Tag: Environment

The Knife’s Edge of Ruin

The Knife’s Edge of Ruin

Madison W. Cates

This article uses largely untapped source collections to show how African Americans built movements for economic and environmental justice in Lowcountry South Carolina by the early 1970s. Looking at the area around Hilton Head Island, the essay starts by explaining how Black Gullah communities faced devastating land loss due to economic, legal, and demographic pressures. Into this context, the BASF company announced plans in late 1969 to build a petrochemical plant just west of Hilton Head. Although many Black leaders saw the plant increasing the purchasing power of their communities, others dissented out of concerns for industrial pollution’s threat to maritime industries. By June 1970, a temporary alliance between a Black fishing cooperative, white developers, and white retirees defeated the project. By studying these unusual alliances, this article helps explain how Black southerners shaped national debates about environmentalism even as Hilton Head became a well-preserved but exclusive landscape.

Snapshot: Water Treatment, 2020

Snapshot: Water Treatment, 2020

Monique Verdin

For this short “Snapshot” feature, photographers selected one of their photographs and wrote a short reflection on what it shows us about the ever-shifting relationship between people and place in the South.

Snapshot: Two Sides to Every Story, 2014

Snapshot: Two Sides to Every Story, 2014

Aaron Turner

For this short “Snapshot” feature, photographers selected one of their photographs and wrote a short reflection on what it shows us about the ever-shifting relationship between people and place in the South.

Snapshot: The Tea Room, Vizcaya, 2017

Snapshot: The Tea Room, Vizcaya, 2017

Anastasia Samoylova

For this short “Snapshot” feature, photographers selected one of their photographs and wrote a short reflection on what it shows us about the ever-shifting relationship between people and place in the South.

To Talk About Power Is to Talk About Shame

To Talk About Power Is to Talk About Shame

Janisse Ray in conversation with Amy Wright
Picturing the Road’s End

Picturing the Road’s End

Teresa Parker Farris
Amber Waves of Broomsedge

Amber Waves of Broomsedge

William Thomas Okie, with illustrations by Becca Stadtlander
“A Self-Inflicted Wound”

“A Self-Inflicted Wound”

Rebecca Bond Costa
“We’ve Got to Be Awful Careful or We’re Going to Lose It”

“We’ve Got to Be Awful Careful or We’re Going to Lose It”

Anna Hamilton
Rising

Rising

Intro and photographs by Baxter Miller, oral histories collected by Ryan Stancil & Barbara Garrity-Blake
Here on Earth Now: Notes from the Field

Here on Earth Now: Notes from the Field

Grace Hale, photos by Emmet Gowin
A List of Waters

A List of Waters

by Tyree Daye

Poetry by Tyree Daye.