Pride overpowers injustice in Hopewell, Virginia
Across the bridge from Virginia’s capital city of Richmond, where the Appomattox and James rivers meet and the first electric dishwasher was made, sits the City of Hopewell. Generations of people from this historic riverfront city have propelled the South toward becoming a better place for all.
However, legacy pollution from the Kepone Disaster of 1975 — which sparked the modern environmental movement in Virginia — and the encroachment of factories that pump toxic chemicals into their environment every day, have clouded how some people perceive and experience this historic place.
On a cold day in January — coincidentally Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday — the city is alive with neighbors waving, faiths mingling, clothes drying outside on the line, and a palpable sense of hometown pride.
Hopewell’s headquarters
Demanding justice in Hopewell is a time-honored tradition.
Michael Harris and NaQuetta Mitchell are two homegrown Hopewell neighbors that embody the city’s spirit of joy and justice, while taking care of unfinished business.
On a street named after his father, some of the city’s richest history is tangible in Harris’ house — starting with the smoke from the factories circling his home. When fellow community organizer Mitchell comes by, the air that sneaks through the front door smells like the felt tip of a permanent marker.
Harris and Mitchell are discussing the significance of the space surrounding them. It’s Harris’ childhood home, but a sacred place to many.
“I still call it the headquarters,” Harris says. For all his life and longer, this house has served as a spot where people gather to share stories, eat good Southern cooking, talk about God, and make plans to improve their city.
His father, Reverend Dr. Curtis West Harris, was a local civil rights warrior and pastor at four nearby churches, including the Union Baptist Church across the street. Like smoke from the factories, the church is visible through a windowpane in the door.
Although he passed away in 2017, the reverend is still known for challenging the status quo of segregation and keeping that door with the modest windowpane open to all – including a very young Mitchell.
As Mitchell’s single mother pulled long shifts at the factories to make ends meet, she made sure Mitchell got to church by dropping her off early at the Harris household, dressed and ready in her Sunday’s best.
Here, Mitchell marveled as she watched the reverend work.
“You would see people come to the door in three-piece suits, but you would also see someone come in with their clothes tattered and obviously needing assistance,” she says. “Some people coming over were going to church, and some were not, but they were all getting wise counsel from him, and he always made time to serve.”
When that’s all you’re seeing, it becomes part of who you are.
NaQuetta Mitchell, Hopewell resident
Observing Mrs. Ruth Harris, who doubled as her daycare teacher, bake extra biscuits “just in case” someone hungry dropped by also left a lasting impression on the young girl in her church dress.
Now, the community advocate attributes so much of her drive to serve the city to that early experience. She is most proud of passing generations of this sustained wisdom onto today’s kids of Hopewell, whether that means getting Harris to share his history at after school programs or raising her own girls on historically relevant documentaries.
A bronze bust in honor of the elder Harris, unveiled in front of Hopewell City Hall in 2023, provides another chance for the city’s first Black mayor to expand his influence. The post office has also been renamed in his honor. And the street named after him intersects with one named for his wife, a display of the duo’s everlasting impact on the community.
An entire hallway of the Harris home is dedicated to newspaper clippings and photos depicting some of the reverend’s greatest contributions — including leading a sit-in at a Hopewell drugstore‘s segregated lunch counter in 1960, resulting in a 60-day jail sentence.
Later that year, his protest of the city’s whites-only policy at the swimming pool prompted Hopewell to close the pool and fill it with cement rather than allow its Black residents to swim.
The images, mostly printed in black and white ink, depict Reverend Harris working in Hopewell and across the South — many of the photographs taken with close companion Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
In this Hopewell hallway, Reverend Harris can still be seen marching the historic 54-mile route from Selma to Montogomery, Alabama, with Dr. King. A snapshot from the March on Washington before the delivery of Dr. King’s famous, “I Have a Dream” speech stands out as well.
These civil rights leaders from Hopewell and Atlanta were at the forefront of environmental justice.
In 1963, Reverend Harris stopped the Ku Klux Klan and the City of Hopewell from opening a landfill in his predominantly Black community.
Some say Dr. King’s work before his death paved the way for the famous fight against another toxic landfill — this one proposed in Warren County, North Carolina, in 1982. Reverend Harris was also on the frontlines of this campaign against manmade chemical pollution. When news spread, the environmental justice movement was born.
Including his historic mayorship, Reverend Harris served his community on City Council for almost 30 years. He gave up his seat in 2012 after suffering a second stroke.
“The work kept him going,” reflects Mitchell.
He was “well past 90,” during his final run for Council, adds his son, who continues his father’s legacy from his own seat on Hopewell’s City Council.
When Harris asked his father why he was still so involved in Hopewell politics, “he said, ‘I got some unfinished business.’”
Harris and Mitchell have done the reverend well by picking his work back up.
Unfinished business
Forty years after Reverend Harris fought off the local landfill, a new threat entered the city in the form of an ethanol plant built in 2010. Now, this plant and five more massive plants surround the residents of Hopewell.
One of the greater-known stories of environmental disaster in the city took place from 1966 until 1975, when the Allied Chemical Corporation poisoned its workers and the environment with a toxic insecticide called Kepone. The company dumped this nonbiodegradable chemical into Virginia’s largest and possibly most iconic river, the James River, until the pollution was documented and publicized.
Authorities eventually shut down the plant and ordered some of our nation’s first-ever fishing bans and advisories, making headlines in Hopewell and across the country. The Kepone disaster is now considered one of the first large-scale environmental disasters in the country, and its impacts are still incredibly relevant.
People living closest to Hopewell’s orb of polluting factories have raised concerns about its potential health problems for decades. Their concerns have largely been ignored.
The old Allied factory is still in operation across from the Harris household, and it’s the state’s fourth largest emitter of nitrogen oxide — a chemical known for damaging the respiratory tracts of people who inhale high levels of it. Now the factory is owned and operated by AdvanSix Resins and Chemicals.
Local press revealed in spring 2023 that AdvanSix had violated the Clean Air Act every month for the previous two years.
According to Harris, many locals who live near Hopewell’s polluting facilities are left with sore throats and more serious illnesses including colon and prostate cancers.
Combined, Hopewell’s industrial sources of air pollution generate 6.5 percent of the entire state of Virginia’s emissions of “criteria pollutants” — six common pollutants regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Hopewell is also responsible for 8 percent of the state’s emissions of hazardous air toxics known to cause cancer and other serious health impacts.
The average life expectancy in Hopewell is 73 years, compared to the national average of 76 years. Recent data also shows almost a quarter of Hopewell’s adult population is in fair or poor health, but statewide that number is only 15 percent.
Last year, on behalf of several environmental and community groups, SELC petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to object to AdvanSix’s air pollution permit. The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality renewed it without holding a public hearing to allow community members the opportunity to voice concerns.
“Our air pollution laws require more public engagement than this hasty permitting process provided,” says Senior Attorney Mark Sabath. “Considering the amount of chemicals this plant emits into one of Virginia’s most polluted cities, the community should have had the chance to have their voices heard.”
While a collective vision is building around telling the brighter story of this vibrant community, a spirited base of locals, including Harris and Mitchell, continues to demand their right to a healthy and safe environment.
How to be #HopewellPROUD
Even on an icy winter day, the city park’s riverwalk trail provides stunning views of its waterfront and an intimate moment with the pink and purple hues that only appear briefly before sunset.
Right off the riverwalk is Lamb Center for Arts and Healing, a community arts center and nonprofit dedicated to helping the people of Hopewell heal through accessible, high-quality arts programming.
When Eliza Lamb opened its doors in 2016, she had just returned home to the Hopewell area from New York City and a career as curator of the Children’s Museum of the Arts. She imagined a place closer to home where people could heal their mind, body, and spirit through creativity.
“Our community does not have many opportunities for positive reflections of itself,” says Lamb. “Any sort of media or press tends to be very negative. Imagery of the community tends to be very negative. People are constantly seeing themselves reflected back negatively, so we’re creating different reflections.”
The thriving arts scene is one of the most obvious glimmers of Hopewell.
Last November, the popular and colorful Lamb Arts Festival drew crowds of people who embrace the power of art, including members of the Creative Change Makers Program — one of the art nonprofit’s initiatives to help teens find creative ways to spur community change.
Once accepted into the program, the teens participate in an intensive creative leadership training that focuses on problem-solving, community service, workforce development, and building local knowledge. It pushes forward the work of former Hopewell legends like Reverend Harris, and today’s community leaders like his son and Mitchell.
One result of the program is a current social media campaign centered on community pride, called #HopewellPROUD. It’s an intentional way to highlight the unique and authentic Hopewell that deserves to make headlines.
“There are so many mitigating circumstances around us that can take our joy away. I understand how people can get down and depressed,” says Mitchell. “I want to make sure youth understand their history, but also that you can’t let your current situation determine your final destination.”
Adds Mitchell, “Your current environment can withhold or propel you into the life you want.”