beverly wright heads the deep south center for environmental justice. this case started in st. hn, the baptist parish of louisiana. tell us what that place look s like and who lives there. beverly: well, it came out of saint john parish but but the site is the same across what is called cancer alley, where we have the third highest cancer rate in the nation, and 85 mile stretch of land between new orleans and baton rouge, with over 156 petrochemical plants and six refineries, over 200 million pounds of pollution. that number is almost comparable to the amount of pollution in the state of texas. all of the research basically shows that it was intentional and we can show places where white community members were actually moved away from areas while black people were left to languish in pollution as they expanded the plants. saint john parish was one of the communities that actually brought administrative regan down and he was able to see what his own eyes smell and feel the stench of these facilities, and then look at the data that showed, for example, a public school down the roa

think one really incredible example that comes to my mind is the leadership from bob bullard, beverly wright. we see incredible work that they're doing. leveraging a network of hbcus. building up capacity in individual hbcus to support so that student and facility leadership can support community leaders in developing and implementing programming they think is important. most recently they have been awarded an epa thriving communities grant which is supporting them as also in sustaining this work but also as regranting organization. so that different community- based organizations can come to them with ideas for research projects and then ensure they can implement these with the resources that are needed from universities themselves. i think this is also really powerful model not only because of the work that is happening but also because of the workforce development that's happening. what we're seeing is the next generation of scientists are being trained in ways so they have the cultural awareness and the relationships with the communities that some of them are part of and some of them may