Environmental Justice Movements Timeline

Like most movements for justice, the Environmental Justice movement does not have a single starting point or timeline. Its development involved the critical thinking, organizing, and protesting of many groups and individuals over time.

However, several events intersecting with the environmental movement and civil rights movement helped formalize environmental justice as its own movement. Activists began to recognize that unsafe living conditions, polluted water, and toxic neighborhoods were also civil rights issues. Just as the Civil Rights Movement fought for voting rights and desegregation, environmental justice advocates argued that clean air, safe water, and healthy environments are basic human rights.

The higher levels of pollution and limited access to green spaces in predominantly Black neighborhoods even today result from both specific actions (such as racial redlining) and broader issues of discrimination, like lack of access to the levers of power. In this course we will look at each of these forms of oppression, examining their impacts and what it will take to dismantle them.

The milestones achieved by the Environmental Justice movement were won through decades of grassroots organizing and advocacy, and the fight continues on today. At the end of the course, we’ll explain what types of changemakers are needed, and how you can get involved.

But first, let’s learn a bit more about the events that spurred the environmental justice movement. Click through the timeline to learn more about EJ’s origin story: