Bullard, Robert

Robert bullard is an activist and academic who has been one of the leading voices of the environmental justice movement. While working as an environmental sociologist in the 1970s, Bullard wrote a study called “Solid Waste Sites and the Black Houston Community” that identified a systematic pattern of siting garbage dumps in black neighborhoods. His research documenting the unjust connection between toxic siting and communities of color led to the first lawsuit (Bean v. Southwestern Waste Management) that used civil rights law to challenge environmental discrimination.

Bullard documented this research in Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality (1990), which is widely regarded as the first book to fully articulate the concept of environmental justice. In Dumping in Dixie, Bullard reports that African Americans in ...