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Vernice Miller-Travis, a Crusader who Continues the Struggle to Weed out Environmental Racism

NNPA NEWSWIRE — Vernice Miller-Travis said that it’s her job to analyze data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s list of national priorities. In that way, she’s able to keep abreast of hazardous waste sites in the United States, including the ones that pose an immediate health and environmental threat. “You get to see the pattern,” Miller-Travis told National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) President and CEO Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr.
The post Vernice Miller-Travis, a Crusader who Continues the Struggle to Weed out Environmental Racism first appeared on BlackPressUSA.

Published

3 years ago

October 22, 2022

Stacy M. Brown

By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent
@StacyBrownMedia

Vernice Miller-Travis has consistently recognized racism, including how race has played a significant role in environmental policy.

She’s the vice chair of Clean Water Action’s board of directors, executive vice president for environmental and social justice at Metropolitan Group, and co-founder of We Act for Environmental Justice.

Miller-Travis said that it’s her job to analyze data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s list of national priorities.

In that way, she’s able to keep abreast of hazardous waste sites in the United States, including the ones that pose an immediate health and environmental threat.

“You get to see the pattern,” Miller-Travis told National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) President and CEO Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr.

“The pattern around the racial composition of who lives in a particular place in proximity to a hazardous waste site is not random,” she said during a riveting conversation inside NNPA’s state-of-the-art television studios in Washington.

The full discussion will air on Chavis’ PBS-TV Show, The Chavis Chronicles.

And when there’s any pushback, Miller-Travis stands at the ready.

“When they ask whether they’re being accused of being racist, I tell them that what I’m saying is that your policies you utilize have an unequal impact that people of color are always adversely affected, not white people.”

Born in 1959 at New York’s Harlem Hospital, where both her parents worked, Miller-Travis said she spent a lot of time at the famed health center.

She attended Barnard College before earning a political science degree from Columbia University’s School of General Studies.

“I started as a researcher working for the civil rights division of a small Protestant Church known as United Church of Christ – the remnants of the church established by the pilgrims,” Miller-Travis said.

As she spoke with National Newspaper Publishers Association President and CEO Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr., for a segment of his PBS-TV show, The Chavis Chronicles, they shared stories about the 40th anniversary of the Warren County, North Carolina protest that officially birthed the movement.

“One of the people leading that struggle was a minister in the United Church of Christ, and he called up to the headquarters in New York City and said, look, we need help. Nobody has talked to us, and the state has not reached out. There have been no briefings, no hearings, no nothing,” Miller-Travis recalled.

“And so, the national church did all they could to help and bring attention to it, but they thought, this is kind of curious.”

She continued:

“We need to see if what’s happening in Warren County is endemic to what’s happening in rural North Carolina – is it the southeast? Is it bigger than that? And they hired me as a research assistant to help identify what we would then call environmental injustice and environmental racism, which Dr. Chavis coined the term.”

“And we found that race was the most statistically significant indicator of where hazardous waste sites were located across these United States, not just North Carolina.”

Miller-Travis said her grandmother encouraged her to use her “practical knowledge” as a scientist to understand the circumstances affecting predominately Black communities.

“Nobody was researching the lived experience in terms of environmental impacts on communities of color, on low-income communities, on tribal communities,” Miller-Travis recalled.

“People were focused on endangered species, endangered water bodies – that was where the environmental community’s head was. They were working on hazardous waste issues, but no one was connecting race and environmental threats’ location. So, we were the first folks to do this.”

She continued:

“We published a report in 1987 called ‘Toxic Waste and Race in the United States,’ published by the United Church of Christ’s Commission for Racial Justice, which set the whole conversation aloft in this country.

Miller-Travis later traveled to Washington, where the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit took place.

She said she realized then that environmental racism existed throughout the United States.

Miller-Travis helped to adopt the 17 Principles of Environmental Justice, which remains relevant as the world wrestles with climate change, global warming, and a woeful environment.

However, she said she’s optimistic because the Biden-Harris administration has proven aggressive in its approach to these issues.

“This has been the most aggressive White House administration to address environmental injustice and environmental inequities in the history of the United States of America,” Miller-Travis asserted.

“They have policies, objectives, staff, executive orders specifically about environmental injustice in the climate space, and an executive order on addressing systemic racism across the breadth of the federal government.”

The post Vernice Miller-Travis, a Crusader who Continues the Struggle to Weed out Environmental Racism first appeared on BlackPressUSA.

Stacy M. Brown

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LIVE from the NMA Convention Raheem DeVaughn Says The Time Is Now: Let’s End HIV in Our Communities #2

Set against the backdrop of the NMA conference, Executive Officers from the National Medical Association, Grammy Award Winning Artist and Advocate Raheem DeVaughn, and Gilead Sciences experts, are holding today an important conversation on HIV prevention and health equity. Black women continue to be disproportionately impacted by HIV despite advances in prevention options. Today’s event […]

Published

3 days ago

February 3, 2026

Oakland Post

Black women continue to be disproportionately impacted by HIV despite advances in prevention options. Today’s event is designed to uplift voices, explore barriers to access, and increase awareness and key updates about PrEP, a proven prevention method that remains underutilized among Black women. This timely gathering will feature voices from across health, media, and advocacy as we break stigma and center equity in HIV prevention.

Additional stats and information to know:

● Black women continue to be disproportionately affected by HIV, with Black women representing more than 50% of new HIV diagnoses among women in the U.S. in 2022, despite comprising just 13% of women in the U.S.

● Women made up only 8% of PrEP users despite representing 19% of all new HIV diagnoses in 2022.

● Gilead Sciences is increasing awareness and addressing stigma by encouraging regular HIV testing and having judgment-free conversations with your healthcare provider about prevention options, including oral PrEP and long-acting injectable PrEP options.

● PrEP is an HIV prevention medication that has been available since 2012.

● Only 1 in 3 people in the U.S. who could benefit from PrEP were prescribed a form of PrEP in 2022.

Oakland Post

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TRUMP: “Washington, D.C. is Safe”

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — President Trump, who typically travels with a full contingent of high-level protection, insinuated that he finally felt safe enough to go to dinner in the District of Columbia. “My wife and I went out to dinner last night for the first time in four years,” said the nation’s 47th president.

Published

3 days ago

February 3, 2026

Oakland Post

By Apriil Ryan
BlackPressUSA Washington Bureau Chief and White House Correspondent

“Washington, D.C. is safe,” President Trump declared from the Oval Office today. Those words came while Trump was hosting Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. During the question-and-answer session, which primarily focused on a peace deal in the Russian-Ukrainian war, Trump explained, “You did that in four days.” He was speaking of how fast the National Guard quelled the violence in what was once called Chocolate City.

The President deployed the National Guard to D.C. a week ago, to a city with reduced crime rates over the previous year. Violent crime dropped by 26%, marking the lowest level in 30 years. Homicides also fell by 11%.

President Trump, who typically travels with a full contingent of high-level protection, insinuated that he finally felt safe enough to go to dinner in the District of Columbia. “My wife and I went out to dinner last night for the first time in four years,” said the nation’s 47th president.

Trump reinforced his claim about the newly acquired safety in D.C. by relaying that a friend’s son is attending dinner in D.C., something he would not have done last year.

After the president finished his comments, a reporter/commentator in the room with close connections to Marjorie Taylor Greene jumped into the high-level conversation to affirm the president’s comments, saying, “I walked around yesterday with MTG. If you can walk around D.C. with MTG and not be attacked, this city is safe.”

That reporter was the same person who chastised President Zelenskyy months ago during his first Oval Office meeting with Trump for not wearing a business suit. Zelenskyy, a wartime President, has been clad in less formal attire to reflect the country’s current war stance against Russia.

Without any sourcing, President Trump also said, “People that haven’t gone out to dinner in Washington, D.C., in two years are going out to dinner, and the restaurants the last two days have been busier than they’ve been in a long time.”

The increase in policing in Washington, D.C. is because a 19-year-old former Doge employee was carjacked in the early hours of the morning recently.

Oakland Post

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Rising Energy Costs Weigh Heaviest on Black Households

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — For many African American families, the cost of keeping the lights on and homes heated or cooled is not just a monthly bill — it’s a crushing financial burden.

Published

3 days ago

February 3, 2026

Stacy M. Brown

By Stacy M. Brown
Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent

For many African American families, the cost of keeping the lights on and homes heated or cooled is not just a monthly bill — it’s a crushing financial burden.

A new national study from Binghamton University and California State University, San Bernardino, finds that Black households spend a far larger share of their income on energy compared to white households, even when income levels are the same. “We often say that African Americans suffer more, but we often blame it just on income. And the reality is, there is something more there,” study author George Homsy, associate professor at Binghamton University, wrote. “It’s not just because they tend to be poor. There is something that’s putting them at a disadvantage. I think what happened is it happens to be where they live.” The study, published in Energy Research & Social Science, analyzed 65,000 census tracts across the United States. It found that while the average American household spends about 3.2% of income on energy bills, households in the majority African American census tracts spend an average of 5.1%.

Homsy and researcher Ki Eun Kang point to the age and condition of housing stock, along with lower homeownership rates, as key drivers. Their research concludes that “energy burden is not simply a matter of income or energy cost but also race, which might be driven by place.” Older, less energy-efficient housing and high rental rates in Black communities mean residents often cannot make upgrades like improved insulation or new appliances, locking families into higher bills.

Tradeoffs and Health Risks

The consequences go beyond money. Families forced to spend 10% or more of their income on energy — what experts classify as “unmanageable” — may cut back on food, medicine, or other essentials. More than 12 million U.S. households report leaving their homes at unsafe temperatures to reduce costs, while millions more fall behind on utility bills. The health effects are severe. High energy burdens increase risks of asthma, depression, poor sleep, pneumonia, and even premature death. The issue is especially acute for African Americans, who are disproportionately exposed to housing and environmental conditions that amplify these risks.

Washington, D.C.: A Case Study

In Washington, D.C., the problem is particularly stark. A recent analysis by the Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN) shows that SNAP-eligible households spend more than 20% of their income on energy bills. Across the metro area, nearly two-thirds of low-income households devote over 6% of their income to energy, and 40% face what researchers call a “severe financial strain,” paying more than 10%. Pepco, the District’s primary electricity provider, has implemented three consecutive annual rate hikes, pushing the average household bill to $114 per month as of January 2025. Shutoffs have followed — nearly 12,000 customers lost service in 2024, with disconnections doubling after a summer rate hike. Washington Gas has also sought a 12% rate increase and pushed a controversial $215 million pipeline replacement project, rebranded as “District SAFE.” The plan could ultimately cost D.C. households an additional $45,000 each over several decades, or nearly $1,000 annually added to bills.

Historical Roots

Researchers argue that these inequities are not accidental but rooted in history. The ScienceDirect study reveals that African American communities living in formerly redlined neighborhoods continue to face disadvantages today — from poor housing quality to higher climate risks. Homsy says policymakers must make targeted efforts. “It is harder to get to rental units where a lot of poor people live,” he noted. “We need to work harder to get into these communities of color.”