orleans
and the Gulf Coast (Westview Press, 2009) and
Environmental Health and Racial Equality in the United States: Strategies for Building Just, Sustainable and
Livable Communities (American Public Health Association Press, 2011). He is completing a new book
project, The Wrong Complexion for Protection: How the Government Response
to Disaster Endangers African American Communities(New York University Press, 2012).
 Lisa P. Jackson “Outspoken on issues including
climate change and the need to protect poor communities from
experiencing
a disproportionate amount of environmental harm, Jackson pressed for limits on emissions from coal-fired
power plants and on
dumping mining waste into streams and rivers near mines.”
Administrator Lisa P. Jackson currently leads EPA’s
efforts to protect the health and environment for all Americans and plans to step down in the next few weeks.
AT USEPA she leads a staff of more than 17,000 professionals are working across the nation to usher in a green
economy, address health threats from toxins and pollution, and renew public trust in EPA’s work.
As Administrator, Jackson pledged to focus on core issues of protecting air and water quality, preventing
exposure to toxic contamination in our communities, and reducing greenhouse gases. She promised that all of
EPA’s efforts will follow the best science, adhere to the rule of law, and be implemented with
unparalleled transparency.
Jackson is the first African-American to serve as EPA Administrator. She has made it a priority to focus
on vulnerable groups including children, the elderly, and low-income communities that are particularly
susceptible to environmental and health threats. In addressing these and other issues, she has promised
all stakeholders a place at the decision-making table.
Before becoming EPA’s Administrator, Jackson served as Chief of Staff to New Jersey Governor Jon S.
Corzine and Commissioner of the state’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). Prior to
joining DEP, she worked for 16 years as an employee of the U.S. EPA.
Jackson is a summa cum laude graduate of Tulane University and earned a master’s degree in
chemical engineering from Princeton University.
 Hazel Johnson (1935-2011) and her daughter Cheryl Johnson together founded
People for Community Recovery (PCR) was founded in
June 1979 and was incorporated on October 25, 1982. It mission, to press for serious and long overdue repair
work in Altgeld Gardens, a Chicago Housing Authority development located on the South Side of Chicago.
PCR soon turned its attention to the more serious problems of urban environmental pollution when it was
discovered that the Southeast side of Chicago had the highest incidence of cancer of any area in the city.
PCR's founder and CEO, Hazel Johnson, made numerous calls around the country to educate herself regarding
the cancer rate in her own community. Later she connected with city and state health departments to investigate
reports on environmental problems surrounding Altgeld Gardens as well as information regarding industrial
pollution.
Ms. Johnson dedicated years learning about urban environmental issues and networking with other environmental
groups. After conducting her research, she learned that many waste disposal companies surrounded Altgeld
Gardens as well as manufacturing companies that produced and emitted thousands of pounds of pollutants into
the air, water and land. PCR found that due to the heavy concentration of industry, low income residential
communities on the Southeast side of Chicago were being exposed to substantial amounts of toxic chemicals
that could be responsible for negative health impacts.
With these facts in mind, PCR along with other residents from Altgeld Gardens began to address the
environmental problems within their community. For the past two decades, PCR has been applying pressure
on "corporate polluters" and government officials to make them aware of their negligence. It
is PCR's goal to make both corporations and the government accountable to the communities in which they
operate.
Concurrently, PCR has continually been educating itself and the community about urban environmental issues
and their relationship to industry. Through extensive research and partnerships, PCR has found a significant
correlation among various industrial processes – the byproducts of which pollute the air, land and water
– and the health status of urban minority communities. With perseverance, tenacity and dedication, PCR
continues to be a positive force not only within the Altgeld Gardens community, but within the Environmental
Justice movement at large.
 Naomi Davis of Blacks In Green (BIG),
based in Chicago, Illinois, is a community education and trade association working in the new green economy
to help link, leverage, and lead health and wealth benefits to communities of color, both here in the United
States and abroad. BIG is a network of individuals, non-profits, businesses, agencies, and coalitions –
a global green practices collective – committed to robust African diaspora participation in the age of
social, economic and environmental accountability and responsibility.
While BIG's "green" initiatives span a plethora of sectors, their two key initiatives include the
creation of BIG Villages and the Green Hubs in the 'Hood' Initiative. BIG Villages are naturally efficient
incubators for applying the spectrum of green technologies while BIG Hubs are their natural epicenters for
advocacy, training and partnerships for green collar jobs, careers and enterprise.
Naomi Davis, above left, is the founder and president of BIG. Ms. Davis is a Chicago attorney who consults
with the Chicago Department of the Environment on climate change and recycling. She works on the new
peer-reviewed journal Environmental Justice. She hosts (and produces) Chicago's first and only green-themed
talk show on public access TV. Davis also runs a green economics consultancy called Daughter's Trust, and
her
long-term goal is to convert 1,000 blighted acres on the Far South Side into a mixed-income
eco-development.
 Van Jones is president and co-founder of Rebuild the Dream, a platform for bottom-up,
people-powered innovations to help fix the U.S. economy.
A Yale-educated attorney, Van has written two New York Times Best Sellers:
The Green Collar
Economy, the definitive book on green jobs, and
Rebuild the Dream, a roadmap for progressives in 2012 and beyond. Van is currently a CNN Contributor.
In 2009, Van worked as the green jobs advisor to the Obama White House. There, he helped run the inter-agency
process that oversaw $80 billion in green energy recovery spending. Among his awards and honors:
- One of TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2009
- Recipient of the NAACP’s Image Award
- Rolling Stones’ 12 Leaders Who Get Things Done in 2012
- One of Essence Magazine’s 25 Most Inspiring African Americans in 2008
- One of Ebony Magazine’s 2011 Power 150
- One of Fast Company’s 12 Most Creative Minds on Earth
- Visiting Fellow in Collaborative Economics at Presidio Graduate School
- Member of the international Ashoka Fellowship
- A 2005 World Economic Forum “Young Global Leader”
- Former distinguished visiting professor at Princeton University
- Former Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and American Progress Action Fund
Van is the founder of Green For All, a national organization working to get green jobs to disadvantaged
communities. He was the main advocate for the Green Jobs Act; signed into law by George W. Bush in 2007,
the Act was the first piece of federal legislation to codify the term “green jobs.” Under the
Obama administration, it has resulted in $500 million for green job training nationally.
While best known as a pioneer in the environmental movement, Van has been hard at work in social justice
for nearly two decades, fashioning solutions to some of urban America’s toughest problems. He is the
co-founder of two social justice organizations: the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and Color of Change.
Van is on the board of several organizations and non-profits, including: National Resource Defense Council
(NRDC), Presidio, Center for America’s Future and Demos.
Further Reading
|
