Photo courtesy of Howard Page
Longtime Mississippi Sierra Club leader Rose Johnson died on April 16 in Miramar, Florida, where she was helping raise three grandchildren after their mother died. Johnson, who was battling ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease), was 73.
A native of North Gulfport, Johnson lived for most of her life on the same street where she was raised. She was chair of the Sierra Club’s Mississippi Chapter—the first African American to hold that position—when Hurricane Katrina came howling ashore in August 2005. Nine years and many, many environmental battles later, she became the first recipient of the Sierra Club’s Robert Bullard Environmental Justice Award.
“Rose was a tireless, relentless advocate for her beloved community of North Gulfport,” says Mississippi Chapter director Louie Miller. “She was determined to combat and make right the social and environmental injustices that have been perpetrated on her community over the decades.”
Gulfport took a direct hit from Hurricane Katrina, which left behind what the New York Times called “complete devastation.” Johnson’s house lost most of the shingles off its roof and suffered extensive water damage, but it stood.
“For weeks after the storm, without electricity, 14 family members stayed with Rose in her tarp-covered home while she volunteered handing out food and relief supplies at a local community center,” remembers Becky Gillette, who co-chaired the Mississippi Chapter with Johnson at the time. Gillette became the de facto leader of the campaign against housing Katrina refugees in formaldehyde-contaminated FEMA trailers.
“When you’ve lost everything, you know how truly home is where the heart is," Johnson said in a 2012 interview in Ms. Magazine. “Home is for spiritual things to happen, for storytelling about who did what back in the day, a place to be secure. After Katrina, people weren’t secure; people were lost in so many ways. I saw how important home is—you know, not just four walls. This is a place for black people to protect themselves."
To that end, Johnson founded the North Gulfport Community Land Trust, which bought local properties and put them in the hands of low- and moderate-income black residents who might otherwise have been unable to become homeowners.
Rose Johnson believed to her core that environmental justice is one of the most powerful tools African Americans have to protect their communities.
“Our work became even more crucial to the survival of the North Gulfport community after Katrina,” Johnson told Ms. “I saw developers moving into other historically black communities, bulldozing the wetlands, and putting up shopping centers. I didn’t want that to happen here. Our ancestors fought hard for this land.”
[For a great account of Johnson’s fight to save the creek where she was baptized from being filled in, see Showdown at Turkey Creek by Jenny Coyle.]
Rose understood the big picture of environmental and social justice, and she gave generously of her time, energy, and wisdom,” says Miller. “She recognized the Sierra Club as an ally and a vehicle for change. She was on the cutting edge of environmental justice, and she helped transform the Sierra Club in its journey to embrace those principals.”
Among the notable victories Miller and Johnson notched together was exposing the Southern Company for sticking ratepayers with the tab when its much-ballyhooed “clean coal” plant in Kemper County failed to operate properly. The defeat of the Kemper plant resulted in a number of clean energy victories, including energy efficiency upgrades for low-income customers, solarization for schools and Mississippi's first ever utility-scale low income community solar project.
“We plan to locate it in North Gulfport and name it in Rose's honor,” Miller says.
“Rose was key in our campaign to help workers and community members who were being poisoned by dioxin from DuPont’s Delisle chemical plant,” says Becky Gillette. “She worked on a 'No scrubber, no rate hikes' campaign to get Mississippi Power to install pollution controls on Plant Watson, which was located in the North Gulfport area. We were on the front pages of several state newspapers on that campaign.”
The Sierra Club reached Gillette in Arkansas, where she moved over a decade ago, and asked if she wanted to say a few words about her longtime Sierra Club sister-in-arms. Here’s what she had to say:
Rose worked incredibly hard to protect her community and all Mississippians. She also had a wonderful sense of humor. I remember her grousing at Sierra Club meetings that people were stereotyping her. "Don't ask me to sing! I can't sing. Not all African Americans can sing!"She was also a total hoot and so much fun to be with, always laughing and joking. I met Rose in 2003, organizing against Louisiana developer/politician Butch Ward's application to the US Army Corps of Engineers to fill in a 600-acre wetland in low-lying North Gulfport. Three US senators had intervened with the EPA to get approval. Rose beat them.
She organized faster than anyone I've ever seen. Within a week she’d gathered more petition signatures than the Corps of Engineers had ever seen on a project in Mississippi, and she was later featured in a story in the Washington Post. It was the first of many battles she joined to protect the environment and people’s quality of life. She was a major force for good and an incredible friend—what a heroine!
Sometimes the Sierra Club gets recruits who work hard on the issue that brought them to the Club, but that’s it. I really admired Rose’s willingness to work and organize throughout the state. She wasn't only about protecting North Gulfport.
I remember going to a public hearing on a proposed nuclear plant expansion in the predominantly African American community of Port Gibson in the Mississippi Delta. It was a long drive—nearly 250 miles—and we could easily have bailed. But as Rose had anticipated, only a few people turned out to the hearing, which to Rose made it all the more important that we were there.
Rose always helped organize the bus trips to Jackson for lobbying. She helped on the Chevron expansions and the DuPont PFOA campaign after Katrina while helping her community recover from the devastation of the hurricane. She took on more and more as I got caught up in the formaldehyde in FEMA trailers campaign.
She disliked speaking in public but made herself do it anyway. She was careful about what she said. She was deathly afraid of flying, but eventually took the first airplane ride of her life because it was for the Sierra Club. She also helped diversify the Mississippi Chapter and our local Coast Group. Because of her high standing in the community, the community came to trust and rely on us.
When Gulfport mayor Ken Combs introduced a measure to the city council to censure me for accusing the city of environmental racism over promoting the wetland fill in North Gulfport, Rose got every black preacher in town to show up to support me at the council meeting. Ironically, this made it even harder to get the wetlands fill permit because of the large amount of negative publicity around it.
When asked about the situation by the Gulfport daily newspaper, Combs said, “We’re dealing with some dumb bastards. I’m not running for reelection, so I guess I can say that. None of these people voted for me, anyway.” Jim Price, the Sierra Club’s regional representative at the time, said Mayor Combs was the best organizing tool we could have had in North Gulfport.
One thing I learned from Rose is how tight-knit and family-oriented her community is and how important the churches are. She spoke of how her parents sheltered their children from discrimination and that it wasn't until she was older that she realized how much discrimination there was against African Americans.
Her father worked at a creosote plant and died young, probably due to exposure to the toxins in creosote. He came home every night with contaminated clothing. No one realized the risks at the time. I suspect Rose's battle with ALS may also have stemmed from that chemical exposure when she was a child.
I've been out of the loop on Mississippi Chapter activities since I moved to Arkansas 11 years ago. But Rose would call me once in a while, ask for help writing a speech, etc. I always felt honored that she still valued my advice.
“Rose was a remarkable person whose spirit always shone through no matter what kind of adversity she faced,” says Miller. “Whether it was seemingly insurmountable political odds, Hurricane Katrina, the loss of her daughter-in-law and her calling to raise her surviving grandchildren—or ultimately, her diagnosis of Lou Gehrig's disease—Rose always conducted herself with dignity and grace. I’m honored to have had the pleasure of knowing and working with her.”
“I admired Rose so much,” says Leslie Fields, national director, policy advocacy and legal, for the Sierra Club. “She was fearless, and she was really good at what she did. She also epitomized Southern hospitality. She was a gracious host and an amazing cook; I think I put on five pounds every time I visited. Her fried chicken was to die for, and her coconut cake … don’t get me started. Kathy Egland, a Sierra Club member in Gulfport who knew Rose well, has a photo of me curled up in a fetal position on Rose's couch, in a food coma after one of her dinner parties. It’s one of my favorite photos.”
Rose Johnson believed to her core that environmental justice is one of the most powerful tools African Americans have to protect their communities. Most recently she was involved in a campaign to create more jobs for African Americans at the Port of Mississippi, while at the same time working to protect North Gulfport from port pollution. She remained connected to her community even after she moved to Florida, where she was diagnosed last year with ALS.
“When she got the diagnosis, she cried a little bit,” says her sister, Sandra March. “But then she came back strong. ‘It is what it is,’ she said. ‘I’ve just got to deal with it.’ She wasn’t going to let it get her down.”