NC Health News: “The Autumn of 1982 was turbulent for Warren County, N.C., residents. Then-Gov. Jim Hunt decided to place a toxic waste landfill in the Afton community to house soil laced with polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, that had been collected from sites where it was illegally dumped along a several-hundred-mile stretch of state roads.
For six weeks, hundreds of primarily Black residents and their allies received national and international intention for staging protests. They used their bodies as human shields to prevent trucks loaded with contaminated soil from reaching the landfill.
Although protesters could not stop the dump from being placed in their community, their actions helped give rise to what is now known as the environmental justice movement. Four decades later, what started as a fringe grassroots movement is finding footing in mainstream spaces.
And now, from a small gallery in Durham to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, photo exhibits are displaying the ongoing influence of Warren County’s story.”