Overview
It is widely recognized that the environmental justice movement first gained traction in 1982 in a predominately African-American community in Warren County, North Carolina. University of Michigan professors Bunyan Bryant (a graduate of EMU) and Paul Mohai were pioneers in the movement. Bunyan Bryant who in 1972 had become the first African American to join the SNRE faculty attended a meeting at the Federation of Southern Cooperative in Sumter County. Shortly after, he joined with Professor Mohai in Ann Arbor.
In the early 1990s, during the Clinton years, it was the period when the environmental justice concept “hit the radar” of the EPA and federal government. Professors Byrant and Mohai led a team of academics and activists to advise the U.S. EPA on environmental justice policy. Drs. Bryant and Mohai published