No community, rich or poor, urban or suburban, black or white, should be made into a sacrifice zone or… — Robert D. Bullard

The 1991 First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit was probably the single most important event in the environmental justice movement's history. The summit broadened the movement beyond its early focus against toxics to include issues of public health, worker safety, land use, transportation, housing, resource allocation, and community empowerment. The meeting also demonstrated that it is possible to build a multiracial grassroots movement around environmental and economic justice.

The environmental justice framework shifts the burden of proof to polluters and dischargers who do harm, who discriminate, or who do not give equal protection to racial and ethnic minorities. Under the current system, individuals who challenge polluters must prove that they have been harmed, discriminated against, or disproportionately affected. Few affected communities have the resources to hire the lawyers, expert witnesses, and doctors needed to sustain such a challenge.

In 1990, my book Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality chronicled the convergence of two social movements-the social justice and environmental movements-into one, the environmental justice movement. This book highlighted African Americans' environmental activism in the South, the same region that gave birth to the modern civil rights movement. What started out as local and often isolated community-based struggles against the siting of toxic waste and industrial facilities blossomed into a multi-issue, multiethnic, and multiregional movement."