For decades, residents of the historically Black Southeast community of Newport News have raised concerns about the health and nuisance impacts of pollution from local coal terminals.
After many years of seeking government help and hitting dead ends, the community has started to gain traction for air monitoring and potential solutions.
A new art exhibition in the community aims to keep pushing the momentum forward.
“Evidence: Coal Dust in Hampton Roads” opens Thursday at the Downing-Gross Cultural Arts Center in Newport News and will be on display through July 9.
“The thing about environmental racism is it silences voices. The beautiful thing about what we're doing is amplifying those voices that have been silenced for generations,” said Lathaniel Kirts, a local pastor and community activist. “Art amplifies our voices in ways that we probably didn't have a way to do” in the past.
The exhibit is part of a larger Coal Dust Kills campaign spearheaded by the University of Virginia’s Repair Lab, which focuses on environmental justice.
The Repair Lab has spent the past few years working with community members in Southeast Newport News and Lambert’s Point in Norfolk to pursue solutions, install a network of air quality sensors and collect oral histories from residents about their experiences with coal dust.
Adrian Wood, a multimedia producer with the organization, said the new gallery brings those efforts together, including the premiere of an interactive archive called “Voices in the Dust.”
“The main goal of this exhibition is to connect people to each other and to information that they can use to take action towards the kind of neighborhood that they want to live in,” Wood said. “This work is an accumulation of everything that came before, and it's a springboard for what's to come.”
The display highlights the toll of coal dust pollution through photos, quotes from residents, maps showing data such as local asthma rates and newspaper articles stretching back to 1927.
One local news story on display is from 1985, featuring a photo of Louise Bazemore, a then-resident of Newport News and a member of the Ridley Circle Tenants Union. Bazemore held a rag visibly covered in coal dust while speaking out about the issue.
Directly next to that article is a recent photo of Bazemore’s daughter, Janny Bazemore, holding up the photo of her mother and a rag similarly dirty with coal dust four decades later.
“That's the kind of thing that gives me chills and haunts me at night,” Wood said. “People who, generations ago, were talking about this, trying to get things done, and hoping that something would be done by now.”
Yugonda Sample-Jones, a Southeast resident and CEO of the civic engagement business EmPower All, said she got involved with Coal Dust Kills after her son experienced breathing issues and was diagnosed with asthma shortly after moving to the area.
She said the campaign’s work in recent years has helped jumpstart what she hopes will soon be meaningful protective measures.
The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality plans to put up regulatory-grade air monitors in the area, though residents say they are not waiting for more data to seek action.
Community activists have packed Newport News City Council meetings and advocated at the General Assembly in favor of installing wind fences to curb dust flying off coal piles, or a large dome to cover the piles.
The city recently lost out on the potential for a $20 million federal grant to address coal dust, but Mayor Phillip Jones said they plan to seek other funding opportunities. Newport News is also part of Bloomberg American Sustainable Cities, a three-year initiative meant to help local governments work on environmental solutions.
Sample-Jones said voicing concerns about coal dust is nothing new.
“But bringing the right people in place to validate what we already know in our community, and then showing people that we are actively doing things to change and move the needle, gets more people engaged and wanting to do something about the issue,” she said.
Members of the public can attend a free opening reception for the coal dust exhibit and a civic engagement workshop Thursday, June 12 from 5-8 p.m. at the Downing-Gross Cultural Arts Center.
The group also plans to make scientists and historians available to discuss coal dust at a community concert at King-Lincoln Park on June 28.
