This article suggests the need for a new “green” and “Earth-based” reassessment of the work of Booker Taliafaro Washington. Although it includes global and national perspectives, the African American community of South Central Los Angeles will provide the primary perspective. A general societal overreliance on petroleum-based chemicals has worked to the long-term environmental detriment of the African American community there. This article draws upon the works of four key environmental activists: Benjamin Chavis Muhammad, Robert Bullard, Van Jones, and Majora Carter. Working across a range of academic disciplines, the authors integrate contemporary “diagnostic” concepts of community health and environmental justice with older “prescriptive” concepts of employment in the primary trades and community self-reliance. The authors suggest that these old “Bookerite” concepts merit reconsideration, reframing, and re-messaging. The life’s work of Washington has therefore been recast here, in light of its newfound green relevance for the African American community, today.
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