Social Justice and Environmental Justice Is an Easy Blend For Us: You Can’t Have One Without the Other—An Interview With CEEJ

Reverend James Black and his daughter, Joi Black-Tate, are key members of the Center for Environmental and Economic Justice team that served as a community hub for risk dissemination and clinical cohort management during the Gulf Coast Health Alliance: Health risks related to the Macondo Spill effort to characterize risk from the Deepwater Horizon well explosion and crude oil spill. In this interview, Reverend James Black and Ms. Black-Tate discuss how their community in Biloxi, Mississippi, was impacted by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and connect this catastrophe to their previous experiences with collaborative Environmental Protection Agency projects measuring dioxin in “Back Bay Biloxi” and toxic chemical seepage from the Keesler Air Force Base. They elaborate on why they view their organization’s commitment to environmental justice as a natural outgrowth of the struggle for African-American civil rights and social justice in Mississippi and share reflections on the spiritual core of their relationship to community, social change, health, and the natural world