For this year’s Black History Month, we chose to highlight some of the most prominent Black environmentalists and their extraordinary contributions to society. Each person also has a special bowtie assigned to them so that you can wrap a bow around supporting a Black-owned sustainable business, along with the stories of some of our heroes inspiring the work that we do. ( source: SF Environment )

Carl Anthony has spent his career working to solve social justice problems. His two passions are the battle for justice for people at the bottom of the economic ladder--particularly people of color—and working for an economy that is environmentally sustainable. He has been instrumental in expanding the environmental movement to include those most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. He is the founder of the Urban Habitat Program, one of the oldest environmental justice organizations in the country and is the former head of Earth Island Institute. He also started the only environmental justice periodical in the United States: Race, Poverty and the Environment Journal.

Solomon G. Brown was the first African-American employee at the Smithsonian Institution working continuously from 1852 until 1906. He held a number of roles during his 54-year tenure including preparing maps and drawings for lectures and working in the International Exchange Service. Brown was also self-educated and while at the Smithsonian obtained considerable knowledge in the field of natural history. He became well known for his illustrated lectures on natural history and lectured frequently at scientific societies throughout the Washington, DC area.

George Washington Carver is regarded as one of America's greatest agricultural researchers and educators. His innovations in the field of crop rotation are considered breakthroughs in resource conservation, by preserving soil and making farms more productive. Carver may have been one of the first scientists to look at systems through the lens of biomimicry; he observed that nature produces no waste--what is consumed is returned to the whole in another usable form. As we are coming to understand 150 years later, Carver believed that in the natural world everything is a part of the whole. He understood that nothing exists in isolation, everything is inextricably connected, and ignoring that fact can have disastrous effects. An intensely spiritual man, Carver believed that God spoke through the beauty of nature and the joy of creating. He taught that any action must be considered in light of its overall long-term consequences, not just its immediate benefits. In 1941, Time magazine dubbed Carver the “Black Leonardo". Photo credit: Library of Congress

Kari Fulton comes from the school of thought that everything you do is connected to the environment in some capacity. She calls her generation “Generation Why Not?” and works to mobilize them by building awareness of the connection between environmental and social justice issues. She led the youth campaign for the Environmental Justice and Climate Change (EJCC) initiative of the United Nations and co-founded "Loving Our City, Loving Ourselves," a campus and community initiative that builds solidarity on issues of concern. In her capacity at EJCC, Fulton trains hundreds of young people at more than 50 universities, particularly students of color at historically black colleges, about the importance of building a green movement. Noted as a young leader to watch by Elle and Glamour magazine, Fulton co-founded Checktheweather.net, a national online community and web platform to amplify the voices of young people of color advocating for environmental justice.

Dr. Robert Bullard is often referred to as the “father of the environmental justice movement.” He has been one of the leading voices on the issue for decades. In 2008, he was named one of Newsweek’s 13 “Environmental Leaders of the Century”. In 2013, he was the first African American to be honored with the Sierra Club John Muir Award. Dr Bullard has authored numerous books on the prominence of waste facilities in predominately African-American areas all over the nation, as well as others that address urban land use, industrial facility siting, housing, transportation, climate justice, emergency response, smart growth, and equity. When asked what keeps him going in his quest for environmental justice, Bullard answers, "People who fight... People who do not let the garbage trucks and the landfills and the petrochemical plants roll over them. That has kept me in this movement for the last 25 years." Another thing he believes is that if you live on this earth, if you breathe this air then you are an environmentalist.

Dr. Diane Glave is a historian and professor whose specialty is African American Environmentalism. Her love of nature has translated professionally and vocationally and she writes and speaks extensively on the topic. She is currently serving as the associate pastor at Ingomar Church in Pittsburgh, where part of her ministry is advocacy for impoverished and marginalized people affected by environmental disparity including access to recreational spaces and healthcare. She is the author of “Rooted in the Earth: Reclaiming the African American Environmental Heritage.”

Audrey and Frank Peterman are among the leading experts on America’s publicly-owned lands system and have been pioneers in the green and conservation movement since 1995. They are tenacious advocates for breaking the color barrier and for integration of our natural treasures as a way for all Americans, including children, youth, adults and seniors - regardless of ethnic heritage - to better appreciate our collective history and achieve a truly democratic society. The captivating story of the Peterman’s journey through the national parks and the environmental world enables Americans to look at our country with new eyes. It shows that around the country, Americans of every race contributed to the protection of our most treasured places. They are co-authors of the book: Legacy on the Land: A Black Couple Discovers Our National Inheritance and Tells Why Every American Should Care.

Jerome Ringo

Jerome Ringo is president of the Apollo Alliance, a coalition of organized labor, environmentalist, business and civil rights leaders dedicated to freeing the United States of dependence on foreign oil. "We are an organization that looks like the face of America," Ringo has said. A life-long groundbreaker, Ringo became the first African American in history to chair a major conservation advocacy organization, the National Wildlife Federation. He was the only African-American delegate at the 1998 Global Warming Treaty negotiations in Japan. Ringo’s experience as a union leader in the petrochemical industry solidified his commitment to environmental justice. Many of his relatives lived just beyond the fence from these industries and he saw the impacts first hand. He noted that employees at the refineries wore masks and protective clothing, but that the neighbors across the fence, who were predominantly poor and black, received no such protection, and suffered disproportionately high levels of cancers and respiratory diseases.

Warren Washington

Warren Washington is an internationally recognized expert in atmospheric sciences and climate research, specializing in computer modeling of the Earth's climate. As the second African-American to earn a doctorate in the atmospheric sciences, Washington has served as a role model for generations of young researchers from many backgrounds. Among his many prestigious appointments, in 2009 he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering "for pioneering the development of coupled climate models, their use on parallel supercomputing architectures, and their interpretation." He won the 1997 U.S. Department of Energy Biological and Environmental Research Program Exceptional Service Award for Atmospheric Science, for the development and application of advanced coupled atmospheric-ocean general circulation models to study the impacts of human activities on future climate. Washington's computer models for studying the impacts of climate change in the 21st century were used extensively in the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment, for which National Center for Atmospheric Resources scientists, including Washington, and colleagues around the world shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

Celebrating Black Environmentalists

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