Description
Transforming Environmentalism explores a moment central to the emergence of the environmental justice movement. In 1978, residents of predominantly African American Warren County, North Carolina, were that the state planned to construct a land fill to carry 40 thousand cubic yards of soil contaminated with PCBs from illegal dumping. They responded with a 4-year resistance, ending in a month of protests with over 500 arrests from civil disobedience and disruptive movements.
Eileen McGurty traces the evolving approaches residents took to contest environmental racism of their community and displays how activism in Warren County spurred greater political debate and turned into a style for communities around the nation.