![]() She talked to her neighbors and concluded that they too experienced ailments far too numerous to be normal. She further discovered that Altgeld Gardens had been built upon a toxic waste dump and sewage farm created by the Pullman Palace Car Company and town decades before. The primary conclusion she drew was that her low-income minority community was deluged by pollution because manufacturers and government regulators thought they could perpetuate this injustice if the victims appeared poor and powerless. She contacted governmental boards of health and various regulatory bodies and questioned academics and activists. THE FOLDER FACTORY MOUNT JACKSON VA TVAfter seeing a TV program about environmentally-related cancer in the 1970s she began to research environmental pollution. The air, water, and soil of Altgeld Gardens produced constant emissions. Factory chimneys were spewing noxious fumes and toxic waste dumps festered underground. Hazel Johnson worried about the environment surrounding Altgeld Gardens. ![]() THE FOLDER FACTORY MOUNT JACKSON VA SKINThe Johnsons' seven children, then aged from 2 to 16 years, suffered from a variety of mostly skin and respiratory ailments. In 1969 Hazel's husband John died of lung cancer-a sadly sudden event for a relatively young man who rarely smoked. She began to work nights so that she could be with her children during the day. That job was followed in 1969 by her service as receptionist and general office support at Parents and Friends of Retarded Children. In 1968-1969 Johnson worked for Continental Temporary Services, as typist, filing clerk, or receptionist. She was employed as a mail sorter for the U.S. Hazel Johnson continued to work and to raise the couple's children there. ![]() After 1956 it was managed by the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA), and housed approximately 10,000 residents, mostly low-income families with children. In 1962 the Johnsons moved to Altgeld Gardens Homes, a very large, segregated public housing project built in 1945 to house African American veterans and war workers on Chicago's far southeast side, in the heart of the vast Calumet industrial area. ![]() There Hazel Johnson worked from 1960 to 1962 as a canvasser in the The Woodlawn Organization (TWO), recruiting new members for that African American neighborhood organization. In the mid-1950s the Johnsons moved to Chicago. She married John Johnson, whom she met in New Orleans. From 1949 to 1951 she attended the first two years of high school at Thomas Jefferson High School in Los Angeles, California while living with an aunt. Johnson was born Hazel Washington on Januin New Orleans, Louisiana, to Mary Dunmore and Clarence Washington. During her forty years in the movement she worked closely with othegroundbreakers such as Benjamin F. In the environmental justice movement Johnson joined such outstanding women leaders as Peggy Shepard, Dollie Burwell, Emelda West, and Margaret Williams. ![]() She fearlessly worked for change at the highest levels of federal government and reached out to empower her own neighbors at home. Self-educated, she provided testimony and documentation that revealed the extent of that pollution. she inspired other poor and minority grassroots organizations to organize to fight the corporate, governmental, and cultural causes of the pollution placed in their communities. Johnson, the “Mother of Environmental Justice,” founded the People for Community Recovery to fight environmental racism on Chicago's heavily polluted southeast side. Jeanie Child, Harsh Archival Processing Project, 2014 supervised by Michael Flug, Senior Archivist, Harsh Archival Processing Project Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature When quoting material from this collection the preferred citation is: People for Community Recovery Archives,, Chicago Public Library, Woodson Regional Library, Vivian G. Halsted Street, Chicago, Illinois 60628ĭeed of gift, from Cheryl Johnson, October 19, 2009 Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature, 9525 S. Chicago Public Library, Woodson Regional Library, Vivian G. ![]()
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