by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)
This is Hazel M. Johnson. A working-class woman and mother of seven who lived in the Chicago housing project Altgeld Gardens for most of her adult life.
Because of Johnson’s grassroots efforts to combat environmental racism, she is now known as the “Mother of Environmental Justice.” In 1979, a decade after her husband died of lung cancer, Johnson saw a TV report saying South Side of Chicago residents had the highest incidences of cancer in the city. Hazel became determined to find out why.
Hazel learned that not only did the steel mills, refineries and chemical companies nearby shoot toxins into the air and dump into the local river (which locals fished in) making Altgeld Gardens a perfect storm of contamination of air, water and land which Johnson herself would later call (and coin) “the Toxic Doughnut,” but that Altgeld Gardens was originally established as a federal housing project for World War II African American veterans.
It was built atop land that had been an industrial sludge dump for the Pullman Motor Company from 1863 until the early 20th century. Altgeld Gardens, it turned out, had the highest concentration of hazardous waste sites in the nation.
Johnson went door-to-door collecting data from neighbors and started calling city and state health departments to investigate industrial pollution in her community. In 1982 Hazel founded People for Community Recovery to fight environmental racism.
environmental issues in Altgeld Gardens in 1989 (source: PowerShift.org)
PCR, made up mainly of mothers and local residents who were volunteers, pushed for city and state officials to do epidemiological studies of Altgeld Gardens (there was no legislative mandate before Hazel Johnson’s activism that addressed how industrial pollution was affecting the quality of life for low-income and minority communities).
Hazel and PCR also put pressure on the Chicago Housing Authority to remove asbestos from Altgeld Gardens.
Johnson was equally instrumental in convincing city health officials to test drinking water at Maryland Manor, a South Side neighborhood dependent on well water. After tests conducted in 1984 revealed cyanide and toxins in the water (Hazel convinced city and state officials to meet her in Altgeld Gardens and took them on a “toxic tour” so they could see the problems first-hand), officials installed new water and sewer lines.