In mid-April, the U.S. Department of Justice revoked a settlement that dealt with wastewater problems in Alabama’s Lowndes County. Only a week prior to that decision, which sought to advance “President [Donald] Trump’s mandate to end illegal DEI and environmental justice policies,” I sat in a room with civil rights activists and learned about the contentious civil rights history of Lowndes County.
The county, which had an ominous nickname in the 1960s, lies between Selma and Montgomery. It was called “Bloody Lowndes” due to the high rates of racial violence against African Americans. The events at the civil rights march in Selma in March 1965 that became known as “Bloody Sunday,” along with other injustices, inspired the creation of the Lowndes County Freedom Organization, an independent political party.
Learning about Lowndes gave me a deeper understanding of the Civil Rights Movement and how it plays into today’s ecopolitics. There are places like Lowndes, and others such as Flint, Michigan, and Jackson, Mississippi, that have turbulent civil rights histories and water management problems. I wondered, Is there a link between the protests of the past and the environmental injustices of the present?
Why We Wrote This
A story focused on
As water management problems arise – and in some cases go unaddressed – in places such as Alabama, Michigan, and Mississippi, our columnist wondered, Is there a link between civil rights protests of the past and the environmental injustices of the present?
“There is a direct connection from the battles of the Civil Rights Movement to today’s environmental sacrifice zones. Flint, Jackson and Lowndes are just a few out of thousands of recent unjust actions,” says Bruce Strouble, a scholar and author of the 2024 book “By Any Dreams Necessary,” in an online interview. “These aren’t coincidences. These are communities that dared to demand dignity, and now they face poisoned water, broken infrastructure, and government abandonment.”
In November 2021, when the Department of Justice began its investigation of Alabama and Lowndes’ health departments, it was the first-ever environmental justice probe under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
“Sanitation is a basic human need, and no one in the United States should be exposed to risk of illness and other serious harm because of inadequate access to safe and effective sewage management,” then-Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Kristen Clark said at the time.
Jake May/The Flint Journal-MLive.com/AP/File
The probe was launched in the aftermath of a peer-reviewed study noting high rates of hookworm infection in Lowndes, a collaborative effort between Baylor’s College of Medicine and the Equal Justice Institute. According to EJI, more than 1 in 3 people (34%) tested positive for traces of hookworm, which, the group has pointed out, was a 19th-century disease.
When the DOJ presented its findings and established the settlement with Lowndes in 2023, it felt like a turning point at the cross section of civil rights and environmental justice, and Ms. Clarke herself said, “The fight for environmental justice is also a fight for racial justice.”
But now, the landmark decision is being rolled back by the current administration, whose rhetoric against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives also takes aim at long-standing civil rights legislation.
In 2017, the same year that Lowndes’ hookworm crisis made national news, the Michigan Civil Rights Commission issued a 138-page report, “Flint Water Crisis: Systemic Racism Through The Eyes of Flint.” It is listed on the state’s Department of Civil Rights webpage with this ignominious paragraph: “After a year-long investigation, three public hearings, testimony of more than 150 residents, community leaders, experts, academics and government officials, the Michigan Civil Rights Commission finds that race and racism played a significant role in causing the Flint water crisis, and all races were victims.”
Taking governmental responsibility into consideration, Dr. Strouble calls the DOJ’s reversal on Lowndes a “betrayal, not just of environmental justice, but of human rights and dignity.”
“When raw sewage backs up into people’s homes and the government turns its back because of anti-DEI politics, it tells Black communities their suffering is acceptable collateral. This isn’t just a policy shift, it’s state-sanctioned neglect,” says Dr. Strouble, former sustainability program coordinator for Tallahassee, Florida. “We’re watching decades of environmental racism go unpunished because this administration fears equity more than it fears injustice.”
Solutions for environmental justice seem few and far between at times. When the 2020 Democratic presidential primary reached South Carolina, the plight of Denmark, South Carolina, reached national news. The chemical HaloSan, not approved by the Environmental Protection Agency for drinking water, had been used in the city’s water supply. The organizing efforts of residents such as Deanna Miller Berry were acknowledged by politicians and covered by outlets such as NPR.
Five years later, a proposed $1 million settlement has been reached on behalf of the residents. After expenses, though, the $600,000 payout to about 3,000 people may not feel like justice to a town that said its drinking water was making residents sick.
Nevertheless, advocates are continuing the fight.
“The environmental justice movement is shaken, but we are not giving up,” Dr. Strouble writes. “We will continue fighting back against the administration’s rollbacks on human rights, environmental protections and DEI initiatives. … For many of us this is a life or death struggle.”
