We Birthed a Movement

Name: We Birthed a Movement — Click! Photography Festival
Start: 2023-10-14T15:30:00-0400
End: 2023-10-14T18:00:00-0400
Location: Kenan-Keohane Gallery, on the first floor of the West Duke Building, East Campus, Duke University

Saturday, October 14, 2023
3:30 PM 6:00 PM 15:30 18:00

Kenan-Keohane Gallery, on the first floor of the West Duke Building, East Campus, Duke University 1364 Campus Dr Durham NC United States (map)

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ACTIVISTS FROM WARREN COUNTY PCB LANDFILL PROTESTS TO SPEAK AT PUBLIC EXHIBIT VIEWING

The Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University and the Warren County Environmental Action Team will host an event at 4:00 p.m. on Saturday, October 14 to showcase the exhibit “We Birthed the Movement: The Warren County PCB Landfill Protests, 1978-1982.” Speakers will include two community members who played leading roles in the original protests, Dollie Burwell and Wayne Moseley, and Director of the Warren County Environmental Action Team, Rev. William Kearney. This event is free and open to the public.

Through archival photographs and materials, “We Birthed a Movement” offers a retrospective of a large, community-driven protest against N.C. Governor Jim Hunt’s 1978 decision to place a landfill for toxic waste in the small, majority Black town of Afton in Warren County. A multiracial, intergenerational coalition of citizens fought against the landfill for years, eventually committing civil disobedience in a 1982 protest, lying down in the roads to block the passage of the trucks carrying the PCB-laden soil.

Though the protests were ultimately unsuccessful at preventing the landfill, their legacy has endured. Forty years later, they are widely considered the beginning of the environmental justice movement.

“We Birthed a Movement” was originally created by staff at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Wilson Library in collaboration with Warren County community members to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the protests. It is now on display at the Kenan-Keohane Gallery on the first floor of the West Duke Building on Duke University’s East Campus.

A photograph from the “We Birthed a Movement” exhibit shows Dollie Burwell (center, holding her hand against her neck) and Wayne Moseley (left, in striped polo shirt), as they gather with a crowd before a 1982 protest. Photo Credit: Jerome Friar.

In addition to viewing the exhibit, attendees of the public event on October 14 will have the opportunity to hear from two community members who played pivotal roles in the protests, Dollie Burwell and Wayne Moseley.

This event is brought to you by the Warren County Environmental Action Team, the Kenan Institute for Ethics, and one of its signature programs Just Environments (a partnership with the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability).