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Polluted Promises: Environmental Racism and the Search for Justice in a Southern Town
Association for Humanist Sociology 2007 Book Award co-winner
Julian Steward Award 2006 Runner-Up
One community's fight against industrial contamination and environmental racism
Over the past two decades, environmental racism has become the rallying cry for many communities as they discover the contaminations of toxic chemicals and industrial waste in their own backyards.
Living next door to factories and industrial sites for years, the people in these communities often have record health problems and debilitating medical conditions. Melissa Checker tells the story of one such neighborhood, Hyde Park, in Augusta, Georgia, and the tenacious activism of its two hundred African American families. This community, at one time surrounded by nine polluting industries, is struggling to make their voices heard and their community safe again.
Polluted Promises shows that even in the post-civil rights era, race and class are still key factors in determining the politics of pollution.
Julian Steward Award 2006 Runner-Up
One community's fight against industrial contamination and environmental racism
Over the past two decades, environmental racism has become the rallying cry for many communities as they discover the contaminations of toxic chemicals and industrial waste in their own backyards.
Living next door to factories and industrial sites for years, the people in these communities often have record health problems and debilitating medical conditions. Melissa Checker tells the story of one such neighborhood, Hyde Park, in Augusta, Georgia, and the tenacious activism of its two hundred African American families. This community, at one time surrounded by nine polluting industries, is struggling to make their voices heard and their community safe again.
Polluted Promises shows that even in the post-civil rights era, race and class are still key factors in determining the politics of pollution.
275 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 2005
6 people are currently reading
277 people want to read
About the author
Melissa Checker
7 books4 followers
For fiction works, please see Melissa Checker.
Dr. Melissa Checker (PhD NYU, 2002) is a member of the Urban Studies Department at Queens College. Her research focuses on grassroots environmental justice activism, the politics of urban sustainability, and post-disaster recovery on Staten Island. She is the author of Polluted Promises: Environmental Racism and the Search for Justice in a Southern Town (NYU Press, 2005) which won the 2007 Association for Humanistic Sociology Book Award and was a finalist for the Julian Steward Award and the Delmos Jones and Jagna Sharff Memorial Book Prize. She also co-edited the upcoming volume, Sustainability in the Global City: Myth and Practice (with Cynthia Isenhour and Gary McDonogh, Cambridge 2014) and she co-edited (with Maggie Fishman) Local Actions: Cultural Activism, Power and Public Life (Columbia U Press, 2004), In addition, she has authored a number of academic articles and book chapters, as well as articles for popular magazines and newspapers. She was one of the original co-editors of the “Public Anthropology Reviews” section of the American Anthropologist.
Checker serves as the Advisor for the Environmental Studies Major/Minor Program. She teaches the Department’s introductory course, Urban Poverty and Affluence, as well as courses on Urban Environments and Environmentalism, Contemporary Urban Theory, and Service Learning Practicum. She is the Faculty Advisor to the Urban Studies Club.
Dr. Melissa Checker (PhD NYU, 2002) is a member of the Urban Studies Department at Queens College. Her research focuses on grassroots environmental justice activism, the politics of urban sustainability, and post-disaster recovery on Staten Island. She is the author of Polluted Promises: Environmental Racism and the Search for Justice in a Southern Town (NYU Press, 2005) which won the 2007 Association for Humanistic Sociology Book Award and was a finalist for the Julian Steward Award and the Delmos Jones and Jagna Sharff Memorial Book Prize. She also co-edited the upcoming volume, Sustainability in the Global City: Myth and Practice (with Cynthia Isenhour and Gary McDonogh, Cambridge 2014) and she co-edited (with Maggie Fishman) Local Actions: Cultural Activism, Power and Public Life (Columbia U Press, 2004), In addition, she has authored a number of academic articles and book chapters, as well as articles for popular magazines and newspapers. She was one of the original co-editors of the “Public Anthropology Reviews” section of the American Anthropologist.
Checker serves as the Advisor for the Environmental Studies Major/Minor Program. She teaches the Department’s introductory course, Urban Poverty and Affluence, as well as courses on Urban Environments and Environmentalism, Contemporary Urban Theory, and Service Learning Practicum. She is the Faculty Advisor to the Urban Studies Club.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 19, 2019
***Note: as a reminder, this is a book review/reflection paper for my course, CPLN 624: Readings on Race, Poverty, and Place.
Melissa Checker’s Polluted Promises: Environmental Racism and the Search for Justice in a Southern Town details the combined contamination of ecological and social resources in Hyde Park, a tiny black neighborhood in Augusta, Georgia.
I first became interested in this book when it was introduced in class as a story about “normal places.” This conversation about the appeal of normal places/smaller cities reminded me of this recent op-ed in the NYT about why we need to return to places like these (which is where most of us come from), particularly if we’re interested in meaningful justice efforts. The author, Michele Anderson, speaks about the concept of homecoming, and how by engaging with normal places, you can not only stop participating in destructive economies of transplants in coastal cities, but also help to create “a vital, wakeful society of local communities elegantly adapted to local ecosystems.”
Black Southern women (like Latria Graham, a great South Carolinian and alum of my high school!), have been saying this, and Checker shows that many Hyde Park activists have been doing this. She shows that many of these people have continued the fight for a neighborhood they have long left, due to their religious and cultural ties to it. Even for people without these kinds of roots, this book starts with Melissa Checker asking what she could do for environmental justice. Her answer is somewhat simple —moving to a place and beginning activism where “everyone else wants to leave.”
In addition to my personal interests, this book is largely about the hidden history of environmental racism, a topic I’ve been casually learning about in Attica Locke’s (wonderful!) Jay Porter series. In Polluted Promises, because Hyde Park residents could not “point a finger at one deliberate polluter” in their neighborhood, they were often gaslit by the scientific and political establishment alike. This inability to address less-publicized wrongs, and to deem (black) people who don’t have empirical evidence of this treatment as near-conspiracy theorists, is common in so many fights. I remember a time when we thought hoteps were crazy for saying there were more black people than the government said, and now we’re talking about the risk of undercounts for Census 2020!
Obviously, part of the issue is getting the information in the right hands, so that more people who intrinsically know that their communities are suffering environmentally can learn the language and gain the resources to prove this to people. However, even when people have a better sense of environmental racism, many of traditional education programs are seen as the territory of “white women with predatory fetishes for every urban issue except their own harm in cities” (quote from one of the shadier group chats for my major.) These white women are often doing valuable work, and snide remarks won’t change that. But, it’s important to think about how everyone can become equipped with the technical resources to make these cases and wage these fights from a scientific standpoint.
Melissa Checker’s Polluted Promises: Environmental Racism and the Search for Justice in a Southern Town details the combined contamination of ecological and social resources in Hyde Park, a tiny black neighborhood in Augusta, Georgia.
I first became interested in this book when it was introduced in class as a story about “normal places.” This conversation about the appeal of normal places/smaller cities reminded me of this recent op-ed in the NYT about why we need to return to places like these (which is where most of us come from), particularly if we’re interested in meaningful justice efforts. The author, Michele Anderson, speaks about the concept of homecoming, and how by engaging with normal places, you can not only stop participating in destructive economies of transplants in coastal cities, but also help to create “a vital, wakeful society of local communities elegantly adapted to local ecosystems.”
Black Southern women (like Latria Graham, a great South Carolinian and alum of my high school!), have been saying this, and Checker shows that many Hyde Park activists have been doing this. She shows that many of these people have continued the fight for a neighborhood they have long left, due to their religious and cultural ties to it. Even for people without these kinds of roots, this book starts with Melissa Checker asking what she could do for environmental justice. Her answer is somewhat simple —moving to a place and beginning activism where “everyone else wants to leave.”
In addition to my personal interests, this book is largely about the hidden history of environmental racism, a topic I’ve been casually learning about in Attica Locke’s (wonderful!) Jay Porter series. In Polluted Promises, because Hyde Park residents could not “point a finger at one deliberate polluter” in their neighborhood, they were often gaslit by the scientific and political establishment alike. This inability to address less-publicized wrongs, and to deem (black) people who don’t have empirical evidence of this treatment as near-conspiracy theorists, is common in so many fights. I remember a time when we thought hoteps were crazy for saying there were more black people than the government said, and now we’re talking about the risk of undercounts for Census 2020!
Obviously, part of the issue is getting the information in the right hands, so that more people who intrinsically know that their communities are suffering environmentally can learn the language and gain the resources to prove this to people. However, even when people have a better sense of environmental racism, many of traditional education programs are seen as the territory of “white women with predatory fetishes for every urban issue except their own harm in cities” (quote from one of the shadier group chats for my major.) These white women are often doing valuable work, and snide remarks won’t change that. But, it’s important to think about how everyone can become equipped with the technical resources to make these cases and wage these fights from a scientific standpoint.
June 26, 2020
An excellent in-depth history of environmental racism and the human condition.
March 30, 2025
Really well-told read about environmental justice activism in Augusta. Excited to cite and build on this work; and useful as a model of dissertation turned book.
February 27, 2017
Read all but chapter 6 for EJ. Interesting.
March 12, 2012
Anthropologist focuses on a particular neighborhood to highlight a theory of "environmental racism". She finds that even when you control for community poverty, race can predict where society keeps it waste and dumps its pollution. Very important study.
August 11, 2009
Does a great job of discussing assumptions about race, environment, and environmental activism and different organizing strategies for different environmental communities.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews