• Durham, North Carolina (Hayti District) – A once-thriving Black business community destroyed by urban renewal is now reclaiming its power.
• South Memphis, Tennessee – Burdened by decades of industrial zoning and cumulative pollution, South Memphis now faces a new threat, the burden of being home to the polluting xAI facility.
• Hampton, Virginia (Bay Shore Beach) – Once a haven for Black families excluded from segregated beaches, Bay Shore was lost to inequitable redevelopment and climate-driven erosion. Today, local organizers are working to protect the community from new threats.
• Bucksport, South Carolina – Founded by formerly enslaved people, this historic community is fighting a proposed interstate that would slice through its core.

The “Plantations to Pollution” multimedia storytelling series also includes the latest season of SELC’s award-winning podcast, Broken Ground. Host Leanna First-Arai sits down to talk with descendants of enslaved laborers, career historians, and community members to better understand how the choices made in our past created the challenges that communities face today as they look to ensure the longevity of the places they love.

Together, the immersive website and podcast stories reveal a shared truth: The geography of slavery has become the geography of pollution, and the fight for justice is far from over.

“Because of the South’s history of racial injustice, communities across our region face a legacy of environmental injustice today,” said DJ Gerken, president and executive director of SELC. “As lawyers and advocates, we’re connecting that history to ongoing pollution and policy failures harming communities across our region. ‘Plantations to Pollution’ highlights these stories because we can’t find the path forward to a future where every community breathes clean air, drinks safe water, and lives in a healthy environment, if we don’t understand how we got here.”

Why it matters now

This project launches amid a federal attack on foundational environmental laws and safeguards that protect community health. As federal agencies weaken enforcement efforts, SELC attorneys are stepping in to fill the gaps left behind, holding polluters accountable and defending our environmental laws.

“At SELC, we’re responding the way lawyers are uniquely equipped to respond, by going to court,” said Taylor-Sawyer. “Across more than 100 active environmental justice matters, we’re enforcing the laws that safeguard clean air and water for communities of color across the South.”

Through this work, SELC continues to connect its legal advocacy with the lived experiences of Southern communities. “Plantations to Pollution” underscores that achieving environmental justice requires both enforcement of the law and acknowledgment of the history that shaped these inequities.

Visit “Plantations to Pollution” at https://plantationstopollution.selc.org/ to explore the multimedia storytelling series from the Southern Environmental Law Center featuring community stories and local advocacy efforts.

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About Southern Environmental Law Center

The Southern Environmental Law Center is one of the nation’s most powerful defenders of the environment, rooted in the South. With a long track record, SELC takes on the toughest environmental challenges in court, in government, and in our communities to protect our region’s air, water, climate, wildlife, lands, and people. Nonprofit and nonpartisan, the organization has a staff of 200, including more than 130 legal and policy experts, and is headquartered in Charlottesville, Va., with offices in Asheville, Atlanta, Birmingham, Chapel Hill, Charleston, Nashville, Richmond, and Washington, D.C. selc.org