Who We Are
We're connecting the dots on environmental, transportation, climate, energy, economic, health and racial justice.
The Robert D. Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice at Texas Southern University was launched to address longstanding issues of systemic inequality and structural racism that cause disproportionate pain, suffering and death in Black and other people of color communities.
Just four decades ago the concept of environmental justice was a mere footnote. The world has changed since the` 1979 Bean v. Southwestern Waste Management Corp. lawsuit where the Houston Black Community Study challenged environmental racism from solid waste sites.
Today, environmental justice is a headline—registering on the radar of the media, green groups, health, civil rights, human rights and racial justice organizations, social media networks, academic consortia, and educational institutions. Before environmental justice movement burst onto the national scene it was commonplace, and a generally accepted norm by the larger society, government and industry that steering pollution to poor and people of color communities and away from white and affluent communities was no big deal. For African Americans and other people of color it was a big deal, and they began to wage a frontal assault on environmental racism and began demanding environmental justice for all.
Scholars at historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), institutions that have a long and rich legacy of seeding justice movement, laid the foundation for environmental justice research by conducting research, writing books, starting centers, and working in partnership with the environmentally impacted communities—now called community based participate research (CBPR), and served in role for technical, legal, and advocacy. It is in the spirit and proud HBCU legacy we launch the Robert D. Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice at Texas Southern University to meet the multiple converging challenges facing Black America.
A life devoted to environmental and social justice.
Robert D. Bullard, Ph.D., is founding director of the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice and distinguished professor of urban planning and environmental policy at Texas Southern University. He received his Ph.D. degree in sociology from Iowa State University.
Professor Bullard is often called the “father of environmental justice.” He is co-founder of the HBCU-CBO Gulf Coast Equity Consortium and HBCU Climate Change Consortium, and co-chair of the National Black Environmental Justice Network.