Last week was the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Although he is well known as a champion of Civil Rights, he also fought for a number of other causes. One of these causes was environmental justice.

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines environmental justice as “the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origins, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.” Along with this, the EPA website sets forth guidelines to help maintain environmental justice, including “the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards” and “equal access to the decision-making process to have a healthy environment in which to live, learn, and work.”

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Environmental justice has often been associated with environmental racism. This is because, as the Natural Resources Defense Council puts, “People who live, work, and play in America’s most polluted environments are commonly people of color and the poor. Environmental justice advocates have shown that this is not accident. Communities of color, which are often also low-income, are routinely targeted to host facilities that have negative environmental impacts…”

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Many involved in the environmental justice movement think of 1982 as the year when the movement gained significant ground. This was when North Carolina announced plans to move soil contaminated with PCBs, a group of man-made organic chemicals, from 210 miles of roadside to a landfill in Warren County, which was one of the only counties in NC with a majority black population. This decision caused protests, resulting in the arrest of activists, including a U.S. congressman, who tried to block the trucks from entering the landfill. Although that battle was lost, the event made it clear that environmental problems disproportionately affect low-income people of color.

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In 1983, the U.S. General Accounting Office released a report called the “Siting of Hazardous Waste Landfills and their Correlation with Racial and Economic Status of Surrounding Communities.” The report concluded that landfills are disproportionately located near black, low-income communities. Similar results were published four years later regarding the distribution of toxic waste sites related to race by the Commission for Racial Justice under the United Church of Christ.

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As this relationship became increasingly apparent, the environmental justice movement continued to grow. Leaders of the movement looked for allies among traditional and primarily white environmental organizations. In 1990, the Southwest Organizing Project, part of the Southwest Community Resources, Inc., penned a letter to 10 big environmental organizations, including Defenders of Wildlife, Environmental Defense Fund, Greenpeace, National Audubon Society, National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Defense Council, The Nature Conservancy, Sierra Club, The Wilderness Society, and World Wildlife Fund, calling them out for not protecting people of color from environmental issues.

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“Although environmental organizations calling themselves the ‘Group of Ten’ often claim to represent our interests, in observing your activities it has become clear to us that your organizations play in equal role in the disruption of our communities. There is a clear lack of accountability by the Group of Ten environmental organizations towards Third World communities in the Southwest, in the United States as a whole, and internationally,” read the letter. “Your organizations continue to support and promote policies which emphasize the clean-up and preservation of the environment on the backs of working people in general and people of color in particular.” The letter goes on to list examples of when the environmental organizations showed a “lack of accountability,” such as legislation that supported preserving land over the rights of indigenous people to have the land and the lack of people of color in decision-making positions within the organizations.

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After this letter was sent, some of the mainstream environmental organizations started developing environmental justice initiatives, decided to take environmental justice into account when making decisions, and added people of color to staff. Still, a report released in 2007 from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies said that 90 percent of environmentalists were non-hispanic white, even though the group made up only 62 percent of the U.S. population.

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The environmental justice movement is ongoing and the need for environmental justice can be seen clearly today.

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The state of Michigan announced Sunday that they will no longer be providing bottled water to Flint, the Michigan city known for its water contaminated with lead. As expected based on historical evidence, Flint is primarily black. Although the contamination has been an ongoing issue that has received public attention, little has been done to mediate the problem.

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Native American tribes have also been victims of poor environmental policies, or lack thereof, as seen with the oil pipelines recently. The protests at Standing Rock in North Dakota were against the Dakota Access pipeline. Protesters argued that the pipeline would unfairly burden the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, which is unlikely to receive any economic benefits from the project. As seen repeatedly, the needs and wants of minorities are often sacrificed for the financial gain of big business.

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In 2015, Pope Francis called for world leaders to care of the planet and the world’s poorest people. This was coupled with the adoption of 17 Sustainable Development Goals by the 193 member states of the United Nations.

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“Any harm done to the environment, therefore, is harm done to humanity,” Francis said, according to the New York Times. “A selfish and boundless thirst for power and material prosperity leads both to the misuse of available natural resources and to the exclusion of the weak and the disadvantaged.”