This story comes from Warren County, North Carolina.  In the early 1980s, Warren County became a flash point in the fight for something that didn’t have a commonly used name at the time: environmental justice. 

These days, members of this small, “majority-minority” community are taking new approaches to raising environmental consciousness. 

Jereann King Johnson and Joe O’Connell have teamed up to tell the story of local environmentalism in the present day. 

Jereann has been involved in social justice work in the county since the 1970s.  She knows Warren County intimately. Joe, on the other hand, was drawn to this story through his work as a folklorist.  He lives in Durham, about an hours drive to the south of where our story takes place.

Learn more about PCBs and global environmental justice conflicts. 

(Image: Anti-PCB demonstration 1982. Credit: Mac Shaffer)

Slideshow of protests against PCB site in Warren County, photographer Mac Shaffer:

PCB March September 15, 1982, photos by Matt Cooper, Jr.