Benjamin Chavis: Difference between revisions

[[File:Afton, North Carolina 01.jpg|thumb|Highway marker in Warren County commemorating 1982 PCB landfill protests]]

Some have asserted that Chavis coined the term [[environmental racism]] in 1982, during [[environmental justice]] protests in Warren County, NC, although Carolyn A. Burrow (Adjoa Aiyetero) had used the term in 1970. Over the past four decades, Chavis has emerged as the "Godfather of the Environmental Justice Movement." Some have asserted that Benjamin Chavis cried out: "this is environmental racism!" at the moment of his arrest during the [[North Carolina PCB Protest, 1982|1982 PCB landfill protests]] in North Carolina, but legal scholar Richard J. Lazarus found this likely apocryphal; Chavis first was recorded using the term in 1987.<ref>Lazarus, Richard J. "Environmental Racism-That's What It Is." ''U. Ill. L. Rev.'' (2000): 255; Carolyn Burrow, “Environmental racism,” Proud Vol. 1 No. 10 (December 1970), 6-9.</ref> He writes in the forward of a 1993 testimonial of the environmental justice movement:

 

In 1986 Chavis conducted and published the landmark national study: ''Toxic Waste and Race in the United States of America'', that statistically revealed the correlation between race and the location of toxic waste throughout the [[United States]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Chavis |first=Benjamin |date=1987 |title=Toxic Wastes and Race in The United States |url=https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1310/ML13109A339.pdf |journal=Commission for Racial Justice}}</ref> Chavis is considered by many environmental grassroots activists to be the "Godfather of the post-modern environmental justice movement" that has steadily grown throughout the nation and world since the early 1980s.{{citation needed|date=February 2014}}