This story is part of our occasional series The Power of Moms: Stories of Intergenerational Influence and Climate Legacy.
Among the memories LaSharon Adams has of growing up in the shadow of what is now the Valero Oil Refinery in South Memphis, Tennessee, was a story of a neighbor who was severely injured in an explosion on the site. The neighbor was a worker who had been badly burned, said Adams, now 64. But aside from these whispered community stories, little else was known about the site and the environmental dangers it posed to the largely Black community.
Then her relatives began to die younger than they should have. Her grandfather died at 60 of “a heart condition,” her daughter’s father at 65, and her brother at 43. Though Adams can’t say for sure if the deaths were directly related to something potentially unsafe being emitted from the refinery, “It’s possible,” she said. “I really think they could have been.” Today, LaSharon regrets not being informed earlier about the environmental hazards she and her community have been exposed to. “It was really sad to think that humans can be going through things that were harmful to their bodies and they didn’t even know about it,” she said.
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The Adams family is not alone. Scores of Black communities have shouldered the environmental burden of industrial plants like the one in Adams’ backyard. Today Adams’ daughter, LaTricea, has taken on the fight for clean air and water in communities of color as the CEO of the environmental justice group Young, Gifted & Green, which has mobilized young people for environmental actions in Memphis, Baltimore, Washington, DC, and Flint, Michigan. “We didn’t even know how problematic that oil refinery was until I started to do this work in environmental justice,” LaTricea said. One of her goals is to ensure that “Black and Brown young people have a voice in legislative decision making and rule making.”
Photo courtesy of LaTricea Adams.
LaTricea’s interest in sustainability came from LaSharon, who grew up working class and had to be conscious of how different items were used and reused around the house. While not an environmentalist per se, LaSharon makes her own jewelry from fabric scraps and reuses “things that I already have like glass jars and buttons.” LaSharon also described a family history of giving back to the community that started with her own mother, Mary Ella. “She would take people to the doctor on the bus because she didn’t drive,” LaSharon recalled. “She would bathe them and feed them, she would keep other people’s children.” As a result, LaSharon said, the Adams family has a culture of giving back to the community. “It’s faith-based servitude, Christian family values.”
LaTricea’s mother, grandmother, and nephew all suffer from respiratory issues that were likely the result of toxic fumes from the refinery, she said. Both sides of her family lived within a five mile radius of the plant. LaTricea’s great grandmother moved to Tennessee from Texas in the 1940s. “Once you see the smoke stacks from the oil refinery. It’s heartbreaking,” LaTricea said. “You also smell it when you get there. It smells like sulfur.” According to data from ProPublica, there are a handful of industrial sites in the region that emit carcinogenic gases, including cobalt compounds, benzene, nickel compounds, and naphthalene, sometimes surpassing federal standards for emissions. “It’s heartbreaking,” said LaTricea. “It’s schools over there. It’s a park over there,” she added. “That’s insidious.”
“We didn’t even know how problematic that oil refinery was until I started to do this work in environmental justice,” LaTricea said. She had launched her first organization, Black Millennials for Flint, in 2016 in response to the ongoing Flint water crisis, when the water supply of an entire community in Michigan was contaminated by lead. As the organization grew and began to tackle new issues, it evolved into Young, Gifted & Green.
The most significant victory so far for Young, Gifted & Green has been in supporting efforts to stop the Byhalia Pipeline project, a crude oil pipeline that was slated to be built in predominantly Black communities of Memphis, specifically Boxtown near the Valero refinery. Young, Gifted & Green volunteers worked alongside other grassroots organizations, including Memphis Community Against the Pipeline, led in part by Justin J. Pearson, a community organizer with roots in Memphis and a Tennessee state representative.
“These projects that continue to be placed in our community are the embodiment of racism and a tax on our environment and our climate,” Pearson said. “These are sacrifice zones of Black communities, Indigenous communities, and poor communities.” Indeed, look at a map of Shelby County by its racial demographics and one can clearly see the density of Black residents, who are closer to numerous environmental hazard sites than white residents. With its potential for leaks and water contamination, the Byhalia pipeline project would have added another layer of pollution to an already sickened community. According to government data, the cancer death rate for Black residents of Shelby County was 23% in 2022 compared to 16.8% of white residents.
Shutting down the project was a major win for activists like LaTricea and Pearson, but they both say the fight for environmental justice in Memphis is far from over. In 2022, the Tennessee General Assembly approved a bill that would limit local authority over environmental projects and allow companies to override the demands and laws of the community. This would allow companies to “exploit people without any repercussions,” Pearson said.
The passage of the bill also comes at a time when a new environmental concern in the region is causing outrage: Elon Musk’s xAI supercomputer facility. “It’s a huge fight that we are fighting right now,” said LaTricea, who is hoping that bringing attention to this issue will have a similar effect to the Byhalia project shutdown. “Once you start getting publicly shamed, it works,” LaTricea said. Protests against Musk’s latest endeavor have already begun.
“To create change it’s always climbing up a very steep mountain,” Pearson said. “This is our lives we’re talking about; it is a fight for our lives.” LaTricea said that she and Young, Gifted & Green are ready for the challenge. “People who are the most impacted by environmental racism are the least represented in decision making,” she said. “We are trying to change the dynamic of that. To move beyond the point of victimhood to really getting people in positions of power and influence.”
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