THE SUM OF US
“The Sweetest Water In The World”
Season One, Episode Two
Futuro Studios / Higher Ground Productions / Spotify
Heather McGhee: My crew and I had just hopped off the streetcar. In downtown Memphis. We’re hoping a can’t-miss barbecue spot was still open. But then we turned a corner, and I froze. The building in front of me was unmistakable. Two stories, a big neon sign. A row of curtained windows. The Lorraine Motel.
<Archival> CBS: Walter Cronkite: Dr. Martin Luther King, the apostle of nonviolence in the civil rights movement…
Heather McGhee: It was right there that we lost him. April 4, 1968.
<Archival> CBS: Walter Cronkite: …Has been shot to death in Memphis, Tennessee. In a nationwide television address, President Johnson expressed the nation’s shock.
Heather McGhee: A man I named my son after. A man who told us that segregation harms us all.
Heather McGhee: My crew went closer to take pictures. I couldn’t look. I hung back, I averted my eyes. I can’t see that building without seeing the famous photograph of him laying there. Memphis is haunted to me by everything we lost that day. Dr. King himself seemed to know it. When his plane touched down here, he said “Either the movement lives or dies in Memphis.” 48 hours later, he was dead.
Heather McGhee: Today, Memphis is just as segregated as it was back then. But there’s a new movement building here. And I came here to meet that movement’s leader. Also a preacher’s son.
<Archival> MCAP: Justin J. Pearson: The call of injustice is not just a call for Black folk to wake up, not just a call for those oppressed to wake up, it’s a call for all of us to wake up…
Heather McGhee: Who came across my news feed one day.
<Archival> MCAP: Justin J. Pearson:…We’re gonna rally with our brothers and sisters who are whiter than we are but they’re being oppressed just like we are.
Heather McGhee: He’d quoted my book at a rally.
<Archival> MCAP: Justin J. Pearson: Something happens when, as Heather McGhee calls it, there’s a solidarity dividend built.
Heather McGhee: A 26 year old. Who was fighting for something nobody thought was possible. Something that would unite his deeply segregated city. And prove that the movement for justice is actually alive in Memphis.
Heather McGhee: From Higher Ground and Futuro Studios…I’m your host Heather McGhee. And this is The Sum Of Us. A podcast documenting my journey around the United States, in search of hope and solidarity.
Heather McGhee: It's one of these gray days, the water matches the sky. I guess if I squint, I can see how this could have been something else at some point. This could have been a beautiful lake with thousands of people swimming and enjoying themselves.
Heather McGhee: McKellar lake is in Southwest Memphis. Maybe 10 minutes from downtown.
Jim Schmedes: Back in the fifties, when Elvis used to come here and used to go water skiing here and run his boats. We used to have bikini contests out here… (fade out)
Heather McGhee: Jim Schmedes keeps a houseboat here.
Martin: Unbelievable. I mean, this used to be THE place.
Heather McGhee: Used to be. Now, Jim won’t let his kids swim out here.
Jim Schmedes: Cause who wants to go water skiing when you fall into the lake and it's made out of 20 percent benzene you know your hair falls out, you lose all your toenail polish or whatever else. You don't want to swim in this lake, you know…
Heather McGhee: I got to say it's a little bit nerve wracking to know that you really can't touch the water.
Heather McGhee: In 2020, the Environmental Protection Agency found unacceptable levels of carcinogens and mercury in the water. A big sign warns people not to eat the plentiful blue catfish.
Martin: So it's really not good. I stuck my hand in yesterday, started getting a rash already.
Heather McGhee: What are those factories?
Jim Schmedes: So across from here is an industrial place. They manufacture asphalt, cat food, all sorts of different things over there. There's a Valero refinery…
Heather McGhee: Valero’s Memphis plant makes gas, diesel, and jet fuel. Processing 200 thousand barrels a day. Not many people live over here. But there are a few neighborhoods.
Heather McGhee: If you drive south a bit, you come upon some small tidy plots and subdivisions. A Black neighborhood in Southwest Memphis. Where Miss Scottie Fitzgerald grew up.
Heather McGhee: Hello.
Scottie Fitzgerald: Come on in.
Heather McGhee: So nice to meet you!
Scottie Fitzgerald: Alright! You must be Heather. Nice to meet you all! Come on in..
Heather McGhee: Scottie turns 70 this year.
Scottie Fitzgerald: Greg. Can you come and turn this down a little bit?
Heather McGhee: She’s the kind to hold your hand while you talk, and say a prayer over you before you leave.
Scottie Fitzgerald: And I wanna have a word of prayer before y’all get on the road, if you don’t mind.
Heather McGhee: Some of Scottie’s earliest memories are of “Whites Only” signs. Of cutting school to march when Dr. King came to town. And her neighborhood. A planned community, developed in the 1950s by a Black doctor named Joseph E. Walker.
Heather McGhee: OK, so the house where you grew up? How far away was the Valero refinery?
Scottie Fitzgerald: You could see Valero from your front porch.
Heather McGhee: What did it look like?
Scottie Fitzgerald: You could see the pipes and the smoke coming out of the pipes, you know? And then you could smell them stinky rotten eggs. Anybody that would come visit us, like for Christmas, they would say, well, we knew we were close to you all house because we could smell it! We could smell the eggs. That's how bad it was.
Heather McGhee: How did that feel?
Scottie Fitzgerald: I don't know how I felt about it.
Heather McGhee: It was just life.
Heather McGhee: And it is. Across the country, people of color are twice as likely as white people to live near toxins.
Heather McGhee: When you were growing up and all this was happening, and you were always sensing the pollution. Did you, first of all, did you call it pollution?
Scottie Fitzgerald: I called it funny. ‘cause I didn't understand it!
Heather McGhee: One by one, Scottie’s friends and neighbors began to die, early, of cancer. So many, that Scottie can’t always recall their names. She had to phone a friend to help her remember.
Scottie Fitzgerald: And look, I got one of my friends. We all grew up in the same neighborhood. Her name is Dorothy. I couldn't remember everybody's name…
Heather McGhee: Yeah
Scottie Fitzgerald: …That passed with cancer. And I told them about Peggy Sanford. Diane Stewart…
Dorothy: Mm hmm. You remember, Jenny Lynn Taylor? Jenny Lynn Taylor just died.
Scottie Fitzgerald: You said Brenda was the one that uh we had just graduated high school and…
Dorothy: Brenda died about a year after we graduated, or two. And Michelle Walker. They were all in they —in 20s. Michelle died. Yeah, Clara died of cancer.
Scottie Fitzgerald: Dorothy, I appreciate you helping us because I just couldn't remember everybody.
Heather McGhee: Oh, I'm so sorry Miss Dorothy, for your loss of your brother.
Dorothy: Oh, thank you so much.
Heather McGhee: Every one of those names was a person that somebody loved. Together, they form a cluster of cancer cases. We can’t know whether those cancers came from living close to this industrial zone. But we do know how environmental racism works. Segregation laws, restrictive zoning, housing discrimination force generations of Black families into a corner. That same corner where toxic sites are placed. After wealthier, whiter neighborhoods say, not in my backyard. Communities like Southwest Memphis are known as Sacrifice Zones.
Heather McGhee: And these neighborhoods were what percentage Black?
Scottie Fitzgerald: All.
Heather McGhee: All. How else did you experience segregation?
Scottie Fitzgerald: Oh my dear everywhere—uh you talking about the Mason-Dixon line, darling. Uh you had to drink colored water. They all –it both look the same to me, but I mean, they had a sign, saying colored and white water.
Heather McGhee: A lifetime in the sacrifice zone prepared Miss Scottie for what happened next.
Scottie Fitzgerald: For me, it started with a note on the door. The paper was all wrinkled up and, you know, it just looked like a third grader thing. And I didn–I couldn't hardly believe it. I said who is this pipeline. We don’t have anything to do with Byhalia, this is Tennessee.
Heather McGhee: That note on Scottie’s door. Would bring the history of environmental racism she grew up with right back into the present.
Heather McGhee: Scottie says the note she found on her door. Was from representatives of a pipeline project. Valero was working with Plains All American—a seven billion dollar, oil and gas, pipeline and storage business. On a pipeline that would connect the Valero refinery in Memphis down to Byhalia, Mississippi. They wanted to build a 49-mile long pipeline, right through Miss Scottie’s backyard. Then Plains started calling, saying they wanted to survey her property. They’d even pay for it.
Heather McGhee: Now why’d you say no?
Scottie Fitzgerald: Because I just didn't know why they wanted to get on my property. I didn't understand it. I know if you’re wanting to survey my property and pay for it, I know you're not just coming to have a picnic. You want something.
Heather McGhee: And what did they want to do exactly?
Scottie Fitzgerald: They wanted to buy a portion of the land. And he tried to tell me it would be a small portion, fifty feet. He sent me a packet and they offered me, started off with three thousand dollars. And I told him, no, I said, I can't do that. You want to go up underground and put a pipeline underground. I said, don't these things don’t they eventually cause a lot of disruption and sickness and stuff? No means no!
Heather McGhee: But Plains and Valero weren’t taking “no.”
Scottie Fitzgerald: When he called back the second time, I told him, Sonny, as I realize that you got all these people behind you, I said but let me tell you who I got in front of me, behind me and all over me. I have Jehovah God. I said and you talk to your guys, and I’ll talk to mine. And Sonny got so tired of me talking about god, he called me and started talking to me real rough, you need to go on and blah blah blah. I mean, he talked to me something ugly.
Heather McGhee: What the pipeline guys didn’t understand was this land was a source of pride. Bought by Black housekeepers and Pullman porters who had pooled their money.
Scottie Fitzgerald: In fact, I have some of the receipts.
Heather McGhee: Wow…
Scottie Fitzgerald: And they're so old and yellow.
Heather McGhee: Back then it was almost impossible for Black people to get mortgages. The pipeline company didn’t seem to understand the sacrifice. And ingenuity it took. to buy a home. Which is why Scottie still carries her mother’s yellowed bill of sale.
Scottie Fitzgerald: So I told him, I said, first of all, I am old enough to be your grandmother, I betcha. And I don't care for how you are disrespecting me about something you don't understand.
Heather McGhee: The company tried to play hardball. And when Scottie stood firm, they sued her.
Scottie Fitzgerald: But let me tell you how God takes care of you. They took me to court and this is how the paper read: Mr. Scottie and Linda Fitzgerald. Hmm. My name is Scottie Linda Fitzgerald. They sowed–sued the wrong two. I’m seri–right before Christmas, knowing that the courts were going to close.
Heather McGhee: Miss Scottie understood eminent domain. When government needs private land for public use. If the city needed to build a sidewalk, or a sewer line, they could force a sale of her property.
Scottie Fitzgerald: But I didn't understand eminent domain coming for a private company. These are private people. So why should I give you my property for you to get richer?
Heather McGhee: Meanwhile, the company was approaching Scottie’s neighbors, too. Some of them took the money. Or got scared by the lawsuits. But others pushed back. Discussing their options at church and neighborhood association meetings. They invited their city and state representatives, but most politicians wouldn’t even call them back. Meanwhile, further east, where the city unwinds past 100 year old trees, and art museums, and leafy university campuses. Where the boulevards breathe a little wider. White Memphis was waking up to the threat of the Byhalia pipeline. It wouldn’t cut through their backyards. Or invite threatening calls from an oil company. But for them, the pipeline threatened something just as precious.
Heather McGhee: What is it about the water in Memphis?
Jeff Warren: Have you had any? You can go down and you can drink that water straight. I don't think there's a better tasting water on the planet.
Heather McGhee: Memphis is crazy about its water.
Jim Schmedes: Memphis has excellent tap water. It's been rated nationally.
Sarah Houston: It is some of the highest quality water in the country. And Memphis can taste it.
Scottie Fitzgerald: Oh, you couldn't even imagine tasting water like that. I'm talking about when you say good water, good water.
Heather McGhee: See, every drop of rain that has fallen on Memphis for thousands of years has trickled down through layer after layer of clay, and sand, and soil. The rain collects in this enormous well called the Memphis sand aquifer. It’s the pride of the city. The source of its famously clean drinking water.
Jim Kovarik: I would say that I wasn’t here a week and I knew about the water.
Heather McGhee: Jim Kovarik has lived here 41 years. He’s a retired lawyer and helps lead a non profit called Protect our Aquifer.
Jim Kovarik: I'm going to go get something, just a sec…(fade out)
Heather McGhee: When we arrived, Jim had coffee brewing and cookies in the oven. Jim gets incredibly excited talking about the Memphis Sand Aquifer. He showed me a picture, a cross-section of the geology that created this thing. And it is extremely cool. Like a thousand feet below ground of a natural brita filter.
Jim Kovarik: And what it shows is that the aquifer lies beneath Memphis, a thousand feet deep with 2000 year old water. It takes a long time for that water to get down there, and it's filtered.
Heather McGhee: The water that comes out of the tap in Memphis fell as rain before the bible was written. It existed before plastic or industrial chemicals. Before fertilizer runoff and oil refineries. And factories that make asphalt and cat food.
Jim Kovarik: As Ward, our president likes to say, it's the good bourbon, the aged bourbon.
Heather McGhee: And how much water is there.
Jim Kovarik: The estimate, 57 trillion gallons.
Heather McGhee: Whoa.
Jim Kovarik: If you were wise with this, you should have it for a thousand years. Barring any calamities. Like an oil spill.
Heather McGhee: For example.
Heather McGhee: So when did the Byhalia pipeline first come onto your radar?
Jim Kovarik: I'm going to say like spring of 2019.
Heather McGhee: Now, Jim knew that even the safest pipelines have a certain failure rate. And Plains All American had been criminally charged and convicted over past spills. And agreed to pay hundreds of millions in settlement costs. Like for one spill off the coast of California in 2015 that shut down a state beach for months. A single drop of crude oil can contaminate a huge amount of water. And the Byhalia pipeline would carry 17 million gallons of oil a day…right over the top of the Memphis aquifer. A single leak. Even a small drip, let alone a catastrophic spill ran the risk of poisoning the well. Forever.
Heather McGhee: Jim’s non-profit sounded the alarm and manned their battle stations. Along with other environmental groups, like the Sierra Club and the Southern Environmental Law Center. Their tactics were…
Jim Kovarik: We got two or three opinion pieces in the newspaper.
Heather McGhee:…Extremely polite.
Jim Kovarik: There were open comment periods and we commented voraciously.
Sarah Houston: I would say a lot of well-worded legal letters. A lot of signs in front yards. A lot of social media promotion.
Heather McGhee: Sarah Houston is the Executive Director of Protect Our Aquifer, where Jim is a board member.
Sarah Houston: You know, it was kind of like screaming into the ether.
Jim Kovarik: We had a conversation in fall of that year. I asked Ward, what do you think our potential of stopping this pipeline was. And he said, about 10 percent.
Sarah Houston: It's like, you don't fight oil and gas, you're never going to win! You can catch them in the act of some horrible pollution event and fine them and, you know, get some corrective action. But to stop an actual pipeline, I didn't know if that was possible.
Heather McGhee: Despite the yard signs and the voracious commenting, the coalition of environmentalists didn’t make much headway. Meanwhile, the pipeline project donated a million dollars to local charities, and was promising three million a year in local tax revenue.
Jim Kovarik: And the pipeline people had been in town over a year working their magic, spreading their money, having meetings that were more like, you know, advertisements than meetings.
Heather McGhee: The Byhalia pipeline was looking as inevitable as the hundreds of other pipelines in this country. Jim says the company showed up at local churches, trying to win the favor of residents.
Jim Kovarik: We learned all this later, mostly from these ladies that came forward and they said, “Oh yeah, I was where they were giving the bags with all the goodies in them, at the church, right after church service.”
Heather McGhee: Then, at one neighborhood association meeting, a representative from the pipeline said the quiet part out loud. When asked why the pipeline had to go through this particular neighborhood – Black Memphis, he replied that they were taking, quote, “a path of least resistance.” In the eyes of the company, Black Memphis WAS the path of least resistance - the sacrifice zone. Where they thought no one would put up a fight.
<Archival> Memphis Commercial Appeal:…Least resistance?
Heather McGhee: They were wrong.
<Archival> Memphis Commercial Appeal: I see a lot of resistance here today!
Heather McGhee: Two communities in segregated Memphis had been fighting the pipeline on different fronts. Environmental groups were focused on the aquifer. Black homeowners like Scottie Fitzgerald cared about the water AND didn’t want their neighborhood to be the path of least resistance. The two groups met at a forum the pipeline company held in 2020 in the wake of their growing PR disaster.
<Archival> Protect Our Aquifer: Memphis Sand Aquifer: I’m Katie, um, I work for Plains, one of the companies building the pipeline. So before we start, I just wanna ask, how many people heard about the quote from our contract land agent. H–Can I s–have you guys heard about that? Read about that?
Heather McGhee: Plains apologized, but they didn’t deny what their agent had said.
<Archival> Protect Our Aquifer: Memphis Sand Aquifer: So we had a land agent who used a poor choice of words, and I want to say first and foremost, that I am sorry. I am sorry. That should not have happened.
Heather McGhee: Jim and Sarah from Protect Our Aquifer were there:
Sarah Houston: It was a Bluebird October morning day and it was chilly. It ended up being a four hour meeting, it was a tense setting.
Jim Kovarik: There were probably 50 to 70 local, very local neighborhood people. People got riled up.
<Archival> Protect Our Aquifer: Memphis Sand Aquifer: Local: You said you don’t know what it’s going to take for us to stop the pipeline? Representative: I don’t. Local: Can you come next time with that answer? Representative: No, I’m going to come with an answer of we still want to work with you because we still want to build a pipeline, because…
Sarah Houston: Some had true questions, others were taking the opportunity to tell the pipeline company their thoughts.
<Archival> Protect Our Aquifer: Memphis Sand Aquifer: Local: We don’t want you to build a pipeline through this community, our community!
Heather McGhee: Hours went by. And the billion-dollar corporations couldn’t stop the meeting.
Sarah Houston: And then a young African-American gentleman came to the microphone. He was in a suit and tie, he had a nicely trimmed fro, and he just went on an incredible speech.
<Archival> Protect Our Aquifer: Memphis Sand Aquifer: The path of least resistance. That’s what they called Boxtown. That’s what they’re calling Memphis. (unintelligable) know that they care about the air that we breathe…
Sarah Houston: And you know, he held space for a good while. And I mean, nobody could turn away when he was speaking.
<Archival> Protect Our Aquifer: Memphis Sand Aquifer: We have to fight now. We have to fight now. Yeah! Because this cannot stand. Yeah!
Sarah Houston: You could tell, you know, not only was he passionate, but he was knowledgeable. That was Justin J. Pearson, the one and only.
Justin J. Pearson: I'm Justin J. Pearson. I'm 26 years old. I'm from Memphis, Tennessee.
Heather McGhee: Everyone has a story about Justin J. Pearson. Including me. He’s the 26-year-old I mentioned at the beginning. Who had quoted my book at a rally. He’s the reason I heard about the fight in Memphis.
Heather McGhee: Hey, Justin, it's Heather McGhee.
Heather McGhee: I met Justin at his former high school.
Justin J. Pearson: Hi, Heather McGhee, how are you?
Heather McGhee: An all-Black pride of Southwest Memphis.
Heather McGhee: I'm so well, I’m a…I'm right out front of Mitchell High School.
Justin J. Pearson: OK, I'm coming down.
Heather McGhee:In the very neighborhood they called the path of least resistance.
Justin J. Pearson: Hiiiiiiiii!
Heather McGhee: Hey, how are you doing?
Justin J. Pearson: I’m fantastic. Very nice to meet you. Hi, how are you?
Ryan Kailath: Good!
Justin J. Pearson: Very good to see you!
Heather McGhee: The halls are lined with class photos. some fifty young Black men in tuxedos, and young Black women all wearing the same string of pearls.
Justin J. Pearson: That guy in the middle. That's me.
Heather McGhee: What does that say?
Justin J. Pearson: Justin J. Pearson, President, Valedictorian.
Heather McGhee: Mm!
Justin J. Pearson: Yeah, that happened.
Heather McGhee: So when did you first hear about the BYHALIA pipeline and how did you decide to take action?
Justin J. Pearson: So I first heard about it on Facebook. The Mitchell High School alumni Facebook page. I don't think that without the summer of 2020 being what it was, that post would have had the same impact. We were in the wake of George Floyd's lynching and Breonna Taylor's lynching and Ahmaud Arbery’s lynching. We were having serious conversations about what it meant that people of color were disproportionately being killed by the coronavirus. And asking the question of why? Why was this happening? And we learned this word co-morbidities.
Heather McGhee: Co-morbidities like lung and heart diseases. Cancers. The same problems that plagued the Sacrifice Zone where Justin grew up. All of this was on his mind at that October meeting.
Heather McGhee: Did you –you were planning to speak? No? Why not?
Justin J. Pearson: I was listening.
Heather McGhee: Mm hmm.
Justin J. Pearson: Got moved. That's what happened. The spirit moved me.
Heather McGhee: Had you thought about the aquifer?
Justin J. Pearson: No! I always brag about Memphis having the best water in the world because we do. Scientifically. (laugh) Never thought about like why we had the best water in the world. You never question really where it comes from and never think about like somebody messing it up. My dad's church was in midtown, which is a more white part of the town. When we moved back, I'd seen these blue signs protect our aquifer. Did I ever google it? Did I ever look it up? Never. I was like, Oh, that’s -it’s for white people, right? This is obviously something else they got going on. And it's not involving us, right? Until you learn that it is! (laugh)
Heather McGhee: When you were younger, what was your impression of who an environmentalist was?
Justin J. Pearson: Oh, it's a white person, in a tree, hugging a tree. Something like that. In college, it was somebody who wore Patagonia. Right? Like that's an environmentalist. The narrative that we have in our community and communities is different. We didn't talk about, like, climate change, right? We talked about the things that were actually more personal and visceral to you as an individual. The fight for the environment isn't about some theoretical climate being improved or the globe being greener or some polar bears. It's actually to stop Black kids with asthma from dying ten times more than white kids, right? A or Scottie Fitzgerald having to fight for their land because of people trying to build pipelines through it, right? Like, that's actually the environmental justice fight
Heather McGhee: Turns out Justin J. Pearson is a natural born organizer. His dad’s a pastor. And his mother’s a teacher. She told me he used to carry a briefcase around in grade school. He was the kind of kid who everybody knew would be somebody. After speaking at that meeting in October 2020, Justin formed a group called MCAP. Memphis Community Against the Pipeline.
Justin J. Pearson: We started to meet four or five times a week for two or more hours every day, doing research on oil and gas and pollution.
Heather McGhee: And these early meetings, are they all black folks?
Justin J. Pearson: Yeah. There's no relationship yet with Protect Our Aquifer. They were like, we need to get with that group cause they knew something. And they began to tell us where are the places that we can jam up the gears?
Heather McGhee: The white led group, Protect Our Aquifer knew the law. The regulatory process. How to get an audience with the city council. The Black organizers, MCAP, knew that wasn’t enough.
Justin J. Pearson: A lot of our partners’ focus was on how can you write really good letters or how might you have conversations behind closed doors with elected officials to try and shake them to care about what's happening? And our strategy was different.
Heather McGhee: MCAP’s strategy was to put the people most directly impacted by the pipeline at the FRONT of the effort to stop it. Justin knew that not everyone might care about Black folks’ land being taken. But they would care about the aquifer.
Justin J. Pearson: The work was to tie those together to where it became inseparable to say that you care about water, but you don't care about Scottie Fitzgerald. Because if you do not care about the folks who are being exploited, the ramifications of it will be universal.
Heather McGhee: Making the movement Black-led wasn’t always easy. The more established environmental groups were pretty used to doing things their way.
Justin J. Pearson: The change in power…that's not easy to maintain. And so whether it is press releases making sure things show up a certain way to in meetings, making sure that the voices of black women speak first. Those moments were lovingly tense.
Heather McGhee: Were there any moments or experiences where you thought, well, this is something we're going to have to deal with?
Justin J. Pearson: Yeah. I mean, one of the first things…me being interrupted in meetings. It was consistent. I could be saying an idea or asking something. And one of my white, typically male colleagues from the environmental groups would interrupt me. And I haven’t always wanted to address it. But one of my colleagues, amazing black woman, she called me after one meeting, and she said, I didn't like how so-and-so kept interrupting you. You need to call them and tell them. And so I would call people and say, hey, you know, during the meeting, when I was talking about X, Y or Z thing, you kept interrupting me.
Heather McGhee: Hmm.
Justin J. Pearson: Yeah, I'm going to need you to not do that.
Heather McGhee: And how'd that go?
Justin J. Pearson: Folks each time were receptive and super apologetic,
Heather McGhee: Ok.
Justin J. Pearson: Which also was unexpected.
Heather McGhee: Mm hmm.
Justin J. Pearson: And there probably may have been something about my tone.
Heather McGhee: What was your tone?
Justin J. Pearson: I was pretty intense.
Heather McGhee: It took some getting used to but ultimately. The coalition managed to stick together. And MCAP’s members brought new energy to the fight.
Pearl Walker: I'm kind of like the town crier. Um…I share information.
Heather McGhee: Pearl Walker is a Black hair stylist who specializes in natural hair care. She’s the unofficial cheerleader for her middle-class Black neighborhood in southwest Memphis, and the environment chair of the local NAACP. As soon as she heard Justin speak, she started volunteering with MCAP.
Pearl Walker: They had their shit together, you know, they were emailing and then they had the website and they was keeping us posted and it was consistent and they would say, OK, we need to do this for the council meeting on this day and let's get the emails. And they did canvassing door to door and phone banking. And so every time there was a meeting or action in a march, I was there.
Heather McGhee: MCAP had organized the voices so often left out of this conversation.
Pearl Walker: I view Mother Nature synonymous to God. And so to violate Mother Nature I just think that you are violating God's greatest creation.
Justin J. Pearson: I would get in the car rain, sleet or snow, knocking on doors, informing people about the project, letting them know that they've been sued and then telling them that we were here to help them fight. I lose my voice every single week because there is no person I won’t talk to. There's no group that I won't meet with. There's no individuals I won't go and see. And it’s the same for our whole team. We're just going nonstop. And everything's coming to like a fever pitch.
Heather McGhee: As momentum built, hometown celebrities started to get on board.
Justin J. Pearson: People who are superstars. Justin Timberlake tells people to sign the petition, Danny Glover, Cybill Shepherd flies into Memphis to march alongside us. It becomes a movement.
Heather McGhee: Local politicians saw which way the wind was blowing. Especially after maybe the most high-profile environmentalist in the country came to town.
<Archival> Memphis Commercial Appeal: This pipeline project is a reckless racist ripoff!
Heather McGhee: Former Senator from Tennessee, Vice President Al Gore.
<Archival> Memphis Commercial Appeal: When the pipeline representative said this is the path of least resistance that was a gaffe because he told the truth accidentally. Least resistance? I see a lot of resistance here today!
Heather McGhee: Miss Scottie Fitzgerald - from the beginning of our episode - was there.
Scottie Fitzgerald: Justin brought me to the park and he wanted me to get up and talk. It was such a mixed crowd. It was so many colors and people there that was pushing. And that was for us.
Heather McGhee: Have you ever seen that before in your life? All those white people?
Scottie Fitzgerald: I cried because I wouldn't have thought that anybody would care. When I looked out and saw the bouquet of people. And that's what God loves is a bouquet. Everything he made is diverse.
Heather McGhee: Despite the diversity at that rally. Memphis remains deeply segregated. Some neighborhoods are 100 percent black. And some neighborhoods are almost equally white. But this fight had united the city. It got working people to volunteer on top of their day jobs.
Jim Kovarik: No longer appearing before a city council was just white guys. But here the ladies. Here comes Justin. Here comes a whole ream of people that are questioning what what's going on here? Are you really going to approve this?
Heather McGhee: This movement got people like Protect our Aquifer’s Jim Kovarik and MCAP’s Pearl Walker to work together.
Pearl Walker: It was a cause that people had in common and wanted to get on board with. It was a cause that everybody valued. I think the core issue was our water could be compromised. People were turning deaf ears to that, and it was like they couldn't believe it, like we were being extra or sensational or something. No! We could be like Flint, but worse.
Heather McGhee: They worked together to protect a resource that mattered to everyone. AND a community that hadn’t, always.
Justin J. Pearson: There's no way to win when we're not doing it together. The universality of water does connect white people and rich people like, but know that it is being threatened because black folk are being targeted because of a history that is said that it is OK. And if you accept that the suffering of black people or poor people is OK. You are ensuring that your own suffering persists.
Heather McGhee: After months of rallies and marches and meetings and speeches, the campaign was preparing to take a much needed pause for the Fourth of July weekend. Justin was at the grocery store on that Friday when his phone rang. He looked down, it was one of his allies on the city council.
Justin J. Pearson: And he said, uh, Hey, I just called to tell you, the pipeline’s been canceled. Chile, listen. You talk about screaming to the top of my lungs like oh my god! Oh my God! That was, has to be like one of the happiest moments of my entire life. Like seriously, like…we did it?
Heather McGhee: Who did you call first?
Justin J. Pearson: Mommy, yeah, yeah, hands down.
Pearl Walker: I didn't expect us to win like that the way we did. I felt like it was kind of like, unbelievable.
Sarah Houston: Pure disbelief. So it was just like Friday afternoon caught us completely off guard. And so we ended up convening down in South Memphis at Alonzo Wever Park, where a lot of the rallies had been held. And, you know, just all like hugging and like, Oh my God, we did this!
<Archival> Action News 5: Some viewed it as a battle of David vs. Goliath. Friday night, the company pushing to build the controversial Byhalia pipeline backed off.
Heather McGhee: In their statement, Plains All American didn’t mention the grassroots movement that had swept across Memphis. Plains stopped pursuing the project, a spokesperson said “Due to lower US oil production, resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.” After a victory that most people didn’t think would happen, MCAP regrouped and renamed itself: Memphis Community against Pollution, not just the Pipeline.
Heather McGhee: What else can this movement do?
Justin J. Pearson: Everything. Anything we put our minds to, we can do it. Uh, what we ultimately want to do, right, is to ensure those things become true, that your air is clean, your water is safe, that the land that you grow in is safe as well. To provide peace to some Black folk.
Heather McGhee: And by providing peace to some black folk, this movement stands to benefit everyone in Memphis.
Justin J. Pearson: Here's the powerful point: If I am invested in the places that are being most harmed, then I'm actually ensuring a better quality of life for myself.
Heather McGhee: Justin’s point is backed up by research. Studies show that the more racially integrated a city is, the less pollution it has.
Justin J. Pearson: When you have more integrated communities, you have white folks living near black folks. Those same systems that would put a toxic release inventory facility in a 99.9% black African-American community will not do that in a community that's 60 percent white.
Heather McGhee: In highly segregated cities. When the powerful can dump pollution out of sight in the so-called “sacrifice zone,” they tend to allow more pollution. So much, in fact, that it doesn’t stay there.
Justin J. Pearson: Our air doesn't have a point at which it stops and says, I've left the black part of town or our water doesn't have a point at which it stops and says, Oh, I've left the poor part of town.
Heather McGhee: We all live under the same sky. It was Dr. King who wrote that “all men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” An injury to one will, eventually, become an injury to all. That mutuality is something we have often lost sight of in America. Especially since we lost Dr King.
But the truth of it is inescapable. And 54 years later, right here in Memphis, a group of people who didn’t know each other has rediscovered the power of that idea. And used it, to save their city.
PROMO
Heather McGhee: Next time on The Sum of Us…
Heather McGhee: I go to Florida, where you can wind up with a felony for a lot of things.
Neil Volz: Disturbing a lobster trap is a felony.
Desmond Meade:Trespassing on a pier. Felony.
Neil Volz: Getting caught in a construction site. Felony.
Heather McGhee: Almost four percent of Florida’s population is behind bars. With devastating consequences for their democracy.
Heather McGhee: But, a movement based on love, won voting rights for over a million people.
Desmond Meade: We the people decided that something wasn't right with felon disenfranchisement. We decided it wasn't fair. We decided that when the debt is paid it’s paid.
Heather McGhee: On our next episode.
CREDITS
Heather McGhee: From Higher Ground, this is The Sum of Us. Created and hosted by me, Heather McGhee, and produced by Futuro Studios.
Heather McGhee: Our producers are Cassim Shepard, Ryan Kailath, Emilce Quiroz, Joaquin Cotler and Juan Diego Ramirez, with help from Liliana Ruiz, Sophia Lo, Susanna Kemp and Alissa Vladimir.
Heather McGhee: Our Senior Producers are Nicole Rothwell, Jeanne Montalvo, and Fernanda Echavarri.
Heather McGhee: We’re edited by Sandy Rattley and Maria Garcia.
Heather McGhee: Executive produced for Futuro by Marlon Bishop.
Heather McGhee: Mixing by Stephanie Lebow and Julia Caruso.
Heather McGhee: Research by Lynn Kanter and Carolyn Lipka.
Heather McGhee: Executive producers for Higher Ground are: Mukta Mohan, Dan Fierman, Anna Holmes, and Janae Marable. Jenna Levin is our editorial assistant.
Heather McGhee: Executive producers for Spotify are: Daniel Ek, Dawn Ostroff, Julie McNamara and Corinne Gilliard.
Heather McGhee: Our original music and theme song is by Thee Sacred Souls.
Heather McGhee: Join us for the next episode of The Sum of Us, a podcast in search of hope and solidarity.
Sonic ID: Futuro