Many people of color live on the front lines of environmental

Hear, O children of justice, the words of Martin Luther King III: “Many people of color live on the front lines of environmental hazard and harm.” These are not mere words, but a cry forged in the fire of suffering and witness. They reveal the truth that injustice wears many faces—economic, social, racial, and even ecological. For where the smoke is thickest, where the water is foul, and where the soil is poisoned, it is too often the poor, the marginalized, and the forgotten—many of them people of color—who bear the weight of such hazard and harm.

In the wisdom of the ancients, it was known that the weak are the first to feel the tremors when the earth is shaken. The rich dwell upon the high hill, the poor in the low valley. When floods rise, it is the valley that drowns. So too in our modern age: factories are not built beside mansions, but beside the neighborhoods of the struggling. Highways and toxic dumps do not cut through the gardens of the privileged, but through the backyards of the powerless. Thus King reminds us that environmental injustice is woven into the greater fabric of inequality.

Consider the story of Warren County, North Carolina in 1982. There, a poor, mostly African-American community rose in protest when the government sought to dump hazardous waste in their midst. They lay down in the roads, they cried out with their bodies, and though the trucks rolled through, their voices awakened a nation to the truth of environmental racism. From their struggle grew a movement, teaching the world that the environment is not merely forests and oceans, but also the places where the vulnerable live, breathe, and hope.

The origin of King’s words lies also in the legacy of his father, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who declared that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Martin Luther King III carries this vision into the realm of the earth itself, proclaiming that to poison the air of the marginalized is to poison the justice of the nation. For when the least among us are endangered by environmental hazard, then the whole society is stained with guilt, and the moral arc of history is bent away from righteousness.

Yet hope abides, for the cry of injustice can awaken courage. Across the world, communities once silenced have risen to defend their homes. From the Native tribes at Standing Rock who stood against pipelines to the poor of Flint, Michigan, who demanded clean water, we see the truth of King’s words: that though people of color are often placed upon the front lines, they also become the vanguard of resistance, bearing not only the wounds of harm but also the fire of courage.

The lesson, therefore, is this: you cannot claim to love justice while ignoring the suffering of those who breathe poisoned air and drink tainted water. True stewardship of the earth must be joined with true stewardship of equality. The earth cannot be healed if her children are sacrificed unequally. For the river belongs to all, the sky belongs to all, and the soil belongs to all. To deny these to one people is to defile the gift of creation itself.

Practical action lies before you: raise your voice when you see injustice in the placement of factories, landfills, or power plants. Stand beside those who suffer, even if their struggle is not your own. Support laws and leaders who recognize that environmental protection and civil rights are not separate struggles, but one. And in your own heart, remember that silence in the face of injustice is complicity.

So let it be remembered: people of color live on the front lines, not by their own choosing, but by the cruel design of injustice. Yet they are also on the front lines of courage, endurance, and resistance. To honor them is to join them, to protect both the earth and its people, until justice flows like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.