Dr. Benjamin Chavis, Jr., nationally known civil rights and environmental justice leader, will keynote NCLCV’s Green Tie Awards on September 7.
Dr. Chavis has served as the national president of the NAACP and vice president of the National Council of Churches, among many other roles. He first rose to international attention as a young organizer in efforts to desegregate the Wilmington NC school system in 1971. He and nine other activists were falsely accused of arson and convicted in a case subsequently overturned in federal court for prosecutorial misconduct. The defendants were dubbed “the Wilmington 10” in international media, and ultimately received a pardon of innocence from the North Carolina governor.
Dr. Chavis was later involved in the fight against a controversial toxic waste landfill in impoverished Warren County. He famously labeled the landfill’s siting as “environmental racism” in a case which became a precursor of the American environmental justice movement. This September marks the 40th anniversary of that 1982 fight over the landfill. The chain of events had been set in motion four years earlier (in 1978) when a transformer company began the illegal roadside dumping of PCB-contaminated oil along 240 miles of rural roads in eastern North Carolina. The contaminated soil was excavated for disposal as toxic waste and disposed of in a landfill in the majority Black, poor, and rural Warren County.
In addition to the keynote speech by Dr. Chavis, this year’s Green Tie event will feature NCLCV’s annual awards to legislators and citizen leaders of the year. Awardees include: NC Representative of the Year, Cynthia Ball; NC Senator of the Year, Wiley Nickel; Catalyst award recipient, environmental attorney Mona Lisa Wallace; and Jane Sharp Lifetime Achievement honoree, clean rivers advocate Karen Cragnolin.
