At left, Cheryl Johnson at the wheel as she sets out on the toxic tour of Chicago’s Southeast Side. Photo credit: © Rosario Zavala/Goethe-Institut Chicago. At right, portrait photo inlay of Cheryl Johnson from Chicago Public Library website.

By Susan Messer

For over 40 years, Chicago’s People for Community Recovery (PCR), has advanced the cause of social and environmental justice. PCR’s initial mission was to press for repairs in Altgeld Gardens, a Chicago Housing Authority development on the South Side of Chicago. However, under the leadership of Hazel Johnson, known in many quarters as Mother of the Environmental Justice Movement, PCR turned to the more serious problems of urban environmental pollution when the group learned that the Southeast Side of Chicago had the highest cancer rate in the city.

Graphic courtesy of The Sunny Side Blog on Gouphug.

Hazel Johnson died in 2011, but her daughter, Cheryl Johnson, executive director of PCR, carries on her work. In 2021, Bobby Rush, who represents Johnson’s Southeast Side community in Congress, introduced legislation that would celebrate April as Hazel M. Johnson Environmental Justice Month. Rush’s legislation would also posthumously award Johnson the Congressional Gold Medal and her own postage stamp. I had a chance to talk with Cheryl Johnson about PCR’s many achievements under the Johnson mother-daughter leadership.

Q: I love the name of your organization—People for Community Recovery. Can you talk about that, the name, how it was chosen, and what it means to you.

A: My mother felt that the people around her needed to recover as a community. We also need to become a voice for ourselves and recover our neighborhood. She was seeing the community from a holistic and a health standpoint. She used to say that if we can clean up the southeast side of Chicago, we can clean up anyplace else in the world. Because this area is full of multiple environmental contaminants.

Q: Tell me something about your mother. Something personal.

A: By the time my mother was 12 years old, everyone on her maternal side was deceased. But she had surrogate mothers—friends and family—who looked out for her in her teenage years, people she relied on all her life, who taught her about being a female. She met her husband when she was working at a produce factory in New Orleans. She always said that she didn’t want to see her children be alone, the way she had been, so she had 7 kids. I’m the 6th.

Q: What was it like to have such a dynamo as a mother? When did you first connect with/understand what she was doing? When did you join with her in this work?

A: My mother always had her kids involved with her work. She was always very active in the community wherever she lived. When I was growing up, she sponsored trips and basement parties for the neighborhood. She was the block captain. In the summers, she supervised youth jobs. She was always a busy person, and I was always involved with whatever she was doing. I can’t remember when I wasn’t doing something with her. Before she moved into Altgeld, she was a founding member of The Woodlawn Organization (called TWO). That was based on a model of self-determination through community involvement. She used to say that the choices we make are going to improve our lives or desecrate them. She always chose to do things that would improve our lives. And she recognized the impact that pollution has on public health. And she always took us along with her on that journey.

Memorial Wall. People write the names of their deceased loved ones on Altgeld’s yellow-brick wall. Cheryl says the majority of the people named—especially near the bottom—died from some health-related issue, such as cancer or respiratory ailments, which occur at very high rates in their community. Photo credit: PCR staff

Q: What three environmental issues are on the top of your mind—that you consider most urgent at the moment.

A: One, we always have to think about water contamination; it’s one of our biggest threats. So we promote lead water-service pipeline replacement, with priority for the communities that are most affected.

Second, currently, the most environmentally racist practice in the area is related to General Iron [a car-shredding and scrap metal recycling operation] that has moved to the neighborhood from the mostly white, affluent Lincoln Park. It hits you right in the face, the way it contradicts the city health department’s mission of mitigating and reducing air pollution on the Southeast Side. We’re still fighting the permitting process, but the $80 million facility is already up. How did the city allow them to build that plant when they didn’t even have their permits?

This might be a fight that we don’t win, but we staged a hell of a fight. The environmental protection legislation we have isn’t being implemented. Industry is out of compliance, but they’re still allowed to operate. We’re not anti-industry. We’re anti-pollution. We want our government officials to really look at the risks before they allow something to situate near schools and communities. Industry is profit driven. They’re not concerned with people’s health. It will take legislation and stronger green environmental policies to ensure that future generations don’t have to fight these same battles and face these same threats to their health and environment.

“We can dirty up this country, but we don’t have the workforce to clean it up.”

— Cheryl Johnson

And my third urgent issue is preservation of affordable housing. But we want housing to be both affordable and healthy. Our community has abandoned homes, with lead leaching from peeling paint, asbestos fibers, lead pipes. It’s a hot mess.

Q: How do you stay focused with so many competing challenges?

A: Everything we do is driven by trying to find solutions. So we’re concerned about lead-based paint in our homes, so we trained people on how to remove it. Then we got CHA to hire residents to do the abatement. We’re advocating for public transit to electrify the buses so it will reduce air pollution. We look at what other states and cities are doing to find solutions. And we advocate on a policy level, because that’s where decisions and resources come from.

Q: In a past newsletter, I wrote about the tours offered along Chicago’s African American Heritage Water Trail. And now I’ve learned about PCR’s Toxic Tour, which explores the landfills, industrial facilities, and waterways that surround the people who live in this area. It was quite an experience to ride along with you on the virtual tour. How did the idea arise?

A: My mother coined the idea. She collaborated with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and was part of a team of activists who urged President Clinton to sign the first executive order on environmental justice. She told people about the problems in our community, and they wanted to come see what she was talking about. The virtual tour tells the whole story, shows all the sites, success stories and ongoing campaigns. The whole goal is to bring attention to environmental problems, which could lead to solutions. We can dirty up this country, but we don’t have the workforce to clean it up.

Q: What are three things you’d like people to do to support your work?

One thing you can do is contact your congressional leadership and ask them to sponsor the three pieces of legislation Bobby Rush introduced to honor my mother [see the beginning of the article for more about that].

Second, think about reducing the pollutants all around you—in your homes and workplaces and communities—to protect yourselves and the people around you.

Third, I’d like everyone to develop an understanding and compassion for people who live in low-income situations, to see the challenges we face. Get involved with grassroots groups. Share whatever expertise you have. We’re always looking for help.