Black and Green: The New Eco-Warriors - tin foil - Top

Originally published in the July 2008 EBONY

The legacy of activism and awareness that has been part of the African-American experience has found a familiar battlefront: planet Earth. Since the days of George Washington Carver, who in the late 1800s transformed the lowly peanut into a cash crop that saved the South, Black folks have been in tunewith the planet and its natural resources.

"Caring about the Earth and future generations is very consistent with African indigenous values," notes environmental activist Van Jones, one of four eco-warriors profiled this month's in Ebony.

"Somehow we bought into the thought that it was a hippie thing. It was really our commitment to be good stewards of the Earth. Our great-grandmother's values are coming into vogue. We should be leading the charge on fighting against pollution and poison. These are not White values.
These are universal values."

We look at others‹from actor/director Mario Van Peebles and actress Kerry Washington to activist Majora Carter‹who have decided to transform their lives by  making their world a cleaner and greener place.

The InnovatorВ 
Majora Carter
Age: 41
Founder/executive director of Sustainable South Bronx

How She Saved Her World:В 
Created $3 million park where commercial waste once stood; launched local effort to use solar power to fuel her community

Majora Carter is a force of nature.

She grew up Black, female and poor in The Bronx, in a part of the community where nary a public park for children to play existed.

That was until Carter smelled something rotten.

The South Bronx was also the trashcan for more than 40 percent of New York’s commercial waste. Power and sewage plants peppered the borough and at least 60,000 diesel trucks make trips to and through the area each week.

"No community should have to bear the brunt of lots of environmental burdens and not enjoy environmental benefits,” says Carter. “Race and class are two of the determining factors as to where you find the good stuff, such as parks and trees, and where you find the bad stuff, like waste facilities and power plants."

In 1997, she took on then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who planned to put another waste facility in The Bronx, and with a tiny grant, spearheaded the first waterfront park in the community in 60 years. In 1999, Hunts Point Riverside Park was born—a $3 million park and kids’ space that emerged from a mountain of garbage and debris.

In 2001 she began Sustainable South Bronx, an eco-savvy group that educates residents about applying for “green-collar jobs,” such as installing roof gardens where a thin layer of soil and dense vegetation—instead of tar—top buildings in order to conserve energy, absorb rainwater and purify the air.

Still a resident of The Bronx, she realizes that green homes for people and solar panels may take some time for many of the community’s residents to embrace. Still, most of them are taking an interest in their immediate environment. And that’s a start.

(In late 2008, Majora Carter established the Majora Carter Group, LLC, a green-economic development consulting firm that "builds relationships between organizations and across sectors to remediate environmental pollution.")

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