In December 1978, North Carolina Governor James B. Hunt, Jr. announced a plan to build a toxic landfill in the rural community of Afton (Warren County) to store 60,000 tons of soil laced with cancer-causing polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) that had been dumped illegally on 240 miles of North Carolina roadways earlier that summer.

Over the next four years, a group of concerned citizens mounted a series of challenges and protests to stop construction of the landfill. After seven weeks of protests and more than 500 arrests, the State still dumped more than 7,000 truckloads of contaminated soil into a community whose population was 60% Black.

The intersection of environmentalism and civil rights in the Warren County fight was transformational. Forty years later, it has become recognized as the birthplace of the environmental justice movement.

This audio-visual collage shares archival recordings, interviews, news footage, documents and photographs from the movement. It is part of the 2022 UNC Chapel Hill Library exhibition, "We Birthed the Movement: The Warren County PCB Landfill Protests, 1978-1982." The exhibition was curated in collaboration with community leaders from the Warren County Environmental Action Team.

[Copyrighted images, audio, and video footage in this documentary have been used with permission.

Freedom songs heard throughout this video are performed by Golden Frinks and were recorded by Jenny Labalme. For more information, please visit: www.aroadtowalk.com]

University Libraries, UNC-Chapel Hill
library.unc.edu