Environmental Justice Was Born Off the Backs of Black Women, Theresa Landrum

“Women are the backbones of family, of community,” Theresa Landrum (of the Original United Citizens of Southwest Detroit) declares in a Detroit is Different conversation that moves with power, memory, and urgency. In this episode, Landrum traces how her family came from Tennessee into the “triple cities” of Ecorse, River Rouge, and Southwest Detroit, where Black families built businesses, bought homes on land contract, raised gardens, and created what she calls “our own Harlem Renaissance.” She lifts up a world where “we were our own mecca,” rich with doctors, teachers, churches, artists, and everyday people making life together under the pressure of redlining and racism. But this story is also a warning and a call to action. Landrum makes plain that “Jim Crow never ended, it just evolved,” and shows how pollution, industry, and disinvestment made environmental justice a life-or-death issue in Black Detroit. Her words, “the environmental justice movement was born off the backs and the work… of Black women,” frame this interview as both history lesson and organizing guide. This episode matters because it connects Legacy Black Culture to the future: protecting Black community means protecting Black air, Black land, Black health, and Black survival.