2024 Fall Issue of Urban Land - 59

this [discrimination] is not just
an isolated incident, to [be
able to] establish a pattern.
And that's where I think this
whole idea [exists] of kick-ass
sociology and using this framework
of marrying data, science,
and facts with action and community
mobilization to achieve
transformative change.
In sociology, we have something
called serendipity. The
study found five out of five
of the city-owned landfills, six
of the eight city-owned incinerators,
and three of the four
privately owned landfills were
located in mostly Black Houston
neighborhoods. In other
words, this discovery [that
about] 82 percent [of landfills
are located] in Black communities,
but Blacks [made up only]
25 percent of the population-
that was serendipitous.
UL: What was the reaction to
your research?
Bullard: There was a universal
state of denial, even in the
courts and even with the facts
. . . . There were still people
who didn't want to believe
environmental racism was real
and practiced in Houston. It
took years-in some cases,
more than a decade-for civil
rights and environmental rights
to converge. This convergence
was our environmental justice
movement.
UL: How did you find your
way from writing books to
helping communities [that are]
experiencing environmental
racism?
Bullard: I wrote all of my
books, over the decades, with
the idea of using them to
operationalize kick-ass sociology
and assist impacted
and vulnerable populations
and communities [to] make
change. In 1994, I left the University
of California, Riverside
and went back to my alma
mater, Atlanta University [now
Clark Atlanta University], and
started an environmental justice
resource center-an education
and training, research,
policy, civic engagement, and
advocacy institute housed at
an HBCU [historically black
college and university].
It is worth noting [that] the
nation's first environmental justice
centers at American [universities]
were set up in the
1990s. All five of these centers
were set up by Black scholars
at HBCUs: Xavier University of
Louisiana, Clark Atlanta University,
Hampton University of
Virginia, and Texas Southern
University.
Dr. Robert Bullard (center) with President Joe Biden, who signs Executive Order 14096 on
Revitalizing Our Nation's Commitment to Environmental Justice for All in April 2023.
Back then, we had no institutional
infrastructure and
very little resources. So, we
decided we needed centers
at our schools, and that's how
we started to build out the
institutional infrastructure and
community/university partnership
model. We developed,
tested, and deployed this
research model before it had
a name. We would [gather]
and have our experts come
together from the different
schools and support struggles
on the ground, whether it was
Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas,
Alabama, Florida . . . mainly in
the Jim Crow South, but not
exclusively the South, since
our HBCU environmental justice
[EJ] centers, in the early1990s
[part] of our movement,
served as the go-to technical
and research support arm for
the entire EJ movement.
UL: The centers were initially
housed at the HBCUs. Where
were predominantly white
institutions [PWIs] on the issue
in the early 1990s?
Bullard: You must understand
that fighting against environmental
racism and oppressive
systems targeting Black and
other people of color [and]
fighting for environmental
justice in the early 1990s was
risky business. There was no
groundswell of PWIs rushing
in to assist Black and brown
communities overburdened
with pollution and poverty. You
also must remember [that]
many of these same PWIs in
FALL 202 4
URBAN LAND
59
BEST PRACTICES
DR. ROBER T BULL ARD AND THE BULL ARD CENTER F OR ENVIRONMENT AL JUS TICE
2024 Fall Issue of Urban Land

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